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Pittsburgh Robotics Society
Meeting Minutes
Sat.Feb.5.2005 10:00am - 12:00pm (2hrs)
Location: Northland Public Library
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Attending:
Dan Roganti, Jeff Rice, Bob Nansel, Mike Timko, Robert Greene, John Leimgruber
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I. 10:00am - 10:30am (30min):
Order of Business
    Intro
        - any new people ?
        * Mike Timko, Roobert Greene and John Leimgruber attended the meeting for the first time

    Club Organization
        - which members are available to participate for Science Center Exhibit
       *  Some of us will try to take a vacation day off from work so we have enough people to man the booth at SciTech this Fall.

    Membership dues
        - determine membership dues for the new robot club
        - non-membership fees for contests
        *  The membership dues is something we have to consider when the club beceoms larger. The Avergae membership dues among the  other Robotics clubs are about $20/adult and $15/students. This will be discussed more in detail the following meeting.

    Events for 2005
        - Science Center Exhibit possible ?, discuss items needed for exhibit
        * There is string interest among the present memebrs to host an exhibit at SciTech this fall. We have some good ideas on what demonstrations and dsiplays to put in the exhibit. We want to put on a Robot Sumo demonstration with a couple of Mini SumoBot  donated by PARALLAX. Also, we will have a Robot Mouse race where someobody can race the robot mouse thorugh a maze. Also, we  can have several robots that our memebrs have built on static display. We plan to have a TV to run several robot videos that we downloaded. We will have a signup sheet for new members and bring extra flyers to handout. The current floorplan for the exhibit is here.

    Fund raising for the club
        -Find some ways to raise funds for our club,such as, T-shirts, admission to events, sponsorship, etc
         *  We have to continue in finding more sponsors to support our exhibit at SciTech. Some members indicated the possibility of additional contacts where we could get sponsorship. We can try to pursue these additional sources with hopes of gaining more sponsorship.
    Promotion
        - find ways to promote the club
        - print more Flyers
        - post club meeting,contests to online event calendars
         *  With the exhibit at SciTech this fall, we hope to gain more membership and exposure.
    Questions:
        - Anyone with Machine shop we can use ?
        *  Forgot to raise this question, maybe next time.

II. 10:30 - 12:00pm (90min)
Open Discussion:
    Viewing
         - footage of past robot competitions, watch video footage of robot competitions from other robot clubs
         *  had plenty of videos to show, all different kinds of robots to see, from Robo0One to RoboSapien and more.
    Projects
        - Anyone with robot projects, any demonstrations of robot projects.
         *  Mike brought in his Nanobot which was very tiny, you can see the pics from the last meeting here. Jeff brought in some vintage robot books which us old timers used mostly over 25yrs ago.

    Open Discussion
    - Chew the fat with everybody
         *  We had lots to talk about. Many of us had different stories to tell throughout the meeting. I think next time we should hold the Viewing at the end to let us have more time to chat

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thanks again to those who attended.
-Dan Roganti
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