Goals for the first meeting were to elect officers, lay groundwork for bylaws and formalization as an official Alumni Interest Group, discuss committees, and brainstorm ideas for the upcoming official website.

Attending: Tom Wood, Carsen Kline, Sam Swift, Aiton Goldman, Chris Stengel

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Your fearless leaders are:

Carsen Kline, President

Aiton Goldman, Vice President

Chris Stengel, Treasurer

Sam Swift, Secretary

Tom Wood will be an advisor and guiding force for history and preservation efforts. Sarah McMullen will be our connection to Alumni Relations.

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The official name of our Alumni Interest Group, pending approval of our formalization request, will be the Carnegie Mellon Buggy Alumni Association, or BAA for short. We generated ideas for a first draft of the bylaws, and following some polishing by Dani, some brief discussion, and approval by Alumni Relations, will be posted here.

The general goals and purpose of this group will be to grow the sport, bring alumni like us together, and get the community more involved and educated.

In turn, membership is planned to be non-exclusive, generally open to anyone who loves buggy or wants to know more about it. Dues were discussed, but no official rulings have been made. They will likely be nominal to encourage greater membership.

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Committees and tentative heads will be posted here soon.

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Ideas that we could help fund or support: more trophies/categories for races; better scoreboard; more tv screens around the course; activities for kids (e.g., safe buggy ride) at Carnival and Homecoming; design comp prizes to encourage more participation; Buggy Graduates Job Placement Network (recognize talent and experience instead of GPA); stream more events (like HoB) on the web for far flung alums; voluntary chip timing for freerolls in which only participating orgs have access to the data

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Website ideas: Forum, history, rolls reports, team profiles/home pages, individual profiles, how to support buggy/BAA, social network tie-ins (Facebook, Linked-In, etc.), Hall of Fame, polls, calendar of buggy events

Meeting time approx. 3 hrs. Next one planned for early June.

Hi all,

We have six terrific, dedicated volunteers in Pittsburgh who will serve as the initial Executive Committee, and work with Alumni Relations to get our Buggy Alumni group established and recognized by CMU.

The next immediate step will be to identify Committee Heads (who don’t need to be in Pittsburgh) to lead individual projects outlined in the group’s proposal. We will open this up to everyone, and reach out to people who have already volunteered help and/or expressed interest in specific projects — either to head, or work within, these sub-committees.

In the meantime, here is our fearless Executive Committee:

Carsen Kline – Fringe 1997-1999 (Chairman 1998-1999)
Aiton Goldman – CIA 1994-1995 (Helped CIA return, as Chairman 1997-1998 )
Adam McCue – KDR Chairman 2005; Sweepstakes Safety 2006; Head Judge 2007
Sam Swift – Fringe 2001-2004
Chris Stengel – Sweepstakes Asst. Chair 1992-1993

Advisor: Tom Wood – PiKA 1969-1971; also Sweepstakes Safety (was the second and third person to hold this position); Head Judge (4 years); Helped revise Sweepstakes rules 1986-87; History of Buggy

From Abby:

One thing that we need in order to set up the Buggy Alumni Group is identified leadership. We must have a President, VP and Secretary/Treasurer. If anyone wants to volunteer for these positions, please let me know.

I think the best thing to do to start would be to get Pittsburgh-area alums who have a reasonable amout of time and a high level of commitment to this as volunteers for the positions. Then, when there’s a more established membership and organization, we can hold elections.

If anyone has a better suggestion, let me know, otherwise – volunteers wanted. Email Abby Sullivan or post here. If there are LOTS of volunteers then we’ll put it up for discussion.

In Other News…

The Alumni Office is super excited about the idea of Alumni Interest Group. Anne Witchner is on board to do whatever she can from the Student Affairs side of things. So things are moving forward from that perspective, which should allow for the structure needed to do everything else we’ve been talking about.

A bunch of people have sent emails to me and Dani through the site letting us know that you’re interested in participating, and until we have the web forum in place (which looks like it will happen through the Alumni office, if anyone cares), that’s the most ‘official’ way we can keep track of people, so go ahead and do that if you want us to know who you are.

Hi,
This is a draft of an Alumni Buggy Group proposal, compiled from ideas and comments we’ve received.

The Purpose of creating an Alumni Buggy “brain trust” is to preserve and archive the history of Sweepstakes, while fostering undergraduate participation and increased competition in the sport of Buggy, going forward.

We would view this as an expansion on an Alumni Interest Group, with a broader goal to promote the University and its traditions, offer fundraising support and impact current and future students.

Our first task will be to get Carnegie Mellon to sanction and host an official, non-partisan Alumni Buggy web forum where we can further develop ideas laid out in this proposal.

In the meantime…we’d like any and all feedback from alumni, before we make a formal presentation to CMU to create this group. We’ve broken it down by category for discussion:

I. Alumni Web Forum

II. Other Alumni Communications & Promotion

III. Campus Awareness & Education

IV. Buggy Alumni Projects