March Invention Madness

The month of March was a reflecting period for us, as we organized our next steps and collected feedback from the Mid-Grant Technical Review. We learned a lot from our audience regarding what improvements can be made on both the technical and financial side of our project, such as presentation tips and organizations who might be willing to donate to us. Overall, we received over $1,000 in donations that night, which helped us to have about 30% of our goal covered. In addition to the follow-up emails sent out, we created "thank you" letters for our donors.

As we inch closer and closer to Eurekafest, we are planning the logistics of getting to MIT. Our first step was to reserve plane tickets for one week before the price sharply increases. We decided on Southwest Airlines for our travel. Over the next week, we will finalize who is going to Eurekafest so we can have an exact count of what our budget will be for transporting the team and our invention.

Moving forward, we expect to see more earnings from fundraising. We have been able to see profit from our weekly breakfast taco sales that have contributed to our goal. We are planning to attend two events in April that can potentially find donors and serve as a media platform for InvenTeam. The first event will be the Energy Institute Signing Night on April 4th, where we will pitch our project and club to incoming freshmen and their parents. The second event will be Bay Day at Kemah Boardwalk.

In terms of technical goals, the team will put together the final invention design, which now includes a steam accumulator, solenoid valve, and fuel pump. We have deemed the viscometer useless in relaying viscosity to the Arduino, so we are replacing it with the fuel pump and valve. The steam accumulator will heat up the fuel as necessary. The Tech Team will also send the final EurekaFest display for June. We are determined to meet our financial and technical goals.