Spark

Spark is a community of Electrical Engineering (EE) students from the University of Twente focusing on two main goals. These goals are: Plans are that Spark will become a Dispute under the E.T.S.V. Scintilla (Elektrotechnische Studieverenening Scintilla).
 * Executing projects.
 * Building and publishing experience

Spark is run by a board of students that fulfill a specific function within Spark. All the other members will be primarily active with the two goals of Spark.

Board of Spark
The board of Spark is a board of 5 men, who each have their own goal. Below there is a list of board ranks inside Spark.


 * Chairman - Robert Fennis
 * Chief Accounting and Data Administration(CADA) - Robin Lohuis
 * First Project Leader - Joep
 * Second/Assistant Project Leader - Berjan
 * Chief Communication - Maurice Baveco

Each position has its own responsibility. The Chairman focuses on making sure everything inside Spark runs smoothly. The chairman runs the board and discusses decisions with the board. The board together decides what will happen with Spark, the chairman can not make any decisions on his own. The CADA is responsible for watching the finances and administrating all the data that is being produced together with all the member administration. The First Project Leader takes all the decisions about the running project(s). He decides who is responsible for which subsystem and he makes sure that the project will be finalized within the deadline. The Second Project Leader does this job together with the First Project Leader, but is more involved in making sure the ideas can be realized and, together with the First Project Leader, makes the decisions about the technical aspects of the project. The main difference between the First and Second Project Leader is that the first project leader is more involved in coordinating the subprojects where the second project leader is more involved in soling technical aspects and problems. But as being said before, the first and second project leader must both approve of a decision or hand over responsibility before changes can be made. If that is not possible, the decision will be discusses with all the other members of the board. The Chief of Communication is responsible for making contacts with the University and the Student Union. If something cannot be done inside Spark and some instance outside of Spark is necessary, the Chief of Communication is responsible for making those contacts.

The goals of Spark
As said before: the two main goals of spark are: Spark has one main project running at a time. This project is divided into several subprojects. The subprojects are being done by members of Spark (including the member of the board) and are regulated by the first and second project leaders. Each project has a deadline and the final products will be handed over to either the Student Union Scintilla or a different instance that has asked Spark to do a project for them.
 * Executing projects
 * Building and publishing experience

In the field of EE it is very important to have practical experience as well, not only for solo projects but also in group projects. Spark works on longer extended projects that will create a lot of experience along the members. All this experience will be recorded through two media. Documentation of the project and the spark wiki. Documentation can be considered as all the documents that are created during the process of the project development and are a excelent source of information for other people to learn how we have solved problems. The Spark wiki is also a source of information where Spark puts as much explanations about matters as possible. It is a public wiki that allows EE students to share information and is maintainened purely at free will.

Spark members
Several rules apply to being a Spark member. There are several types of positions inside Spark. Non board positions have a specific title. Every position ending with a - in the end, can have a title which specifies what kind of promotion he or she has. Every primary position indicates how long someone is in its title. In general most members are actually students. If a student is doing his batchelor for 4 years he is a 4th Year-Student. If someone is in its first year Master education he is 1st Year-Master.
 * Everyone, in theory, can become a Spark member. The only thing that is mandatory is that Spark members must contribute to running projects or be involved in the organization of Spark. There are no regular costs that involve Spark. Project fundings might be devided along the members excluding passive members that did not contribute to the project.
 * Spark membership can be ended if someone with a Board position believes that person is no addition to the team. This however must be done with approval of the rest of the board.
 * Members can be Passive which means that they cannot contribute to projects. They do recieve information about Spark and updates about Spark and its projects.
 * In agreement with board members, a Spark member can have a break from Spark which means that their contribution will end for as long as needed. This can be due to a lack of time or other important reasons. In that case, the responsibility of them on their subproject will either be temporally cancelled or handed over to someone else inside Spark.