One of the things the BAA has been thinking about for a while is how we can make the web site more useful to all of its various users. While we’ve done a lot of improvements over the last few years, we’ve also been thinking about what a larger overhaul might look like.
To do this, we’re planning a partnership with current students in the IS class 67-240, Mobile Web Design & Development. We’ll be working with several teams of students to come up with ideas for what a redesign might look like. To that end, the students will need to work with current or potential users of the site to understand their needs better, through interviews.
So, we’d like to gather a variety of people — current alums, current students, and others with an interest in Buggy to help give them feedback. If this sounds like something that might be interesting to you, please sign up at the form below. We might not contact everyone, but having a variety of volunteers is important to us.
Sign up here: https://cmubuggy.org/2023designvolunteer
Thank you!
BAA Election Results
Congratulations to our newly elected BAA Board members:
Rob Siemborski, Webmaster
Sam Connor, Graphics Chair
And congratulations to Connor Hayes on his reelection as President!
The BAA Board has also voted to create the position of Events Chair, and has appointed newly graduated alum Sam Thompson to that role for a term of one year. Events Chair will be responsible for planning, organizing, and holding any official BAA-sponsored events, such as Happy Hour, Buggy Bash, and any other official social gatherings or info sessions throughout the year.
Nominate your friends to the BAA Board!
Raceday is over, May is almost here, and BAA elections are right around the corner. But before we can have elections, we need candidates! This year, we will have elections for President, Graphics Chair, Reporting Chair, and Webmaster.
Click here for the submission form, and for details about the roles. Nominees can be any graduated CMU alum who has not already served two terms in that position. Nominations will be accepted through May 5th.
Current BAA officers and chairs can be found here if you have any questions.
Raceday is Coming! WRCT 88.3 FM Preview Broadcast Tonight at 6 PM
WRCT BROADCAST
Tune in tonight at 6 PM EDT for a preview of Sweepstakes 2023. Moderated by our long-time play-by-play commentator Will Weiner, current students will discuss all things buggy to get you hyped for Raceday.
Introducing our on-air talent:
- Elena Harllee – She first witnessed buggy as a high school student, when she visited CMU during Raceday 2019 and fell in love with the spot. She joined Apex Buggy as a freshman and was build lead in 2022-2023, where she built Apex’s first forward trike. This year, she is a part of Sweepstakes as the Design Comp chairman, while still maintaining her status as an active mechanic for Apex.
- Ethan Husted – He is a current MechE masters student and resident old person on CIA. He held a number of roles in the org from 2018-2023, including the hill 5 pusher dubbed “Long Chungus”, build lead of Kingfisher, chair during the mid-COVID RD that never wasn’t, and reluctant head mechanic. He is now obsolete and has thus been allowed to leave the yellow tent to enter the broadcasting tent. He will be moving to Baltimore this summer to work on medical devices at Key Tech.
- Julia “Juju” Nieto – A PiKA driver and this year’s Buggy Book Chairmen, she is a School of Drama grad (dramaturgy), currently working on her MEIM at CMU’s Heinz College. In her words, “Buggy has been one of the best things I could have ever gotten out of my time here. What I thought would be a short-lived attempt at becoming an athlete, quickly turned into an unexpected gift. Over the past four years, I have developed a deep love for this sport and a deep admiration for those crazy enough to be involved in it. Being able to make this year’s Buggy Book was a joy and in the words of Jon Hua, ‘the jacket is always a plus.'”
- Elizabeth Zapanta – A buggy legacy herself, she has been watching buggy for as long as she can remember. The first-ever Sweepstakes Marketing and Communications Chair, she is excited to help coordinate and participate in this year’s broadcast.
Moderator:
- Will Weiner (DC’13) – He got into buggy through doing sports broadcasting with WRCT as a freshman at CMU. Somehow, he’s stayed in the play-by-play role for the races ever since. He now lives in nearby Braddock, PA, and runs a company called Xpogo, which manages the top athletes in the sport of extreme pogo sticking, which was a clear next step after buggy.
You can find the broadcast on air locally in Pittsburgh at 88.3 FM or stream it online from wrct.org! Join in the conversation via the BAA’s CMUBuggy Discord (cmubuggy.org/chat). Have any questions for the broadcasters? Ask them in the #wrctracedaypreview channel under Raceday-Specific Channels. You can also send any questions via comments to this post.
After what will be a great conversation, there will only be 17 hours left until Buggy Showcase (Thursday, April 13, 2023, at noon EDT) in Weigand Gym in the CUC. And, don’t forget our Prelims Lead Truck Auction, ending tomorrow night at 11 PM, so get your bids in while you can!
And, if you aren’t a member already, join now to receive this year’s Raceday Preview featuring MechaJockey! Learn more at cmubuggy.org/membership.
See you on the course!
Election Results for the 2022-2024 Term
Hey everyone!
At long last, here are the results of our 2022 elections, with six officers set to begin their first elected terms:
Vice President: Diya Nuxoll
Secretary: Sydney Baker
Treasurer: Wade Gordon
Quartermaster: Jeremy Tuttle
Broadcast Chair: Matt Galabrese
Communications Chair: Bethany Bauer
Additionally, the Executive Board has created the appointed (non-voting) role of Producer for Rachael Schmitt, so she can continue her work creating our beloved Chute the Sh!t podcast with host Will Weiner.
Thank you all for participating in the elections!
BAA Board Elections – Polls close May 29!
It’s time to vote in the new BAA board!
This year we have 3 no-contest races, and 3 contested. All terms are for two years with potential for one re-election to the same position for a second term.
Each position requires at least 20 votes or votes of confidence. Additionally, each position will have a write in option. For the Secretary position, we will use ranked choice voting per the new Constitution standards.
NO-CONTEST RACES:
-Treasurer – Wade Gordon (1st term)
-Vice President – Diya Nuxoll (1st term)
-Broadcast – Matt Galabrese (1st term)
CONTESTED RACES:
-Communications: Katelyn Smith (2nd Term), Bethany Bauer (1st Term)
-Quartermaster: Jeremy Tuttle (2nd Term), Katy Zapanta (1st Term)
-Secretary: Katy Zapanta (1st Term), Dave Singh (1st term), Sydney Baker (1st Term)
Cast your ballots here: cmubuggy.org/vote
Polls close at the end of the day on May 29, so make sure to get your ballot in!
Nominations for BAA Board are now open!
With a successful raceday behind us, elections for BAA board are right around the corner! There are several positions up for election, and each position has a two-year term. Nominees can be any graduated CMU alumnus who has not already served two terms in the position.
Nominations are open until May 11th, and nominees have until May 15th to accept.
Click here for the submission form
Current BAA officers and their contact information can be found here if you would like additional information.
Want to get involved but don’t want to run for the board? We have multiple committees that are open for members to join! See this post for more detail
We hold regular meetings throughout the year every month with increased regularity around Carnival. As an officer, attendance is not mandatory at every meeting so long as you continue to make an effort to support the mission and projects of the BAA.
Open Positions:
Vice President
The Vice President assists the other officers in their projects, and coordinates with Sweepstakes as necessary. A good BAA VP candidate is someone who wants to improve Buggy, or Raceday, or the BAA in some way, and has some ideas for how to do it. If you read the BAA mission’s 5 stated goals and think, “I know how we could do some of those things better,” and you are excited to commit the time to make that happen, then the VP office is right for you.
Treasurer
Treasurer has 3 main responsibilities – the Financial Report, the Membership List, and the Lead Truck Auction. The Financial Report is an end-of-year (essentially) wrap-up of where we stand, and probably takes a couple of hours to put together, but there’s no real deadline (and there are years we didn’t put it out). The Membership List just requires pinging CMU from time to time (every few months or so) for a list of the people who have donated, and making sure we’re gathering names and emails. I’d put the time commitment here at roughly 1 hour/month, though it’s probably more like 0 hours/month in the Summer/Fall, 1 hour/month in Jan/Feb, and then a couple of hours/month in March/April as we make sure the list is good for the Raceday Preview. Last thing is the lead truck auction, which is the biggest time commitment, but it’s limited to the week of Carnival (you don’t have to do anything until Heats are selected). In total, that’s probably about 5 hours of work, between getting the auction set up, writing the auction news post, opening and closing, and then coordinating with the winners. Other than that, it’s just the BAA meetings which can vary in timing. But overall, it’s not a big time commitment (especially if you don’t want it to be, and you don’t need to be in Pittsburgh to do it)”
Secretary
Listed in the BAA By-laws as the person to coordinate distribution of meeting minutes to general membership as well as handle and maintain the membership list in partnership with the treasurer. The secretary’s duties overlap with several other positions, providing support across the main functions of the BAA. The secretary’s diverse responsibilities provide a broad variety of opportunities.
Broadcast
This position is to provide operational support regarding the Raceday Broadcast. The Broadcast officer interfaces with WRCT, cmuTV, and others in their critical role in collaborating with the BAA and Sweepstakes on Raceday and other operations.
Communications
The main job of the communications chair is to manage the BAA Social Media pages, as well as coordinate content for our website, and other outreach to the Membership. Keeping the community informed of and engaged with the BAA’s activities throughout the year is the priority, although it doesn’t hurt to sprinkle some memes into our content. Additional responsibilities include designing and sourcing merchandise for the BAA to sell on our website, on raceday and at other events held by the BAA, creating the vision for our social media channels, and developing reports of social media engagement and growth.
Quartermaster
Ideally they should have experience leading organizations and have connections to campus to understand needs of current teams & students
Seek out organizations that could potentially field new buggy teams, especially ones who have raced in the past
Identify organizations struggling with buggy
Create and make available programs/resources to help new and struggling teams
Work with sweepstakes and existing large teams to secure loaner buggies for new teams
Identify and assign mentors/advisors for teams as needed
Town Hall Slides & Video
Thank you to everyone for attending our Town Hall! It was great seeing all of you and we can’t wait to have you back on campus for Raceday 2022. Attached you will find the slide deck from last night, including all links to volunteer sign up sheets.
If you were unable to make the meeting, we recorded it for your convenience! You can watch it here (Passcode: S=0F8XTF), and you can also view the slides directly.
Thanks again, and we will see you all on April 7th in Wiegand Gym for Buggy Showcase!
Join us at the BAA Town Hall tonight!
The BAA will be holding a Town Hall tonight (February 15, 2021) from 8-9pm EST. Join us to hear about what we’ve been up to, go over Raceday details, and ask us your most pressing buggy questions.
Join us on Zoom here!
Continue readingIdeas + Feedback Requested!
Happy New Year from the BAA Officers! January is here, which means Raceday is right around the chute turn. We’d love to make sure that the BAA website has everything you need to have a great raceday, so we want to hear from you as to what sorts of tools you’d like to see on the site.
As examples, in the past we have had live updating leaderboard and heat schedules, and even a broadcast bingo board!
Let us know what you’d like to see in the comments in this post, in the #suggestions channel in our Discord, or by emailing us at dev(at)cmubuggy(dot)org. Thank you!