We’re hard at work here at Buggy Alumni Association headquarters getting ready for raceday, and we just wanted to thank everyone for their support so far.

Today, we happened to reach two membership milestones on the same day, and that seems post-worthy.   Thanks to Thomas Felmley and Michael Preysman we now have 200 website members and 50 dues paying members!  (note: the online dues paying member list is incomplete, we have separate records of people that signed up and paid in person at homecoming).

We’re not even 6 months old, so it means a lot that we’ve been able to connect with so many people out there.  Other evidence that we’ve got a good thing going here is that all winter we were averaging a couple of hundred visits to the website each week.  Last week’s rolls report, pictures, and buggy books drove in over 1,700 visits.

If you haven’t registered on the site or become a dues paying member yet, do it now.  Dues paying members will get our Raceday Preview by e-mail (which will be worlds more informative than the rolls reports) plus admission to the raceday reception, and a raceday wrap-up report.

Join Now!

Hopefully you got an e-mail last night announcing the Buggy Alumni Association’s plans for our first raceday.  If you’d like to be sure to receive future announcements like this, make sure you register on this site.

Lead Truck Auction
Bid on your chance to ride in the lead truck to view the action from a perspective never available before. We’re currently planning on running a silent auction to auction off one space in the lead car for each heat. The auction will take place starting April 14th – the day after heat selections. Check out http://cmubuggy.org/Auction for details.
Partnering with cmuTV
cmuTV is eager to provide the best coverage they can on raceday, and they realized the best way to do that is to have buggy experts on the air with them. Andy Bordick (PiKA ’94) and Mark Estes (SN ’87) will be on the air during the races broadcasting from the top of hill 2 and live from the chute. We’re also helping to collect historical footage cmuTV can use in the time between heats. In addition, we’re working with cmuTV and WRCT to make sure the cmuTV audio is being played in the chute for everyone to hear. Continue reading →

If you haven’t already gotten it in the mail, check out Carnegie Mellon Today’s article on Tom Wood and the Buggy Alumni Association.

Tom provided the Buggy Alumni Association with about 75% of the data we’ve gathered to date in our history database, so we are very glad to have him around.

Happy New Year to everyone, and happy first day of class (aka when classes start to interfere with the build season) to all the current students.

Now that everyone has had time to travel home and get back to reality, we wanted to thank everyone who came and made the Buggy Alumni Association’s kickoff weekend a really big success. It definitely felt more like carnival than homecoming seeing so many buggy folks around campus. We’ve only officially existed for a couple of months, and I think we’ve got a lot of momentum. Some stats to make the point:

• We’ve now got over 100 buggy alumni registered here on the website.
• 7 people have registered as dues-paying-members through the website, and many more did so this weekend in person.  Those numbers are still being tallied
• Our history database already has information on 1,592 people and 196 buggies plus many data contributions that we haven’t had time to add to the database yet.
• The website has had over 1,600 visits from more than 800 people in just 2 weeks

So check out the pictures from Homecoming and let us know in the forums what you’d like to see happen at Carnival.  We can’t wait to see everyone back again.

The Buggy Alumni Association is holding its first ever events this homecoming and if you know buggy, you’re going to want to be there. People are flying in from around the country to kick things off, there are even buggies coming in from out of town.

Here’s the event lineup:
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Homecoming Goals:
– Launch Buggy Alumni Association and get as many alumni as possible to sign up
– Educate Freshmen and student body about Buggy, visibility boost (including awareness about HoB)
– Prime seniors and underclassmen to join BA
– Gather missing information for archives
– Networking with other University Community and organizations

Needs:
– Volunteers to take shifts at Freerolls, Welcome Table & Display, and Launch Reception
– Some seed $ for merch and marketing expenses
– Email distribution of Homecoming schedule and BA launch plans (rely on active people on pikabuggy.com)

Promotion:
[Alumni]
– Listed in Homecoming Registration hard mailing that went out
– Listings on Homecoming website with event descriptions
– Send info to your local, regional alumni clans and organizational alumni lists (will provide info)
– Targeted email or mailing (TBD) to 1,400 people registered as Buggy Alums with Alumni House
– Email to anyone we can get to sign up to officiall BAA site between live date and Homecoming

[Students]
– Post to Sweepstakes chairmen’s d-list and Sweepstakes website (note: PiKA chairman is active head until Sweepstakes chair is elected)
– Homecoming event posters around campus (2 weeks, 1 week, and 1 day prior)
– Flyers @ UC desk, dorms, other locations
– Personal invitations to key community contacts (Student Affairs, CMUtv, WRCT, Tartan, CMU Today, Library, etc.)

ACTION ITEMS:
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Hi all, here is the info for the call. I’m posting the dial-in info here, in case there are any lurkers who would like to join us.

Date: Friday, July 18
Time: 6pm ET

Conference Dial In Instructions
1. Dial:  (888 ) 311-9051 or (877) 246-9080
2. Enter Participant Conference Entry Code: 41268 (followed by the # key)

FOR DISCUSSION
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I just got the update from the administration’s meeting about Alumni Interest Group spending from Sarah McMullen. The bottom line is that we will soon be able to accept tax-deductible gifts and donations, and spend that money to fund our buggy-related programs. Whereas before buggy was not considered an educational activity, we now have the go-ahead to sponsor team startups, buy equipment for Sweepstakes, etc.

There will be two accounts; one non tax deductible account for dues, merchandise income and the like, that doesn’t expire at FY end; and another as I described above, with the only catch being that the funds will expire at FY end and go into the University’s coffers.

The latter account hasn’t been set up yet, and this may take a couple of weeks. I’ll keep you posted.