This year, the Duke Robotics Club IT Team, consisting of Nathan Yang and Vedarsh Shah, has been hard at work improving the club’s digital infrastructure and streamlining our online presence. Here’s a recap of everything we’ve accomplished:
Consolidating and Organizing Club Photos
One of our major projects was consolidating all photos from various members and our club’s Google Drive into a new, dedicated Google Photos account. This ensures that our visual history is well-preserved and easily accessible. To make searching for photos more efficient, we labeled the faces of all current members, making it simple to find team members in past events and competitions.
Additionally, many of our archived photos were missing metadata, including timestamps. To address this, we manually filled in dates for photos uploaded without metadata, helping to maintain a chronological record of the club’s activities.
Email System Overhaul
We finalized a new email template and transitioned our communications to the DukeGroups email system. This update streamlines our outreach and ensures consistency in our messaging while making it easier to manage our mailing lists. We also ensured the email template could be modified without touching any code.
Website and Video Hosting Improvements
Previously, videos shown on our website were hosted on our web server, which has limited storage and a slower load time. We transitioned to embedding videos from YouTube, reducing the storage burden on our web server and improving video accessibility and performance.
Hardware Upgrades
After compiling a list of potential devices and comparing their specifications, we purchased a new club laptop and external SSD. The laptop makes it easier to run simulations and pool tests, and the SSD allows us to store the large amounts of data collected by our robot.
Recovering Club Accounts
Access to an old club email account had been lost due to turnover in leadership. By reaching out to previous club members, we successfully recovered “duke robotics club [at] gmail [dot] com” which will be our primary Google account moving forward.
Alumni Network Expansion
To highlight career opportunities for current and future members, we compiled a list of companies that Duke Robotics Club alumni have worked at. This information was then added to the alumni page on our website, showcasing the diverse career paths our members have taken.
These improvements have significantly strengthened the club’s IT infrastructure, making information more organized, accessible, and efficient for current and future members. We’re excited to continue refining our systems and supporting the club’s growth!