Members-Only Fall Wrapup & Spring Preview is out

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 4 Comments on Members-Only Fall Wrapup & Spring Preview is out

We sent out the first of our three annual members-only publications this morning, the Fall Wrapup & Spring Preview.  The issue includes:

  • Our expert summary & analysis of the state of each organization as they ramp up towards raceday
  • Interviews with representatives of each organization
  • Previously unpublished pictures of each organization in action this fall
  • Quantitative freeroll and mini-raceday stats to give the buggy bookies out there some numbers to work with.

If you thought you were already a “dues-paying-member” for 2010 and didn’t receive and e-mail this morning, let us know and we’ll sort out the paperwork.  If you haven’t become a “dues-paying-member” yet this year, do it now and reap the benefits.  We’ll send you today’s FW&SP right away, and you won’t have to worry about a thing when carnival approaches.

Remember, there are currently two ways to become a member, by donating $10 or by sending in 5 pictures from your time in buggy.  That special deal won’t be offered much longer, so send in those pictures or you’ll have to pony up the Hamilton come April.  Details and a full list of the member-benefits are always available at

http://cmubuggy.org/Join

Correction : Sigma Nu’s representative in the Q&A section was not Carl Nott.  I’m not sure how he managed to get in there without being present while we wrote it.  The Sigma Nu representative was their buggy chairman, Brett.

Note : The freeroll benchmarks only include times through mini-raceday.  If a team’s best time of the semester was on the last weekend, they might be getting short changed in the rankings.

100 Days until Raceday

Posted on | by Sam Swift

That’s right, classes haven’t even started but there are only 100 short days to get ready for raceday.  For all the current students out there, that means it’s time to hit the gym and work all night in the garage.  For us alumni, well …  start getting the vocal chords and the liver in shape and make cmubuggy.org your homepage!

To mark the beginning of our march towards raceday, we’ve launched a coordinated attack of promotions.  You’ve probably already received at least one of them, but we wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on anything, so here’s the rundown:

  • With the help of the alumni house we sent an actual physical newsletter in the mail.  You can download a PDF of the newsletter here.
  • The alumni house also helped us send an e-mail to buggy-relevant alumni just to reach out and spread awareness about the BAA’s activities and purpose.
  • This afternoon, we sent out an e-mail to the 345 folks who have registered here on cmubuggy.org.  If you are registered on this site and didn’t get the e-mail, leave a comment or send us an e-mail.  You can also take a look at the email here if you want.

One of the exciting new ideas that we’re rolling out today is a limited-time-only special on becoming a dues paying member for 2010.  We do still need contributions from people that want to support the BAA through their $10 annual dues, but we don’t want to exclude anyone from our slew of awesome members-only benefits, and hey, there’s more to life than money right?  Get on over to the membership section of the site for more details.

So for the next month or so, you can become a card carrying member of the BAA simply by sending in 5 pictures from your heyday in the buggy world to us at admin@cmubuggy.org.  We’ll post them in the gallery and everyone will benefit from a richer, more illustrated history of the coolest sport around.

Alumni in Central Ohio?

Posted on | by Sam Swift

We received this request from a science teacher in the Columbus, OH area:

Greetings,
I am a science teacher in Central Ohio.  As part of our second semester STEM program, we would like to have students design and build “carts” for a competition similar to the Buggy Races at CMU.  I found your website and wondered if there was anyone in Central Ohio I could speak with to get information on design, construction, and safety.  Our carts will be much simpler than the CMU buggies, but the project fits well with our program and curriculum.

Anyone out there live nearby and want to help out?  If so, send an e-mail to admin@cmubuggy.org and I’ll put you in touch.

cmubuggy.org turns 1!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 3 Comments on cmubuggy.org turns 1!

That’s right, it seems like an institution already, but it was only a year ago that cmubuggy.org got started and gave the buggy lovers of the world a place to congregate.  The year-round trash talk, the authoritative source to resolve buggy trivia disputes, and the weekly updates of pictures and news all seemed to have been well received, so they are here to stay.  We want to thank all the alumni and current students that have visited and contributed to the site in the first year. It wouldn’t be any fun without you guys!

For everyone out there that gets a kick out of  quantifying their fun, here are some stats from cmubuggy.org’s first year:

  • 43,000+ visits by 11,900+ “unique” visitors
  • 553,000+ page-views
  • 300+ registered users
  • 1,400+ posts in 72 threads in the forum
  • 1,300+ pictures in the gallery
  • 100+ contributions to the history database (most of which were really many contributions)

Most popular pictures (according to google analytics, not the craptastic view counter in the gallery): Continue reading →

Wanted: Pictures and Seniors

Posted on | by Sam Swift

Now that the real hangovers have worn off, the buggy hangover is in full swing, and we want to help you deal with the emptiest time of year: post-raceday.

Pictures
Share your pictures from raceday with the rest of the cmubuggy.org community.  So far we have a decent start with 250 pictures from 4 or 5 people, but there are a lot parts of raceday that aren’t covered at all.  We are especially short on pictures of the back hills (not unusual) and the chute (very unusual!).   So please, upload some of your favorites from this year.  I know I saw lots of cameras out there and there was no shortage of exciting moments to capture.

Check out the 2009 albums

If you have any questions about how to upload, or have so many pictures to upload that it’s arduous to use the web interface, please let us know at admin@cmubuggy.org

Seniors
Well seniors, you had a hell of an exciting year to go out on, and not a bad 4 year stretch at that.  It’s going to be tough next year being away from things.  Take our word from it, we’ve been there.  Let us help by offering you a year of Dues-Paying-Member benefits for free.  Those benefits include:

  • Fall 2009 Report – get in depth details about the fall semester
  • Spring 2010 Raceday Preview – get the comprehensive coverage of each and every team so that you’re in the loop when you come back to your first raceday as an alum
  • Raceday 2010 Reception – mingle with other alumni after the races
  • Raceday 2010 Wrap-up – a look back on everything that happened

All you have to do is sign up before graduation:

Seniors Sign Up Now

Members-Only Raceday Preview is out

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 2 Comments on Members-Only Raceday Preview is out

The Buggy Alumni Association has distributed its first ever Members-Only Raceday Preview, an action packed, full color, team-by-team low down of the buggy scene just a few days before the races.  Check out these real quotes from satisfied members:

  • “the sweetest thing that has ever come out for buggy ever”
  • “who even needs compubookie now anyway?”
  • “Balanced, nuanced, and – my God – Useful!”
  • “It’s almost as though I’m already there.”

If you are a dues paying member and you have not received your copy, please let us know at admin@cmubuggy.org.

If you aren’t a member yet, there’s still time.  If you become a dues paying member before raceday, we’ll send you a copy of the Raceday Preview right away.   Just make sure that you indicate “Display my name in the list of attendees for this event. ” so that we can quickly confirm things, and then send us an e-mail at admin@cmubuggy.org so that we know to check.

Major history data upgrade

Posted on | by Sam Swift

Just in time for our first raceday, the Buggy Alumni Association’s database of buggy history has been seriously upgraded over the lat couple of weeks.  Major accomplishments include:

  • The entire backlog of history contributions has now been processed and added to the database.  Thanks so much for your contributions so far, and sorry that it took us so long to add them into the system.
  • Additional data from past buggy books, the History of Buggy presentation, and old Tartan records has been added such that we now have full records of times and places going back through the 80’s and times and places for the top 5 or 6 going back through the 60’s
  • Having more complete data allowed us to add more data to the organization pages.  You’ll now see a summary of the last 20 years of places and times for each organization
  • Similar improvements to the Person and Buggy pages reflect more of their individual histories

So check it all out in the History section

Having this much more data in the system opens the doors for you to help us find errors and fill in holes in the data.   To streamline things a bit more, we’ve added standardized forms for Race, Organization, and Buggy data.  Check those out on the Contribute Data page

Huge thanks to Scott Ziolko for doing the hard dirty work with all of the data for this update.  We never would have been able to work through the backlog without him.

22 hours left. Bid Now!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 4 Comments on 22 hours left. Bid Now!

It’s less than 24 hours until the first ever lead truck auction will close.  Don’t miss your chance to get right up in the action this raceday.

Detailed Auction Info |   Live Auction –> Bid Now

Anyone (Alumni, current buggy folks, other students, anyone else) can get in on the action, and there are still some heat without bidders meaning you can take a wild ride for only $10.  Show support for your team by bidding on their heats!  Don’t wait until the last minute to enter your bids, there is no system for extending the deadline if there is a flurry of last minute action.  Enter max bids to make sure you don’t miss out.

Here are the current (11:45 pm)  high bids: Continue reading →

Heats are selected and the Auction is on!

Posted on | by Sam Swift | 5 Comments on Heats are selected and the Auction is on!

The heat selection meeting happened tonight, and we’ve got a raceday schedule to work with.  There are 40 50 teams entering the race this year (18 Womens and 32 Men’s) which is down 9 from last year even though SAE and Beta are joining the fray this year.  Maybe it’s the bad economy. up 1 from last year!

The heats being released also means that our Lead Truck Auction will be underway at 9am this morning.  Get in on the bidding action early and tell all the other alumni (and current students) about this new opportunity.

The heats are: Continue reading →

Lead Truck Auction 2009

Posted on | by Sam Swift

If you haven’t already heard, the Buggy Alumni Association will be auctioning off the chance to ride in the lead truck on raceday for each and every heat. What was previously only the territory of Head Judges and cameramen can now be yours.  In exchange for a charitable contribution to the Buggy Alumni Association, you can see the entire heat of your choice first hand.

The details of the auction go like this:

  • General
    • All heats will be auctioned simultaneously
    • The bidding will start at 9am EDT Friday April 10th
    • Bidding will end at 10pm EDT Monday April 13th
    • Each heat will have a $10 minimum bid
    • The minimum bidding increment is $1
    • You may specify a maximum amount you wish to bid for any heat.  The site will automatically increase your bid in $2 increments as needed until your maximum is exceeded by someone else.
  • Prelim Heat specifics
    • If any person wins the auctions for more than one heat, they will have the option of retracting their winning bids for all but the highest priced heat.  If they decide to withdraw their winning bid for one of the lower priced heats, the 2nd highest bidder will become the winner.
  • Finals Heat specifics
    • Because the specifics of the finals heats are unknown, bidders will be bidding for the right to have first pick of the finals heats.  Runners up will have 2nd, 3rd pick, etc.
    • There will be only two things to bid on for finals: Men’s Finals and Women’s Finals
    • The top 5 bidders for the Men’s Finals will have the opportunity to select a heat in order of their bids
    • The top 3 bidders for the Women’s Finals will have the opportunity to select a heat in order of their bids

Finer details, rules, and on Friday bids all at
http://cmubuggy.org/Auction

Suggestions, discussion, requests for clarification in the forum

We are, of course extremely thankful to sweepstakes for giving us the opportunity to use a spot in the lead truck to create this opportunity and to raise some money so that the Buggy Alumni Association can pursue its mission to support buggy.