A Very productive meeting was held at the North Arkansas College north campus to discuss ways to support the BEST program. The Ozark section representitives were Gary Thomlinson, Mitch Wilkenson and Bryan Cook, also represented was the senior manager for Research and Development at FedEx Freight. This group met with Ed Proctor (IEEE Member) and his staff and were given an overview of the Kits each participating school receives 6 weeks prior to the competition. There are two component sets of the kits, one is a set of reusable items such as motors electronic controlers etc. and the other is a set of consumables that are used in the construction of the teams robot. Following this presentation the group went to the Alpena High School to receive a demonstration of one of their constructed robots. The entire group felt the program provided great benifit in a number of IEEE feilds. This was discussed during the buisness meeting to be held on May 5th 2009.