Gator Motorsports Forum

David and I sent invitations to all the companies which were attending the Career Fair and invited them to come our open house from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Following that email we received _ RSVPs.

In an effort to "spruce up" the event, David and I gave gifts to all the companies which attended. The gifts were mugs with sponsorship packets and thank you letters in them. Also, we had 100 wings donated by Beef o' Brady's.

On the day of career fair, four companies attended. Procter and Gamble, Sikorsky, The Navy, and Intel. Brian suggested that this lack of attendance was because our time window was too large and too late. I could understand how this would be the case because company representatives might get tired after visiting other organizations and decide to skip out on our event. If this is the case, an easy fix may be to shorten the time window and end at an earlier hour. This will force company representatives to attend our event.

I feel like the gifts were nice and were appreciated by those who attended the open house. Hardly any of the wings were eaten and I suppose it was because all the company representatives were dressed nicely and did not want to stain their clothes. Also, I don't think that food looks very appealing in the shop.

All in all the entire event went well. David and I, as well as a few other members, were able to give all the representatives a tour of the shop and information about our program. However, sometimes the amount of members talking to the representatives was a bit overwhelming and that should be addressed for further events involving possible sponsors.

Event Description: Family Weekend- Gave a presentation about SAE to freshmen and their families

Event Date:Saturday Oct 3rd, 2009

Event Location: Reitz Union Classroom

Team Resources Needed: 6 members, baja car, outdated-information brochures, contact information on business cards

Feedback: Pretty good overall. The projector wasn't working in the classroom so Lane and I gave it off my laptop. Most of the students who attended were engineers. We put a spin on how SAE helps you find jobs ect and the parents were really excited. We brought generic business cards, so people would know how to contact us and out-dated informational brochures( I would not recommend giving current ones because of the cost factor involved) for parents to learn about our program.

Event Description: European Rally School’s Supermotor Open Track Day - Acted as corner workers for ERS during a practice session they had before some small bike championship they were hosting.

Event Date: Saturday Oct 24th, 2009

Event Location: ERS

Team Resources Needed: 6 members, two cars for transportation

Feedback: It went well. We showed up with 8, so we doubled up on the boxes and had one guy at the gate staggering bikers' entry into the track. I believe Ivor had asked for 6 volunteers. We were there from about 8am to 4pm, it was a tad boring, but a pretty easy way to build relations with one of our most important sponsors. For next time I'd take some water bottles, as the only chance to get food/drink is about 4 or 5 hours into the event, it was pretty much non-stop races the whole time. In the future I'd also try to verify the time they wanted us there at. We thought we were running about half an hour late, apparently we were about half an hour early.

Event Description: Schlumberger Information Session

Event Date: Tuesday Jan. 19, 2010

Event Location: MAE-B 211

Team Resources Needed: A projector

Feedback: Tuesday was chosen because it was the day before career fair and Schlumberger would be in town. Aan, the lead Schlumberger recruiter contacted me about this a few week before the event. We had some trouble renting the room because the registrars office does not give out room rentals the first week of school. My advice here is make sure you rent them earlier and write on the form the room you want and make sure the number of people you write down matches that exactly.

Aan gave me permission to order food from where ever. I chose Chick-fil-a. I placed the order, Aan paid with credit card over the phone.

We advertised heavily, but only the week of because of the late notice of the room reservation. I created a facebook event, sent emails over the listserves, sent emails to presidents of other societies, hung flyers, and team leaders changed their facebook statuses. Team members were told how important it was to come because they are one of our biggest sponsors.

Around 40-50 people showed up at the event in. I introduced Aan, she presented on Schlumberger, she present SAE with our sponsorship check, and then stayed around for questions. The whole thing lasted over 2 hours.

Event Description: Shop Open House - Invited companies present at career fair to stop by the shop, find out more about the program.

Event Date: Wednesday Jan 20th, 2009

Event Location: The Shop

Team Resources Needed: About 6 members in the event that multiple sponsors stop by at once, food, sponsorship packets, GMS mugs, a few of our more impressive components on display.

Feedback: This spring open house went very well. I believe 4 companies RSVPed, and a few others (e.g. Southern Company or something) just happened to drop by. We provided ... I want to say tortilla chips from Moe's, much better than the wings we had in the fall (too messy). In particular, Intel and Gulfstream both stayed an unusually long amount of time. Fred seduced the Intel recruiters with talk of traction control, PID this and that, closed loop clutch, and all those other impressive computer-science sort of things he does. I spoke a great deal with Gulfstream about the developments with the structural composites projects. This was also a great opportunity for the freshmen that have taken on design projects (e.g. Patrick and his gates) to show off a little of what they've done. Gulfstream in particular told a few of them that they were very impressed with them. They told our freshmen they were exactly what they were looking for from recruits, and that they should absolutely apply to Gulfstream as soon as jobs were posted.

I don't know how much Open House contributes to our sponsorship efforts - I don't see a company walking in for the first time to unload a $1000 check on us in the days following open shop day, although I guess it is mildly possible to obtain new members from it. I think more than anything, Open House serves to: A) really entice recently acquired sponsors who may not of known the huge depth/scope of our program (e.g. Gulfstream), and B) give us a chance to show off a little more tangibly all the stuff we tried to convey at career fair before they told us to apply online.

[quote="Eduardo Rondon"]Event Description: New Student Shop Day - A day about a week after the 1st general body meeting for students to stop by and try to get involved.

Event Date: Thursday Jan 28th, 2009

Event Location: The Shop

Team Resources Needed: About 8 members so we have 4-5 "stations"

Feedback: I didn't think so highly of our performance this time around. I think the big issue was lack of things for the kids to do. This time around the event felt really last-minute, and it was obvious in how the event ran. After we ran them through the little demos and broke out into the 3 big groups, one of the big groups ended up just sitting around talking until they all got bored and slowly walked out of the shop. We need to plan this a few weeks ahead of time so we reserve a couple distinct projects they can all work on.

I think part of the problem was also our attitude towards the event. Not only is it the spring semester, during which recruiting is pretty low anyway, but we also approached it with a sort of defeatist attitude, wondering about whether any of the members that stuck with the program came from a new student shop day. I honestly don't know if the solution is be more perky in the future, or to not bother wasting our time with the event to be honest. But I guess that's a discussion for a different thread.

Response to New Student Shop Day

I was not at the event however, I planned a mill project and a lathe project. There was plenty of work to be done. My understanding is that the students didn't engage in doing the extra work and then all watched the seat back being layed up and vacuumed instead of other projects. The fact that there were still about 8-10 new members in the shop when I came in a few hours later tells me it was just as successful as before. Although this is my view from what I did for the event and noticed after.

Event Description: Industrial Lecturer - Steve Fox

Event Date: Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010

Event Location: The Shop

Team Resources Needed: Projector

Feedback: Steve Fox approached us about stopping by our shop because he was going to be in Florida already for the races in Daytona. I'm not sure if this was because of our request through SAE's collegiate industrial lecturer series or him just knowing out team. Information on how to request lecturers can be found http://students.sae.org/chapters/lectur ... struct.htm. Before he came into town we made sure to meet with the whole team to develop a plan of what we wanted to talk about, how to ask questions, and etiquette.

Steve Fox came in around 5pm. We did rent a classroom for him through the registrar, but he decide to present in the shop because it was more convenient. He gave a 2 hour long power point on FSAE and the things he has seen as a judge. After that we ordered pizza to eat in the shop and gathered around the car to talk it over. As he left (5 hours after he came in) we made sure to give him a Gator Motorsports mug and t-shirt. Overall the event went well and Steve Fox liked our car, although we still need to greatly improve out ability to answer questions before competition. It was a great learning experience for team leaders to get prepared for competition style questions and for freshmen to see how serious the competition is.

For more information see : http://forum.gatormotorsports.com/viewt ... f=33&t=281

Event: Holiday sponsor postcards

We sent out postcards for Thanksgiving and Christmas to all our sponsors. I got several emails from sponsors who enjoyed the team picture, so given the minimal effort they required, I see no reason not to do it in the future. If nothing else it reminds our sponsors that we're thinking of them and appreciate their support.