Week 9

The Importance of Volunteers

This week our class was visited by a very special guest, Tim Otteman's mom, Suzi Tengen! We got to meet the person who inspired our professor to become the events master he is today and learn from her intensive events career. Mrs. Tengen focused her talk on being prepared and volunteer treatment. She also convinced us all to get fanny packs!

She emphasized choosing volunteers wisely and utilizing them to their full potential. While friends are lovely people, sometimes they don't make the best volunteers. It is no secret that the keystone of any event is amazing volunteers, so choosing the best is very important. After selecting the proper workforce, you have to use them! Nobody wants to spend their precious time sitting around uncomfortably twiddling their thumbs when they thought they would be experiencing an event. By making volunteers identifiable and training them to be helpful they can work wonders for your program. 

Mrs. Tengen's advice for being prepared was simple: have an event fanny pack and carry it everywhere. What should be in your event fanny pack? Her recommendations include a first aid kit, a sewing kit, an eyeglass repair kit, an emery board, pen and paper, hair ties, dental floss, lip balm, breath mints, and a little cash. Our class gave her some suggestions and together we created a comprehensive list to have on hand to turn little disasters into chances to impress. Watch out Macker fans, we're getting fanny packs! 

Thank you for following the progress our class makes week after week. Your support means a lot to all of us! We don't have class this Thursday, but some of the class is headed to Grand Rapids for a one day Gus Macker tournament on Saturday! If you want to hear more from us, be sure to follow us on social media!

💜 Facebook: CMU Gus Macker

💚 Instagram: cmugusmacker

💛 Snapchat: CMUGusMacker

💙 Twitter: CMUGusMacker

Week 8

The Tournament Gets Some Direction

This week our class met Mike Fuller, the Macker National Staff Vice President of Sales and Operations. Mike started as a volunteer Gus Buster and after 25 years with the event continues to lay down the law as our Director of Operations this April. His goal was to begin the conversation on how to run our tournament smoothly while representing Gus Macker in a positive light.

He started this conversation by telling us two things we needed to internalize regarding the Gus Macker Basketball Festival. First, that it is a family oriented event and second, our goal is to make people want to come back year after year. Our tournament, April 29-30th, is the first full scale Michigan tournament of the season so we are under the microscope. If people don't have a good time at our tournament they might not go to another all summer. Under Mike's experienced supervision though, a great experience is guaranteed!

After long discussions on tournament logistics, we got to hear from Mike on what makes Gus Macker truly a special organization and event. He loves being part of the National Staff because he gets to work with positive people everyday. Gus Macker is 44 years of tournaments strong and they continue to maintain a great environment for fans of the sport. What's not to love?

Mike informed us that we have now inspired 2 other cities to start launch parties of their own! So far we have been the only tournament to host a launch party, but since Madison and Shelby's talk with 18 other host cities we've spread the launch party love. We're very excited to hear how they like this new edition to their event!

If you would like to hear more from our class and see what we're posting follow us on social media! If you would like to see our class live in action, you can register a team for our tournament April 29-30th by visiting https://macker.com/cities/mt-pleasant-mi by April 10th! If you simply cannot wait until the end of April, have no fear, we're coming to Grand Rapids April 1st for a one day indoor Macker Madness event. It will be hosted at MSA Woodland and the registration deadline is March 26th. You can find out more information by following this link: https://macker.com/local/grand-rapids-indoor.

💜 Facebook: CMU Gus Macker
💚 Instagram: cmugusmacker
💛 Snapchat: CMUGusMacker
💙 Twitter: CMUGusMacker

Thank you so much for reading and we hope to see you at our upcoming events!

Week 7

The After Party

The past few weeks have been very eventful for the Gus Macker family, but we finally had a breather this last class period and just in time for Spring Break!

This was the first class period after the Launch Party and we took a long time discussing what went well, what went wrong, and what we can do better next time. This is an important part of the event planning process and will allow this class to keep contributing to Central Michigan University in the future. We learned the results of our fundraising as well, and as a class we raised a total of $2,912.00. This ended up being $1,000 more than last year, beating the previous record for most money raised! Central Michigan Life also wrote a news article about the Launch Party which you can read by following this link! http://www.cm-life.com/article/2017/02/gus-macker-kick-off-at-okellys

I must include another shout out to two Teaching Assistants, Shelby and Madison, who got to speak about our class at the Gus Macker Conference. At this conference, 18 cities who host Gus Macker Basketball Festivals come together and discuss the pros and cons of the event. Our team members had the honor of sharing what we do as a class and blowing the other cities away with how much we accomplish as 30 college students! They received a standing ovation and our class couldn't be prouder!

That's all I have to report for this class period, but we do have more upcoming events and information for you! Registration for the tournament April 29-30 is now open, if you have an interested team be sure to check out https://macker.com/ and click on Mt. Pleasant to register for our tournament. We will also be coming to Grand Rapids, MI for a one day Gus Macker Event April 1st! 

As always you can follow us on social media to gain more information hot off the Finch Factory conveyor belt!

💜 Facebook: CMU Gus Macker
💚 Instagram: cmugusmacker
💛 Snapchat: CMUGusMacker
💙 Twitter: CMUGusMacker