Steering Committee 2010-07-30
From DEW Robotics
Agenda
- Girl Power Competition
- Fund Raising
- Programming
Participants
- Foster Schucker
- Rita Wall
- Gary Deaver
- Scott Featherman
- Robert Whalen
- Siri Maley
- Faith McKown
- Clem McKown
- Iwona
Girl Power
- We will not have adequate girl students available to compete in Girl power.
- In addition, Girl Power conflicts with our committment to the Franklin Institute Demonstration.
- We will not participate in Girl Power.
Fund Raising
- Arkema has donated $2,000 (plus $1,000 to FLL).
- A Presentation will be made to FIATECH during their annual meeting on 5-Oct at the Sofitel, Philadelphia.
- We've got a Franklin Institute demonstration on 9-Oct.
- What do we offer to sponsors?
- Space on Trailer
- Page in Sponsor Book
- Space on Robot
- Space on Competition Banner
- Name in Team Name
- Space on T-Shirt
- Space in Robot Handouts at community events, demonstrations & competitions
- Would we change our Team name (from Sab-BOT-age) for a major sponsor? Not a popular option. A sponsor would need to commit to covering a large portion of team expenses for a long term (maybe 3 years).
- Iwona made faces at the 1640 screwdriver logo (too complicated - difficult to identify - light lines - breaks a lot of logo rules). VexMen logo is better.
- Best Buy meeting needs to be rescheduled. They are getting cold feet about an event. This really needs an empty store nearby to succeed.
- Students will need to bear some of the financial load. This will need to be made clear from the start. The student's obligation can be met by:
- Direct payment
- securing or assisting in securing sponsorship
- Participation in fundraisers
- Post-Cards asking for donations from family members was suggested (good idea)
- We need to get in to High and Middle school open houses (when? 7-Oct at DEHS).
- Parents & Students meeting needs to be held as soon as practical after recruiting and Clem's return (19-Sept) as practical. Focus of the meeting needs to be financial. Need to aslo make it clear that the school district provides space (with $$ value), but does not cover our operating sxpenses (which are $$).
- We need to execute more formal expense tracking (like Quickbooks).
Programming
- After Finance, programming is the most critical challenge the team faces. Our star progammer has graduated. We've got good students coming up, but the programming mentor position remains a problem.
- Julie had an IT background and will see that version control is enforced.
- A Process Control Engineer (such as Ed Melo, Arkema retirie) would be useful.
- Stay with LabView? Depends on Mentor. Switch to Java if Foster takes this role.