Greetings, narwhals and friends!

Happy second semester y’all! Hopefully, it’s treating you guys better than the first. Build season is rapidly going by, but the narwhals have been very hard at work for the past two weeks, prototyping and finalizing the design of the robot. There’s still a lot to do, but great progress is being made.
Undoubtedly, there has been a couple mishaps, but they have been resolved with the power of crayons and some helpful team members. Without further ado, here’s what our departments have been up to for the past two weeks:

Marketing
As build season progresses, marketing has been hard at work to design new merchandise for the team. We hope to release it soon and look forward for what lies ahead.
- Francesca P.

Mechanical
Over the past two weeks, Mech has been hard at work both inside the workshop and at home. The department has been split up into smaller groups responsible for specific parts of the robot, and each group has used the past few weeks to design, build, test, and evaluate their prototypes before they can move onto their (hopefully) final iteration. We have encountered some setbacks in the form of alignment problems in both the laser and one of our 3D printers as well as communication issues between people inside and outside of the workshop, but we were able to overcome them through greater use of our project management tools and through the general perseverance of everyone involved. Right now, we are starting to finish up prototype testing, manufacture the drivetrain, and fix a practice robot for Drive Team to train with.
-Aaron B.

Strategy
The Strategy department mainly focused on the game design challenge and now, we have a solid design of our game. We are currently working towards designing a theme for our game as we work with Business and Marketing. In addition to game design, Strategy is expanding it’s project line up to give our more coding inclined members the option to contribute to the department and the team through projects like our E-scouting project and Database project
-Yash V.

Business
In the past two weeks, the Business department has directed its attention towards grant writing and working on the first newsletter of the 2020-2021 season. Veterans have been drafting, editing and finalizing the Sempra Energy Grant, which is projected to be submitted in the next coming weeks. Meanwhile, new members have been making good progress on the offseason newsletter and expecting to publish it soon. Business has also worked closely with Strategy on this year’s game design challenge.
-Kevin Z.

That’s all the updates we have for now. Keep up the good work narwhals!

For more updates, you can check out our Instagram page at @3128aluminarwhals!