The Code Bender

I believe if there's one thing our club will unanimously agree we're lacking a bit of right now is organization. We have huge technical talent and knowledge, a large base from which to draw funds, decent support from our school and a nice big pool to test in. However the club suffers from a bit of growing pains, which is a problem I can assure we're more glad to be having than not. We have traditionally been a small club of only a few members and this allowed for a fairly lenient policy to become the norm. However now that we're between 10 and 15 members decision making, decision implementation, fund gathering, trip planning and keeping up with sponsors is becoming more and more sporadic. These are issues that a club really needs to have a handle on to succeed. I'm currently out of Raleigh and away from the technical side of things so I thought I'd delve into a bit my goals over the coming year and how I hope to achieve them.

Firstly let's look strictly at organization. We're currently a club of 12-15 active members; this is a huge increase over the 5-7 at the start of the semester. In a group of less than 10 people admin positions don't seem to be as crucial as when you break that mark. General consensus is a pretty good way to go and projects are tackled either as a group (everyone) or individually, so the decision-making process falls on the shoulders of the whole group, or the person tackling that issue. Things change once you have more people than that. We're constantly dealing with people saying "How did that decision get made, there's no way that makes sense." This mentality is destructive not only to the efforts of the club but to the relationship between the members of the club as well. We're also dealing with issues of defined roles as to who is supposed to be keeping up with parts orders, finances, corporate contacts and other errata that really need to be handled efficiently for the club to run smoothly.

I'm proposing a tiered system to be implemented next year for our club. At the top of the club would be the admin positions. The three positions making up this portion of the club would be President, Vice President and Secretary. This group would be less of a technically involved group, acting more as the group that keeps things running smoothly. Target year for this group would be junior/senior year. A description for these positions is found below. The second tier would be technical administrators. These would be the people leading projects that the club is currently undertaking. These positions wouldn't be static by any means, changing as the need for the positions did. They would be fairly technical positions; target year for this group would be junior/senior year. The third tier would be our typical sophomore/junior crowd, possibly a freshman or two in cases where it makes sense. This tier is essentially the doers. They're working under some sort of technical admin helping to complete a project. These are people that, while they're not experts, they have technical skills of some sort. The fourth and final tier would be the typically freshman group that is interested in the club but doesn't really have any background. Sadly this category has been largely overlooked in our clubs passed. Ideas for dealing with this tier are also found below.

Currently the proposal for top tier admin positions next year is a 3-person team. There would be the president acting as the outward face for the club, the person who takes care of managing relationships with corporate sponsors, talking to the outside world and making sure that the club has what it needs to operate efficiently. Additionally the president would be responsible for events such as recruiting. Generally I would like to think that this person knows what's going on in the club, and can act as a technical reference as needed and would be of course willing to help in projects but generally would be primarily focused on management. Next in command would be the vice president. This person acts much more to the technical side of things. They are the tech lead of sorts. They're the main technical reference for the club. This doesn't mean they know everything, more that they know who knows what and where to find answers. They would be responsible for ensuring that projects are being completed in a timely manner and would be responsible for ensuring that status reports are completed when necessary. I don't see the person in this position heading up projects being worked on by the club but again as with the president could be involved in projects. Lastly rounding up the admin group would be the secretary. While the president deals with the outside world the secretary would be in place to handle issues related to the university as well as book keeping. This could over lap with the president at times, but usually I don't see too many issues arising. I'm still kind of working on this position in my head so that's about all I have to say on it for now.

So lets look at what to do with the newbies. Currently I believe we've lost a few members that in hindsight may have been useful to the club after a little hands on work. There's been a collective groan when someone has arrived in the past that doesn't know a whole lot while cheers can be heard half way across campus when we pick up a coding wizard (cough, cough.... Thunes). This shouldn't be the way it is. Currently the club is operating on a very technical level with very few entry-level opportunities, and that's just the way things go, we're building a robot after all. However I believe that we can shift our focus a bit and effectively use/teach people who may not have ever held a soldering iron before. For example, one idea that we've batted around this year is an embedded electronics workshop. The idea for this workshop was to create a fairly basic project that could be used as a fundraising and outreach opportunity for the club. This sort of project is exactly what our club should have been having anyone that said "hey, this stuff looks really cool but I don't know where to start" tackling. It ensures that we don't lose members, it creates an opportunity for the club to raise funds or accomplish side projects that are as technically difficult and demanding as our main goals and reduces the barrier for entry into the club. There are other possibilities too, especially if they know how to measure twice and cut once. Everything from making cables to craft construction and drilling holes I believe is totally in the realm of possible for our freshest, newest and least experienced members.

Outside of the organization of our club I believe the next area that needs strengthening most is our relationship with our sponsors. There's been a lot of talking about trying to involve our sponsors more in what we're doing and again some time outside the lab has given me some time to think on things a bit.

To start I think we need to get sponsors out of our chatterbox of a mailing list. It's a great resource for us, but the corporate world needs bullets. I know even being an active member of this club keeping up with email for it can seem like a daunting task, I can't imagine that any of our sponsors have the ability to take the time to really keep up with what we're doing. We're subjecting them to a bit of information overload. In the coming year I hope that we can standardize a system of progress reports on possibly a monthly schedule. From these reports I'd like to compile relevant information depending on the sponsor and their involvement and update them with those all-important bullets once a month. This would also be an opportunity to seek input as well as just help our sponsors feel more included in the SeaWolf project.

Additionally I think taking the time and trying to make an effort to meet with local sponsors maybe by bringing them out to the pool one day or at least attempting to go see what they do would be huge in strengthening relationships. We've currently tried with IRobot but have had a bit of trouble but I feel like this is something we definitely need to pursue.

I believe we may have also unnecessarily lost contact with a few sponsors. Possibly as early as this summer I'd like to start into some cold calling just trying to re-establish contact and relationships. I think it would be immensely helpful to get a form email typed up that details our club and what we do. We can tell people to go to the website but then we're relying on them to want to take action. Little changes where we appear more active in the process I think will pay off huge in the end.

Finally, and this may be the most difficult we have to make sure that these changes don't in anyway impede the technical end of our club. We have to ensure that bureaucracy doesn't take over. This one, I'm totally open to suggestions to and I feel like it's going to be one of those things where I'll only be able to see this sort of problem after we've started to implement the changes. If you've ever undertaken anything like this I'm open to all the help I can get. Thanks for reading!