Transition Document - President

Overview

As the President of Blueprint, you are the primary representative of the organization in all official matters and are responsible for setting the strategic direction and goals. Your role involves overseeing the accountability and performance of executive board members and the general membership. Leadership in this position requires you to manage a variety of tasks, some predictable and others that will challenge your problem-solving and adaptability skills. You will lead meetings, represent Blueprint at university functions, and handle external engagements. Given the broad scope of this role, I highly recommend that you familiarize yourself with the responsibilities of other executive board positions by reviewing their transition documents thoroughly. Engaging with past presidents can also provide valuable insights into effectively managing and navigating the complexities of this leadership position.

Responsibilities

Setting Goals and Initiatives

At the start of each year, it's crucial to establish clear goals and initiatives to steer the Executive Board's efforts. These goals serve as a roadmap for the organization and can range from broad objectives to specific projects. For instance, during my tenure, we aimed to:

Representing Blueprint to the Student Government Association and University Administration

As President, you are the primary liaison between Blueprint and key university bodies like the Student Government Association (SGA) and the University Administration. Here’s a list of important contacts within the SGA and Faculty that you should familiarize yourself with to maintain and establish critical relationships.

While other members of the Executive Board will also interact with university staff, you are responsible for handling official presentations and communications with the SGA.

Organizing Executive Board Meeting Agendas

For weekly Executive Board Meetings you should create agendas to guide discussions and shorten meeting times.

1. Agenda: I typically write tickets on the GitHub kanban board and on the meeting minutes I leave links to them. This way the information for particular tasks remains organized and easy to find.
2. Notes: Any general notes or important things discussed during the meeting I place the here. After the meeting, I review this section to see if any updates should be made to the kanban board.

The frequency and structure of your meetings can be tailored to fit the organization’s needs. During the past semester, it was proposed that the Executive Board split into two focused groups for weekly meetings, with the entire board convening biweekly. This division was suggested to improve efficiency, as some topics, such as specific projects or event formats, do not require the attention of the entire board.

• Operations-Focused Group: This group should include the President, Vice President of Operations, Vice President of Recruitment, Vice President of Finance, Vice President of Marketing, and Vice President of Events. The focus here is on the administrative and logistical aspects of the organization.

• Projects-Focused Group: This group should consist of the President, Vice President of Projects, Vice President of Technology, and Vice President of Design, concentrating on the ongoing projects and technological development within the organization.

Alternatively, you may opt for a stricter agenda during full board meetings to ensure that only topics relevant to all members are discussed. Issues that are extraneous or specific to certain roles should be handled individually or in smaller, relevant groups. This approach helps streamline discussions and maximizes the productivity of meetings.

Holding Executive Board Accountable

A large part of this role is delegating. You should ensure each Executive Team member abides to timelines and has the support they need to fulfill their responsibilities. In the event an E-Board member is failing in their duties, we have a policy in our constitution on handling their removal from the Executive Board. Please consult the constitution in the shared drive for details on this procedure.

If a role within the Executive Board becomes vacant, hold an emergency election ASAP. We do not have an official policy on emergency elections. Until one is established, follow normal election procedures, but expedite timelines so that you can fill roles ASAP.

Facilitating Elections

Please read the Election Guide for more details. Your responsibilities include:

• Working with the Executive Board to create a smooth and detailed Transition process
• Marketing Executive Board Responsibilities, Nomination Deadlines and Election Dates in advance
• Sending Nominations to Student Life
• Notifiying Nominees of their nominations a week in advance
• Facilitiating the actual election - you should be an impartial moderator and enforce fair standards to all candidates

Future Goals

Here are some things that I wish I could have led Blueprint into:

• Professional Development: Professional development should not be our primary goal, however, with our projects and website were are in a position to attract sponsors and create recruiting pipelines with companies. Here are some things that I think can boost Blueprint's professional development:
  • Resume Review, Leetcode, and Technical Interviewing Workshops
  • Alumni Panels - after this year we will have lots of Blueprint Alumni!
  • Information sessions with companies
• Sponsors: GitHub, Notion, and Perplexity are more "partners" as opposed to Sponsors. I think landing a corporate sponsor that gives monetary donations will be a major selling point to students and non-profits. With that money we can pay for more Cloud Services, Merchandise, and events. Depending on how busy the Blueprint E-Board is, it might be worth appointing someone dedicated to recruiting sponsors and maintaining corporate relations.
• Standardizing (Especially Project Team Onboarding): A standardized process for new project team members, that not only includes the technical content they need, but also a social aspect will be crucial in making the teams more independent. Past project team iterations have been very dependent on the E-Board. With a thorough and planned onboarding/training process, it will improve the quality of our projects and free up time from the E-Board.

How You Can Succeed in This Role

Miguel Merlin

1. Get People to Buy Into the Mission: We don't get paid, and we don't get course credit for doing Blueprint. For me, the reason I enjoyed Blueprint so much was that it taught me a lot about leadership and allowed me to meet a lot of cool people. I also learned a lot of problem solving skills and when we finished projects like the website or AAD it made me feel very accomplihed. People will have different reasons for joining Blueprint. Get them to buy into the mission and it'll help immensely. I know this is super vauge but I think some tangible things you can do are organize more hang outs so that the E-Board can unwind and y'all can feel more like friends than coworkers. Establish alumni panels and career events to increase the appeal of Blueprint.
2. Start Training New Leaders Early: With such a large Executive Board - we need to ensure each role is filled by capable students. The Freshman Representatives. We've also had a lack of capable Tech Leads in past projects. Whether it be through the Freshman Representative Program, Shadowing, or our project team recruitment process, it is important to ensure we have enough students to carry Blueprint on in future years.
3. Delegate and Empower Your Executive Board: Sometimes you feel like it is easier to do everything yourself. And while in the short term that may be the case, it'll establish a bad pattern of accountability. We expanded the Executive Board to handle some of the more tedious work involved in different aspects. Your job as President is to ensure they are fulfilling their duties on time. Be clear with deadlines and provide constructive feedback to increase the quality of work. Give other members independence and encourage them to act in Blueprint's best interests instead of going through you for every single decision.
4. Standardize Procedures: Work with the Executive board to write down and standardize procedures. This includes things like removing inactive project team members, elections, or even the approval process for making changes to the website. If we establish these precedents, it saves us time in the future and we avoid discussing points that were already brought up.
5. Hold People Accountable: During my term as President I never moved to have anyone removed from E-Board.
   
6. 1:1s with other E-Board Members: During our EBMs, I would ask for feedback on how we ran meetings/other club operations. Most of the time people said things were fine or didn't say anything. I think 1:1s are a good way to get constructive feedback that people might otherwise be afraid of saying. You don't have to do weekly 1:1s, but maybe every month to ensure you E-Board feels heard/supported and to also provide advice for you.
   
7. Get Along with the SGA and Faculty: A good relationship with them makes our lives easier. Abide by budgeting rules and procedures and be respectful and quick in your communications with them. We now have a new Faculty Advisor as well (Patrick Hill) so use his expertise and connections!
8. Make Better Use of the Summer: Over the summer it is very hard to get engagement from the whole E-Board. What I recommend is doing a monthly meeting with the E-Board, but otherwise focus more on 1:1s and smaller meetings. This will make scheduling easier and will allow you to prioritize certain tasks. Things that should be done BEFORE the school year starts include: Gathering at least 2 project proposals from Non-Profits (VP Recruitment), creating the onboarding/training process (VP Projects), planning and documenting all the internal projects for the year (VP Technology), finalizing designer resources (VP Design), finalizing PM resources, creating a detailed event list (VP Events).