A moving experience

Note: HuskyTHON has been featured on the UConn Welcome Mat before as a photo essay.

Greetings Mike here,

It’s only November, but HuskyTHON 2012 is already lining up to be one of the biggest events of the year and the most productive in HuskyTHON’s 13 year history.

Over the last 13 years, HuskyTHON has grown from a small midnight marathon raising just over $13,000 to the behemoth event that it is today, last year raising just over $190,000 for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and maintaining its title as the largest student run philanthropy in the state of Connecticut.

While the accomplishments are great, it’s important to appreciate the continuous work being done by the Management Team. Since last April, the team of 20 has been organizing, collaborating, and planning both the event itself and the year-round fundraising events that take place. Mid-November saw Dancer Week, which officially begins the 100 days to HuskyTHON countdown. During Dancer Week, events are scheduled daily to increase sign ups and recognize those already signed up with special events. A few notable events from this year included the Wally’s Chicken Coop Eating Contest and ZumbaTHON, which brought out a record number of participants. Dancer Week alone raised close to $15,000 towards the 2012 total.

As of mid-November, HuskyTHON 2012 is adding up to be one of the most successful years yet. With over 600 dancers, 200 morale captains, 60 teams, and 165 volunteers already signed up, it looks like the rest of UConn thinks the same.

In my position as Technology Director, it’s my responsibility to manage HuskyTHON’s web presence at huskython.org, manage our team’s email accounts, handle all support cases, keep track of multimedia around the event, and ultimately make sure that the various tools and services that everyone on the Management Team  is using remains functioning and accessible. An event of this size is not easy to pull off, so efficiency is key in everything we do.

If you haven’t gotten involved with this great cause, it’s certainly not too late. HuskyTHON is a great opportunity to, quite literally, stand up for a cause that’s larger than ourselves, to come together as a University community over a shared cause, and to ultimately help give children in Connecticut the care they deserve. Our actions make a difference and being involved with HuskyTHON has been one of the most rewarding in my time at UConn.