By Chris Vance, Cisco Bloodhound Corporate Ambassador
Picture above: Pupils from Portslade Aldridge Community Academy with CISCO competition prize winner, Kate Willets to the right of Bloodhound Education Animator Jo Finch
July 5th 2012 witnessed the arrival of Cisco and the Bloodhound SSC at The Hawth in Crawley West Sussex for the STEM Big Bang South East 2012. With around 2,000 students attending from schools across the south of England this annual event is an opportunity for local schools to experience exhibits and shows focused on the core STEM subjects.
Having only recently joined the Bloodhound Corporate Ambassador programme I thought it would be a good idea to have the STEM Big Bang SE event as the first chance to try out our Bloodhound skills for the Cisco team. After enlisting the help of Shelldene Manuel & Kerry Partridge from the Cisco team to bring some organisation to my crazy idea we set to work on making the STEM event a reality for Cisco & Bloodhound with only a few weeks to go. Thankfully once we advertised the event our Cisco volunteers enthusiastically came forward to attend the event and practice their Bloodhound skills.
As with any large event the biggest challenge was securing funding however with the fantastic support from our Cisco UK marketing and our compute partner INTEL we managed to secure (quite late in the day!) the funding needed. The funding covered the use of the Cisco Network on Wheels experience & Bloodhound SSC Show Car. The Cisco Network on Wheels provided the students with an opportunity to experience the latest collaboration technologies in action and learn more about the history of the internet and future innovations.
Aaron from Holy Trinity School receiving his iPod Touch
Throughout the course of this project we learned a lot about how to organise an event with Bloodhound. Key to success was working with Stella Diamond on the logistics of how to get the Bloodhound SSC from Goodwood Festival of Speed to the STEM event before it needed to be at RAF Fairford for the RIAT airshow. Thankfully with the flexibility of the Bloodhound team and support from Jas, Toby & Paul in the 6am set-up we made the show. Having the support of Jo Finch also provided critical input on what we should, and probably more importantly should not plan for the day. On the day of the event Jo also provided all of the volunteers with a walk-through of the various exhibits before the show to ensure we were all briefed.
The Big Bang South East is organised by STEM Sussex who probably didn’t quite expect to be trying to work out the logistics of having the Bloodhound Show Car & Cisco Network on Wheels (NoW) experience at an event already very popular with local businesses, Universities and Colleges. The investment of time working with STEM to ensure we had the correct power & space requirements onsite, it is essential to have a site visit before the event to ensure access is also assessed. The combination of showcasing the Cisco NoW experience along with the Bloodhound SSC enabled us to generate a significant Cisco brand identity with the schools, students and businesses attending the event. During the event it was very encouraging to hear the students make the connection of how the Cisco technologies can help projects such as Bloodhound to be more effective in communications. In order to generate engagement with the students a short 5 question quiz was created which required the students to visit all of the Cisco & Bloodhound exhibits, at the end of the event we drew 3 winners who had correctly answered the questions and presented them with an iPod Touch.
Jack from Manor Primary School receiving his prize in the under 12 category
I would like to acknowledge all of the support we had at this event, many of whom I am sure you will meet at various Bloodhound events.
The Cisco Bloodhound Ambassadors & volunteers were: Shelldene Manuel, Kerry Partridge, Barrie Blackwell, Darren Ballard, Ulrike Frenzel, Martin Charlton, John Seymour, Simon Herbert & Paul Barnard (Cisco NoW experience). We also had support from seasoned Bloodhound Ambassadors; Toby Cabaret, Tony Barber, Ian Northeast & Charles Stringer. Finally, our team was rounded off with Jo Finch & Jas Thandi from the Bloodhound SSC team, not forgetting the truck driver Paul from Bloodhound’s haulage sponsor, Arthur Spriggs & Sons Ltd.
About Cisco
Cisco are the Networking and Video Partner for Bloodhound SSC providing the highly visible Bloodhound TV powered by Cisco technologies to offer schools and Bloodhound enthusiasts the opportunity to keep up to date on the latest developments through regular short video updates. Stefan Marjoram, Creative Director for Aardman Animation, is applying his creative skills to create the episodes for Bloodhound TV. Cisco are also supporting the Bloodhound team with key collaboration technologies that allow the team to communicate with each other, even when separated by thousands of miles
