Hey hey Whyville!
This is Bigfoot Bill, coming to you straight from City Hall, where your town's leaders, organizers, and programmers are busy at work on keeping our fair town healthy and growing!
Our town is growing, but have you ever wished that it would grow faster? That we'd get new games and places to hang out more often? Wouldn't it be nice to have that beach right away, a Whyville cafe next week, and more plots like YESTERDAY?!!
Well, I thought that this week I'd spend some time talking about what growth in our town depends on -- sponsors! For example, the money that helped us make the Great Balloon Race came from the E. Desmond Lee Technology and Learning Center at the University of Missouri in St. Louis.
The Smart Cars Arena is sponsored by the Center for Neuromorphic Engineering at Caltech, using funds from the NSF (which is short for the National Science Foundation). Do you know what neuromorphic engineering is? Neither do I, but it sure sounds cool! I think it has something to do with using what we know about the brain, like how neurons are linked together, to build robots, kind of like how the Smart Cars' sensors are linked together...
Whyville's latest major addition, the Whyville Aeronautics and Space Administration building (WASA), began with a lot of help from the Caltech/JPL group SIRTF (Space Infrared Telescope Facility). These folks are going to launch a telescope into space in order to look at things through the infrared spectrum, but they care about things here on Earth too. Specifically, they supported the construction of WASAso that Whyville citizens could explore the practical and theoretical aspects of space travel, just like JPL does.
Even if you feel WASA could be improved, or the mall isn't quite enough for your needs, thank the folks who give us the opportunity to be here in the first place. We owe them some big thank-you's! If you email us your thank-you notes, we will forward them along.
To make more cool activities, we need to find more cool sponsors like these folks. Do we want a bank? Yes? Then we need to find a bank like Washington Mutual or Wells Fargo to sponsor our Whyville bank. We want a stock market, right? Then let's get someone like Fidelity or Charles Schwab to sponsor one in Whyville!
A company like Home Depot would be perfect for sponsoring new Myville neighborhoods so citizens can build more houses. Maybe Volvo or Ford would like to sponsor cars in Whyville? How about a cafe? Wouldn't it be neat if Starbucks sponsored a little coffee shop? Whyvillians, what other ideas do you have?
The point is, if there's something you want, like a shopping center or a diner or a bowling alley, you need to help us find a sponsor for it. There's only a half dozen of us here at City Hall, while there's almost 100,000 of you! So if you want your town to grow faster, you need to pitch in!
You might say, "I want to help, but I'm just a kid! How do you expect me to walk into Home Depot and demand to talk to the president??"
That's not what we're asking! All you'd need to do to help us is to talk to the folks you know already. Maybe your parents work for a big company or a university who could sponsor us? Then be sure you show them Whyville and let them see how great our town is! Maybe a family friend works for another potential sponsor? Show them our town!
You are the voice of our town, so speak out!
Your help WILL make a difference in our fair town. Email us if you know someone we can get as a sponsor!
TANSTAAFL, and Carpe Diem!
Bigfoot Bill
