THINGS TO DO!

A list of our current projects and where they are at and who is responsible for them:

- Pins [ORDER BY MONDAY] ... Ginna
- Shirts [ORDER BY MONDAY] ... Neli --> See shirt design!
- Website [FEB. 12] ... Ida
- Budget [ASAP] ... Ida
- Executive Summary [FEB. 19] ... Ida/Sherri
- Chairman's Essay [FEB. 19] ... Ida/Sherri
- Chairman's Video [FEB. 19] ... Arushi
- Business Plan [MARCH 12] ... Team effort

--> Fundraising: We need around $5,000. Contacts, anyone?

We're back!

So, after a 2.5 year blogging-hiatus, the operations team is back and blogging again. Essentially, we did not disappear, but our blogging tendencies did, as operations was a one-man job last year. This season, however, we have a legit team of people, lots of things to do, changes to handle, and a recession to deal with... so we're going to need all the help we can get!

A few things we should probably explain right off the bat:

1. It's the Operations Team now, not Non-Technical. Basically, it's always been a bit embarrassing for the non-tech team to explain its name to judges and others at robotics competitions. It undermined our credibility and didn't exactly line up with FIRST's missions of promoting technology and engineering... Hence, this season we changed it to the less derogatory, more appropriately slick "operations".

2. In the 2.5 years since the last blog post, the constituency of our team has changed! Allison's off at Tufts, Hannah at Princeton - we've got a whole new set of people now. To meet us all, check out our webpage on Gatorbotics.com. The team has grown a bit larger than it was in previous seasons due to expanded responsibilities (See #4).

3. It's already week 5 of build season! Oh my. Yes, that's right, the bulk of the season's already transpired, but that's okay, because Operations does much of it's work over the off season anyways. We've done a lot, but we still have lots to do.

4. Our responsibilities have changed a little bit since we were "non-tech"... Operations is currently in charge of the website, pins, shirts, chairman's essay, the woodie flowers essay, the chairman's movie, the business plan, public relations, dealing with sponsors and fundraising; this is a bit of an expansion on what non-tech was responsible for in past seasons. More on that in the next blog post.

Please do keep us posted with fundraising!

Dearest PR and fundraising,

Please keep us on the robotics team posted with your fundraising efforts! For example, I was unaware that we were graciously sponsored by Intuitive Surgical until I ran into a former co-worker AT the Silicon Valley Regional competition.

Also, I have forwarded to jrock emails from Greg Hurst, Alecia's father, who is interested in working to get Altera (the company he works for) to help sponsor Gatorbotics. Here's the dilemma - Greg got in touch with the electronics and build team because he could make a better case for Altera sponsoring us if there's an Altera microprocessor or chip in the devices that we use.

I am looking forward to working more closely with fundraising and PR next year, because I believe we can help you bolster your case to your potential sponsors with our close knowledge of the technical stuff that we use!

All the best!

Em

How are we doing for Atlanta?

Atlanta is an expensive trip: How are we doing with finances? Have we gone back to our sponsors? How much money do we expect to be able to raise?

Scrapbooking tomorrow

Scrapbooking party tomorrow (Saturday) at my house from 3-6pm. Everyone is invited, but please leave a comment or drop an e-mail so I know who's comming.

Also, the Chairman's essay, short-answers and pictures were submitted yesterday without a hitch.

Honoring our commitments

Dearest PR and fundraising team,

First things first - I think you have done an amazing job given all the difficulties and constraints you are working with in order to support this robotics team. Raising more than $10,000 is not an easy thing, and whatever happens, remember that your efforts are recognized!

With that, I think we learned a lot about fundraising this year - especially about timing. I think we've learnt that we need to get started a lot earlier, especially with the constraints that we face at Castilleja.

The reason why I am motivated to write today is mainly because my heart hurts to think that we seriously upsetted a dear parent of robotics last night. The food donations have been critical to this team, but this is definitely something we could have secured in the off season (something to keep in mind for the next year). This dear parent had taken time off to make cookies, salad and the works just for us, only to find out after she had done so that we had Lulu's providing dinner last night. This is a real shame, and it speaks to our need for coordination between all parties and our need to try to bump up the timeline a little bit.

Everything that happens that's not rosy is an opportunity to learn from! I hope that we can work together next year to make doubly sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

Best of luck with all your other efforts!

Emily

Small gifts for small sponsors?

Is there anything we can give to our small sponsors ($25-$100) like the grocery store and the bagel people right off the bat? Like one of our buttons? Or a photograph of the team that they can stick to the wall? Perhaps we can take one of the kickoff photos and print it out in color with 'Proud sponsor of the Castilleja Robotics Team' on the top of it. That's a really easy token if immediate appreciation that we could give them for less than a buck each.

- Emily

Bagels and Shmear

A bagel shop has agreed to provide us with two dozen bagels and some cream cheese each Saturday for the six week season. We can pick the food up at 8:30.

Large donation from Sophia's Dad's company

I just wanted to mention and give kudos to Sophia and Sophia's dad for getting a wonderful sponsorship from Sophia's dad's company. As I understand it, it was enough to cover most of the registration fee for the year, if not all of it.

Cheers to the fundraising team!

Our First Food

We are still working feverishly to find food sponsors. However, we did get our first (very small) food donation today: $25 at a local grocery store. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. I'll be going to more places today and tomorrow. Luckily, we have parent support covering the first week of meetings.

This is where we'll be posting updates for PR and Finance. We shan't post anything too specific (such as exact companies), but we shall be updating people on things like "We now have food for these days a week." Have fun and start posting!