Who Can Participate?

Smackdown is open to anyone in the world who is interested in modeling and simulation. Although we expect most teams will be comprised of university students and their faculty advisors, private individuals and industry professionals are also encouraged to form their own teams. The minimum team size must be one student and one faculty mentor. However, teams may be as large as a faculty mentor deems manageable or necessary. 

People can even participate as “observers” if they want to familiarize themselves with the Smackdown process and experience the event intimately, without being an actual team member.

Teams and observers will be able to participate remotely via the web, and do not have to be present at the Smackdown event in Orlando, Florida. Last year, several team members participated from Boston, MA, Huntsville, AL and as far away as Genoa, Italy. 

Registration Instructions:

The first step to participating in Smackdown is initiating contact with Outreach Chair, Alexia Joiner, and asking to be listed as potential participants (active or observer). After contacting our Outreach Chair you can request access to email contacts, telecoms, our sharepoint repository, or request any other information regarding participation. 

Forming a Team:

Creating a team is easy! Below are some tips to forming a team for students and faculty members. 

Faculty Members:

If you are an interested faculty member all you have to do is contact the Smackdown Outreach Chair, Alexia Joiner, about participating. She will list you as a potential participant and provide you with the information you need to get started with Smackdown. 

Students:

If you are an interested student, you can bring Smackdown to the attention of a faculty member or department head. Prompt them to take a look at the Smackdown website and urge them to contact our Outreach Chair Alexia Joiner. Work to build interest within the department and try to get other students involved. Remember, Smackdown is a team effort and can include a variety of participants from computer programmers and engineers to designers and artists. Add our facebook page to connect with other students and faculty and to keep up with the latest Smackdown developments.  

Tip: It is strongly recommended that each team include at least one student familiar with design software like Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator and Autodesk Maya. These students will provide both insight into the creative process and the skills needed to compete in the Smackdown poster contest.

Suggestions for establishing team roles: 

Establishing team roles is an important step to keep your team organized and running efficiently. Below are some quick suggestions that will help ensure both efficiency and team cohesion during the Smackdown event.

Establish a Point of Contact (POC): 

In most cases the POC for a team will be the faculty mentor. They will be the teams main contact for Smackdown. The POC’s role is to be the organizational arm of the team. They will make initial contact with the Outreach Chair, make arrangements for travel to the Smackdown Event or arrange for remote participation, as well as make sure specific milestones are met.

Skill Sharing: 

Skill sharing is an exercise that quickly places team members, many of which may not know one another, where they are needed most and is best done during an organizational meeting early in the teams initiation. Participants list out their skills, using a white board or pen and paper.