I’ve been in a lot of clubs and organizations over my years in high school and college. But perhaps the best experience I ever had was working on the Public Relations group for my school’s FIRST Robotics team. We were in charge of community outreach, fundraising, events, etc. It was a lot of work, but I really learned a bunch of new things about Marketing and how to publicize events. We did hit a few snags here and there though.

One of our most daunting tasks was to create signs for all of our events and for the team in general. And we ended up getting a local business to donate a wonderfully-made banner which had our team name, logo, and our sponsors on it. Only problem? We didn’t know what to do it. At competitions we’d end up tie-wrapping it to bleachers and stuff and as a result it got dirty and started to tatter a bit on the edges. But we didn’t have anything else to do with it, so we had to deal.

If only we had actually looked around and purchased something to help us hang that banner. We could have easily gotten a retractable banner stand that we could have set up at competitions. It would have allowed the banner to hang freely and not get pulled on or ripped if people bumped into it while they were passing by. The team still has that banner today, and it still is in good condition, but I bet that all of our signs would be in great condition had we actually bought stands for them instead of using our tie-wrap approach.