As we announced recently, we are very excited to be helping to bring not one, but two jumbotrons to buggy this year.  The first will be at the top of hill to next to the leaderboard just as it was last year.  The second will be down in the chute so fans in either of the primary viewing areas will be able to follow the entire race for the first time.

After the general idea was announced, we were happy to facilitate a spirited discussion about which particular location in the chute area would be best for the new jumbotron.  If you haven’t been following, you can catch up here in the forums.  There are pros and cons to almost any location, but the some of the things to consider include:

• Placing the optimum viewing area somewhere that a large number of people can see it.
• Not using up too much prime space on the ground that people like to stand in with the unit itself .
• Not creating a tempting hazard by putting too much of the prime viewing area in the road.
• Staying “outside” the course because it is not possible to get cables over the road this year.

The black rectangles are the actual size of the jumbotron’s footprint.  The beige rectangle is the rough size and location of the cmuTV scaffolding.  The actual viewing area is a bit larger and wider than depicted.  Let it be said that this can not be a purely democratic decision.  In the end, sweepstakes is responsible for this decision, and they are responsible to more concerns than us fans.  Getting a sense of the popular opinion is important to them though, hence this poll.  So, if you were in charge, where would you put it?

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Ah, design comp.  How many competitions can you think of that some people respond to by wearing suits while others … well … do not make the same effort to make a good impression.

The list of buggies entering design comp hasn’t been announced by Sweepstakes yet this year, but I hope that it will be long and that it will include all of the exciting new buggies and those we expect to challenge for the win this year.  I fear, however, that it will be similar to last year — a competition that less than half of the field chose to enter.

Of course, this topic has already been covered at length on this site so I won’t rehash the pro and con arguments, but feel free to review

• Op-Ed from last March
• Forum discussion #1 from last March
• Forum discussion #2 from this January

Both of those discussions were fairly constructive and I think it was useful to have all of those opinions aired publicly, but true to the alumni tradition it was mostly just talk with no steps towards doing anything.  It’s too late to do anything this year either, but for this week’s poll I want to know which design comp fix is the most popular among the cmubuggy.org crowd.

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We probably should have run this one about a month ago to be timely, but this topic came up in the forums, and I’m in no position to turn down a decent poll idea at this point.

The topic this week is “buggy vs. relationships” or “relationships via buggy” depending on your perspective.  Out in the real world, if you say you’re regularly hanging out with someone before the sun rises, it would be fair to assume you’ve got something cooking.   At CMU, it’s probably safer to assume that your extracurricular activity of choice is buggy.  Whether it’s the hours you spent with people at buggy, or the hours you gave up when other people were making their moves, it seems that buggy and romance do not operate independently.  How did it work out for you? (or how is it working out currently?)

Click through to vote in the poll and see results … Continue reading →