It’s that time again…BAA committee members are stepping down, and we’re looking for candidates NOW. This is a call to action for serious volunteers who want to see the BAA through the next couple years of growth. The main position open this spring is Chairman, but we’re also looking for new people to join the committee in more task-oriented roles like web master and treasurer.
If you’re interested, please comment on this news post with the position you want and, if you like, a campaign spiel. You can also send email to admin@cmubuggy.org if you’re too modest to speak out here.

Elections will be via an online poll early next week! in the fall

Here are some example criteria:

• Someone who has been vocal on the forum with good ideas and creative input.
• Someone who likes what we do and wants to be more involved.
• Someone who has plenty of time in the Spring to work on BAA stuff.
• Nominees do NOT have to be Pittsburgh locals.
• You can nominate someone else if he/she agrees.

Here’s a slice of what we do:

President

• Act as primary contact with Alumni Relations for deadlines, event coordination, reservations, alumni contacts, membership lists.
• Attend AIG (Alumni Interest Group) meetings at Alumni House or by conference call.
• Hold occasional meetings with execs to prioritize and act on projects or new initiatives
• Find volunteers, increase involvement of members, delegate chunks of projects and follow up or save the day as needed.
• Work with the Treasurer to keep tabs on income and spending.
• Have a grasp on the big picture and general scheduling of things. Communicate frequently with other execs and volunteers to get publications out on time, reserve space for events, etc.

Other tasks

• Work to make sure the lead truck auction is ready to go, including coordinating with Sweepstakes and keeping tabs on winners.
• Work with Sweepstakes on safety issues where the BAA’s huge knowledge of history can be of service. Be the primary Sweepstakes contact to exchange ideas on how to improve the sport.
• On-Campus Liaison – someone on campus (or at least in Pittsburgh) to be present at planning meetings, transfer physical stuff from A to B, be in touch with campus and course changes and news
• News Editor – compile and post rolls reports, always be thinking of content and news to keep people engaged with the site and our org, manage social media presence
• Rolls Reporter(s) – someone out at rolls to observe and collect info by talking to people, take pictures, make observations about what is going on that is interesting
• Publications – someone to take primary responsibility for publishing our annual products:  raceday guide, raceday preview, news letters, potentially much more
• Finances – recording membership and handling membership communications, knowing how much money we have and whether we can afford to do XYZ,  communicating our finances to the rest of the committee and to our members, dealing with the school on financial details
• Special project leader – the BAA should always be looking to do new and awesome things for buggy, someone to generate and vet new ideas, and then push projects forward
• Raceday Timing – if we are going to keep doing things (as opposed to hiring someone), someone will have to … do it
• Web-Development – improve website code, add website features, manage server-type stuff
• Web-Management – updating content, moderating user-generated content, entering new data, obsessively checking analytics

Our 4th annual lead truck auction will draw to a close tonight at 9pm, so get your bids in early and often to secure your ride.  We do have a “reserve bid” system if you want to set a maximum and let the computers do the work.

We’ve raised a total of $471.38 so far (all future bids in whole dollars please, wise guys), and here are the current prices.

Women’s Prelims

Heat
1 $1  by yanetut (CIA, '98): SDC C CIA C FringeC 
2 $1  by joe (Beta): Spirit A SDC D Apex A 
3 $0  by nobody: SigEp A Fringe B CIA B 
4 $20 by twood (PiKA): Pika A DF A SigEp B 
5 $0  by nobody: SDC BCIA D Spirit B 
6 $1  by joe (Beta): Fringe A SigEp C SAE A 
7 $5  by CRStengel (SDC): SDC A CIA A Aepi A

Men’s Prelims

Heat
1 $10  by ziolko (Fringe, '00): Fringe B SigEp C Spirit C
2 $25  by twood (PiKA): Pika B SDC D CIA D
3 $26  by joe (Beta): Spirit A Apex AF ringe D
4 $11  by mark_estes (SN): SDC C SigNu A CIA B
5 $1   by ATHundt (Fringe, '09): SigEp A Aepi B Fringe C
6 $2   by lchomas (CIA): SDC B SAE A CIA C
7 $100 by twodd (PiKA): Pika A SigEp D Spirit B
8 $25  by pdesiderio1780 (CIA): Fringe A CIA A DF A
9 $5   by Perrypierce (?): SDC A Aepi A SigEp B

Women’s Finals

Order of selection
1st $10 acharters87
2nd  $2 hopke
3rd  $2 hopke

Men’s Finals

Order of selection
1st $100 twood (PiKA)
2nd $31 mark_estes (SN)
3rd $30.00 abigailsullivan (Spirit)
4th $27.69 ATHundt (Fringe)
5th $26.69 ipmcc (SN)

cmubuggy.org/auction 

This idea has been in the works for a while, but now it’s happening, and just in time.  When we helped introduce Jumbotrons to the course in 2009, it was a fun experiment.  Now it’s practically a necessity.  Can you imagine not being able to see what was going on in the chute while you’re at hill 2?  Actually, most of you probably can because you were around before 2009, but I think we can agree it’s a pretty awesome addition.

The only problem is that Jumbotrons and other pro-spectator efforts like our printed Raceday Guide don’t come cheap.  A pair of jumbotrons for the weekend is in the neighborhood of $10k.  Printing 2,000-3,000 color copies is more than most people can pull off on the sly at work.  We’ve kicked in $1,000 each year from our Lead Truck Auction, and Alumni Relations has contributed, but much of the rest has basically just put Sweeptakes into the red each year.  That’s not sustainable.

Luckily, raceday is an exciting event with lots of eyes from high quality demographics, and we think that there are lots of companies out there who would love to help support buggy and be part of such an important event at CMU.  We will be introducing a number of sponsorship opportunities this year for the first time, and we hope your company wants a piece of the action.  Most notably, both jumbotrons will have sponsorship banners flanking the screen, and our printed raceday guide will carry sponsored logos.

Some of the spaces are already sold, but we’re looking for more support.  Download this PDF and show it to someone in your company who makes these decisions.  It briefly explains what buggy is and has rates for the different placement options.

Buggy Sponsorship Information 2012

You might notice that raceday is not that far away and that we need commitments even sooner (2 weeks from today!).  We realize corporate decisions don’t always happen this fast.  We hoped to have this together quite a while ago, but it’s our first time in this arena.  If your company loves the idea but can’t make it happen, we understand.  If you can make it happen … awesome, let’s do it!

After two weeks off for spring break, we find ourselves right in the heat of things with just 4 weeks to go.  Push practice started this week and has enjoyed absurdly comfortable March temperatures.  Rolls are scheduled for all 8 remaining days before raceday, so lets hope the good weather continues unabated.  So that’s how our 10 (hopefully 11, SAE?) orgs are preparing, what are you doing to get in shape?  Nothing yet?  Don’t worry, we’ve got some ideas for you:

Pre-Order the second-ever BAA T-shirt

We’re making T-shirts for the first time since 2008, and I think you’re going to want one. They will be available at carnival and we got a great deal which we’re passing on to you:

• $10 for members
• $15 for non-members

UPDATE:  All reservations must be made by Friday March 23rd.

Now you can’t say we never did anything nice for ya.

After weeks of late-night, never-back-down, tooth-and-nail negotiation sessions, the Buggy Alumni Association is proud to announce the first ever members-only hotel discount.  That’s right, we’ve secured a limited number of rooms at the luxurious Hampton Inn during the peak-demand days around carnival at a below-market rate.

The details:

• Hampton Inn – University Center @ 3315 Hamlet St. (just off of Blvd of the Allies, 1 mile from the Chute)
• Stay any or all of the nights between 4/18 (Wed) and  including 4/21 (Sat)
• Pay just $129 + taxes per night while those suckers who don’t love buggy enough to support the BAA will be paying $179 + taxes
• Reservations must be made by 3/19 or before the limited supply is exhausted
• Amenities include, but may not be limited to: Free hot breakfast buffet, free shuttle service within 3 miles, free wireless internet, and free company of other enthusiastic buggy alumni in “carnival mode”

How do you get in on this? Continue reading →

We’ve mentioned the guys from Apex Buggy a couple of times in the rolls reports.  They are a group of mostly freshmen, mostly living in a new dorm called “The Residence on 5th” or “The Rez” for short.  Despite being on campus for only a few months, they’ve done an impressive amount of work towards starting a team including soliciting design and build advice from anyone that will talk, and doggedly seeking funding from private donations, and the various official channels.  They are also the organization that recently inspired us to once again consider making seed grants to new orgs (see the New Org Grants thread in our project zone), a discussion we haven’t yet concluded.

Anyhow, they’ve secured enough funding to get going and they’re currently planning their first build for the winter months.  Now’s our chance to help out.  Apex front-man Connor e-mailed me asking some specific questions, but I’d like to use the opportunity to generally improve our informational resources for new teams. If you’re reading this, you know a thing or two that could help a new team.  Take a moment and either:

• Edit one of the Reference pages below to share generally-useful buggy info with the community
• Email info@cmubuggy.org with tips or suggestions and we’ll do the ground work of sharing them with Apex and adding them to the Reference section
• Email Apex’s front-man Connor directly (cmhayes@andrew.cmu.edu) if you want to get your advice straight to the customer
• Post a comment on this post with your favorite tip or trick for building a buggy or getting to raceday with limited funds.

Reference Section pages to work on

These pages are just beginning.  Anything you can add in terms of which tools and materials are most important, good suppliers for critical materials, or cheap and clever substitutes for expensive specialty tools and materials would be super helpful!

• How to start a buggy team
• Materials to build a buggy
• Tools to build a buggy

Good luck Apex, hope to see you out in February.

After a rainout on Céilidh weekend, this past Sunday was designated as our official fantasy buggy showdown.  41 people entered our first ever fantasy buggy game to take  their shot at the $250 “ticket to carnival” grand prize sponsored by NumberFire.com.  Fringe and CIA timers helped out to collect times that could be shared publicly so we also got some of our best data so far of the season.

Jake Mohin (SigEp mechanic, ’10) outfoxed everyone else, taking home the grand prize with a total time of 550.2.  He made the best of his inside info, picking SigEp as a backhill team while the rest of the top 5 picks had them for the freeroll.  Jake adds,

“I knew our chairman was pushing pretty hard for our guys to make a strong showing in terms of pushing so I made a gamble and left us off the free rolls list to give us the #1 Back hills.  In terms of roll number, I banked on 3rd free roll always being fastest. Pushers are usually slow on third first run from being sleepy, fast on their second push, and exhausted on their third.”

There were a number of surprises on the weekend that may have affected the results.  KapSig and SN haven’t made it back out, so we only had 7 teams.  Because it ended up happening after daylight savings time, most teams got 5 rolls, but we had restricted it to the first 3.  For what it’s worth 14 of the top 20 overall times were in rolls 1-3.  Picking the right Spirit roll was probably critical as Fuko wasn’t out, Haraka never finished a roll, and Seraph.   I was surprised to see that the winning strategy was to pick most of the fastest teams for the downhill as I thought the spread on the backhills would be larger.  I guess pushers were giving it their all across the board.

Top Fantasy Buggy Picks

Continue reading →

At 9AM this morning, bidding will commence in the 3rd annual Lead Truck Auction. Don’t show up fashionably late to the bidding this year as we’ve got only 36 hours (bidding closes at 9pm wednesday) to divvy up the rides because the heat selection was held later than it has been in recent years. For the uninitiated, bidders bid on the chance to ride in the lead truck for a specific heat. Winners get to ride with the head judge and other race officials with a view of at least the lead buggy around the entire course.

Last year’s auction was a huge success and it allowed us to help sweepstakes rent not one, but two jumbotrons so that spectators can really watch the entire race from the most popular spots on the course. We saw this coming, but once you have two jumbotrons, it doesn’t sound like any fun to go back to one (or god forbid, zero).  We alumni reap the majority of the benefits of these jumobtrons so if we want them to stick around we’ve got to pitch in.  Bid on a lead truck ride and you get to do your part for the big screens and take a fun ride to boot.

Rides are transferable, so you can give them as gifts if you won’t be in town.  Refunds are available in the event of races being rained out.  Plenty of other details at:

http://cmubuggy.org/auction

(discussion thread in the forum)