Welcome Week Fairs - acmumn/officer-resources GitHub Wiki

Welcome Week CSE Student Group Fair

Sign up in July-ish via email from CSE / Ben Koch. The one that's held in the Lind Courtyard. Entirely Science and Engineering clubs, presenting to freshman. It's around three hours in length, and it's usually still pretty hot and sunny when it happens. Plan ice-cream social like event to invite people to.

  • Have the table staffed with 3-4 representatives throughout the event.
  • Tables aren't set up for you; you'll have to carry them out of Lind and into the courtyard yourself. They're pretty heavy, too. Either bring your own, lighter, plastic table, or be prepared to carry it. It's not that long of a distance, so it's not too bad. Bring the ACM UMN table skirt. Bring
  • Make sure to bring plenty of water. You'll be outside and in the sun, and you don't want to lose your voice. You'll also be pretty thirsty.
  • Bring sunscreen and bug spray.
    • One thing I thought might be an interesting idea was to offer free sunscreen for the freshmen. Since it's all Science and Engineering students, most of them probably wouldn't have thought about it, and it also gives you time to talk to them, since it takes time to put on sunscreen. Just a thought.
  • Make sure that everything that you bring won't fall over in the wind. Whatever you bring, make sure it's sufficiently weighted down.
  • Set up near the edge of the grassy area. In my experience, people will mostly mill about the edge of the grass and sidewalks, only going into the middle of the grassy area later. Make sure they see you first. This means check in as early as you can.
  • Maybe even bring (non-melty) candy to attract the children.

Explore-U

Held in Mariucci Arena, indoors. Also around three hours in length, and also freshmen. However, this time it'll be freshmen of pretty much any major.

  • Tables are already set up for you, so no problems there.
  • Again, bring plenty of water.
  • Only four people can be at the table at a time. I doubt you'll have people chomping at the bit to come table for ACM, but you never know.
  • On the day of the event, check in early. In 2016, check-in opened at 11:00AM and didn't start until 1:30PM, and there was still a line of 30-40 groups at 11.
  • Set up near the stairs of the East or West entrances, if you can. Ideally, you should be the first thing someone would see when they walk up the stairs and into the tabling area.
  • Because it's not just Science and Engineering, be prepared to talk to people outside your area of expertise.
    • In particular, don't wait for people to stop at your table. Call out to people walking around and ask them if they're interested. Even if they say they're not interested, or that their major is too different from ACM, convince them. Computer science and programming are incredibly general skills that can fit into any career and discipline.
    • Knowing a little bit of programming can make for a really big difference in pay in a lot of careers.