Hello MM!

My name is Ethan Dillon. I am a rising Sophomore here at JMU and I will be running for the Treasurer position in this years' officer election. I have gotten the pleasure of meeting most of you but have not yet managed to meet ALL of you, which is something I aim to accomplish! (Alumni included). This club has deep roots and is the favorite beloved club of many of us here, and in my opinion that is one of the main things that make it so great. With that being said, I'd like to be apart of the team responsible for keeping this fine-tuned machine of a club running for many years to come. 

So why Treasurer you may ask?


The treasurer position intrigues me because as we all know, the key to keeping any machine running smoothly is MAINTENANCE. With maintenance comes the need for detailed record-keeping while retaining easy accessibility and readability. I believe I have just the right amount of OCD and excessive work ethic to fill this need. As a CIS (Computer Information Systems) major and overall data and statistics nerd, I not only have the interest in these duties but the skills and experience as well. I have lots of experience including but not limited to the following programs: Excel, Access, Lightroom, Photoshop, Word, PowerPoint, as well as experience in Python and HTML programming. With these skills, I feel confident in assuming the financial and logistical record-keeping responsibilities of the treasurer and much more.

Why me?

Aside from experience and overall technological proficiency, I believe there are other very important aspects of this position. I take pride in being very outgoing and having a genuine passion for talking to others, getting to know them, as well as receiving feedback. I see being approachable and personable as being critical for someone who is being trusted with various financial and operational responsibilities within the club, and I aim to be open and reachable by anybody who may have any questions or ideas at any time. Lastly, I believe there is benefit to being a younger officer. Having 3 years to come in this club, I would continue to be an aid to any future treasurers in the event that I were to run for a different position later on or be replaced by a new treasurer.

Another aspect in which I believe I can be valuable to this club as an officer is my experience with business relations and sponsorships. At the age of 15, I had purchased my first car and built it up into a sponsored show car. It was a 2010 Genesis Coupe 6MT that had been in a front and rear collision and was far from pretty at first sight. After repairing it and modifying it, I was able to obtain sponsorships from Mishimoto, GCTuner, and Incurve Wheels. I then assisted those companies with advertising and promotion at shows and on their websites. By the age of 16, I had then started my own clothing brand. I successfully ran this company and solely carried out every one of its' operations throughout the rest of high school.

Long story short...

My goal as treasurer would be to update the club's record-keeping methods of financial transactions and resource allocation through the use of new programs and/or program features to achieve increased efficiency and accessibility for those who need to access them. I hope to make these changes while also making the treasurer position more approachable than ever before by making my contact info readily available to all and open for comments, questions, suggestions, and more with a rapid response rate. I realize these duties can be complex and I feel confident that my experience and skill-sets in business and technology will allow me to carry out these responsibilities.

Additional Info


One idea I had in particular was to create an MM database in which members will have the ability to go into the UI individually and enter info about themselves such as hometowns, birthdays, areas of expertise, and more. There would be a distinction between alumni and current members. This would be useful for instances such as: "Wow, I have an oddly specific question regarding my fathers LS car", "Yikes, my roof is leaking, I wonder if anyone in MM happens to have any construction or roofing experience", or "I really would love to have a photographer at my wedding this weekend, I wonder if there are any photographers in MM looking for a gig". These various areas of expertise can be inputted and assigned by each member and made searchable via tags and keywords. This idea came to me after seeing the amazing amount of knowledge this group has in such a wide variety of subjects, and it occurred to me how sweet it would be to find a way to organize and utilize that! This is simply a concept at the moment, however I would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions!

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and please feel free to reply with any questions or comments!

-Ethan Dillon

Hello!
I'm Dean, and I am currently a sophomore and a economics and political science double major at JMU. Currently I have a 1991 Mazda Miata, with its only change from stock being a Mishimoto radiator. 

Since I haven’t been on the forums in a while I figured why not post all of my projects. A couple of months ago I flew down to Miami and drove back my new to me m coupe. My original plan was to build the motor on it, do an m52 2.8 block, with the s52 heads/crank and forged internals and a big turbo. Unfortunately work is just keeping me too busy to take on a full build like this so I’m passing it on to a new owner (currently pending sale). But it is definitely a fun car, love how analog it feels. 


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As I’m sitting here during everything going on and ordering car parts I find myself missing MM and haven’t posted on the forums forever. So the story goes we’ve had the Q5 for 2-3 years now and I’ve always wanted to toy with it a little, as well as always wanting a little overlander (for short durations) so after searching for quite a while I found h&r makes, or should I say made lift springs (1”). After them sitting in my garage for a couple months I finally installed them last weekend and noticed that the tires are getting a little low on tread. Long story short general grabber at’s are now sitting in my garage, I think I’d like to ad some bright lights on it and explore a roof mounting tent. I know there’s some forums members who are a bit more hardcore overlanders, I know east coast overlanding trails aren’t plentiful but does anyone mind sharing some spots?

My Role as President… 
The first thing that I will need to do is establish a relationship with everyone related to NASA MidAtlantic and local Auto-X as I have not been able to make it to many of those events. This is especially important since Brandon did such a good job at keeping in contact with all of them and motorsport needs to be the #1 priority for the club. 


I’d like to improve our connections with alumni who may not have the time to keep up with the everyday insanity of the groupme chats. With the future of the MM forums being up in the air at the moment, I see this as being our biggest challenge for this coming year. This is not something that should be put on the back burner and I’ll be doing my best to come up with some sort of solution. I’m confident that with the other officers we’ll be able to find one that works best for current students and alumni. 


I’ll also need to keep in mind that someone will be taking over MM after I leave. Teaching someone everything I know about the club and how to run it will be very important. I’ve already put in place a couple of guides for new officers to go by sort of like the ones left for us by previous officers but more specialized. I’ve made it a point to keep good records and to make them easily accessible. That google drive be realllllll organized


What we improved upon this past year… 

• Improving retention through the winter with strong events like the following
  • BBQ/Potluck Events 
    
  • Game Nights 
    
  • Xlabs Meetings 
    
  • MAAP events
    
• Stand out at Student Org night and on campus events
  • Tall sign
    
  • Laptop w/ video playing bring small speaker
    
  • Stickers
    
  • Shirts 
    
• Member engagement on social media
  • Member Highlights
    
  • Featuring past sponsors of the Car Show
    
• Meeting attendance 
  • Offering food at meetings 
    
  • Flexible times
    
• Keeping records
  • Incident Report Sheet (private) 
    • Used to keep record,  just in case we have a concern about behavior
      
  • Events and how they were put in place
    

I was just trying to put out feelers if anyone else did any kind of sim racing on Xbox during these boring times. I need some more people to play with online and figured this was the best group to ask.


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Hello, I'm Ryan Showalter, a sophomore computer science major. I recently bought a 2016 GTI SE w/ PP, LP, DAP. Here's some low light, low quality garage pictures.





I have a real plate mount coming tomorrow, don't worry! I don't plan to do much to the car yet, as it still has a bit of warranty left on it.

Good evening everyone, it is with heavy hearts that Madison Motorsports must announce that all our Spring 2020 events are canceled. Unfortunately, the decision to cancel all events does not depend only on the MM exec, we must comply with JMU’s policies regarding the cancellation of social events, all in order to public health. At this moment we need to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. We are especially sorry because this means that our annual car show is canceled too, however, we are sure that the car show next year will remain in everyone's memory for a long time; after all MM will be celebrating 20 years of the club’s existence. We hope that everyone stays strong and remains healthy. Next semester will be full of great events. We appreciate your understanding and we hope to see you all again soon.

A forum post will be made about how and when elections will be held for the coming Fall and Spring semester. 

Thanks to everyone for making the past semester a great time. 

With the economy going backwards at ludicrous speed I figure auto and bike manufacturers are gonna start offering massive deals.  GM already rolled out a 0% 84 month program, and I have to think others will follow.

I'm just driving my mom's car for now, biding my time, but I'm hoping some crazy deal shows up just as my signing bonus at my new job hits.  Anyone else stalking some deals?

Forgive me if there is already a thread for this, but I haven't found it. 


TB12 leaving the Patriots has me officially hoping the Covid-19 comes and takes me away. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nf...066224002/