(no subject)
Been a bit of time since my last update but have been very busy.
Was on a summer school run by the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre this week. It’s a week long intensive course run by the university for postgraduates to teach business and entrepreneuring skills. This included having to devise and plan a business and also several lectures on related issues. Over the week we had talks from numerous external presenters on things like Intellectual Property law (patents, trademarks and copyright), Business finance, how to write a business plan, marketing, how to create a company from university research and presenting and others. We were split into teams the whole week (6 teams of 6 or 7, randomly selected) and the first thing we had to do was invent a business idea. I became the unofficial captain of my team, mostly because I was the first to take authority. To come up with the initial idea, each team had a bag of junk dumped on their table containing some balloons, a piece of wood, teabags, cotton pads, some leaves, a ball of wool and other equally useless stuff. We invented the idea by not taking the contents literally and staring at it for 5 minutes. An idea of stuffing a tea bag inside a balloon led to a portable teapot which evolved over 5 minutes into an idea for a survival kit. Our “hook” was that it would contain an electronic locator beacon of some variety to help rescue workers find people in sites of natural disaster. We were team number 5 which led to the idea of “5 ways to stay alive” and the cool team name: Sur5ive.
For the competition each team had to present the business idea and plan the same as organisations do on Dragons’ Den. This meant we had to do a full presentation including a business plan, cash flow forecast, market analysis and strategy and explain how we would be profitable and how the investors’ money would be spent. The week was very intensive and I was so tired during the middle of the week. It was worth it though since I was team leader and Sur5ive won! That was a really good feeling. Also, it looks good on a CV! Might post some photos on f/b sometime. We finished early on Friday which allowed for plenty of drinking time in Staff House with people from other groups. It was interesting talking to the captain of our main rival and discovering we had both picked each other out as the main competition after only a couple of hours on Monday. There was another very strong team from the first part of the week but they didn’t seem to give a very strong presentation at the end and I think that was their undoing.
It was also a very good opportunity to meet other people from other disciplines and I’ve met some very cool people over the week and learned loads about business dealings that I didn’t know before. I don’t really want to start my own business in the near future, but having this understanding is particularly useful. Especially as it’s a common complaint among employers that university graduates (especially postgrads. like doctoral students) have their head in the clouds; they are intelligent and know lots about their field, but have no idea of how business actually works with not enough professional experience. It’s the eternal student syndrome. Doing this ensures I am not one of those.
Over the weekend I have been taking it easy to make sure I have enough energy recovered. Swimming filled Saturday morning as it usually does at some point now. Had my first taste of Geocaching this weekend as well and it was really enjoyable. We covered 4 caches in Lickey hills and left some dinosaurs for someone to find in a couple of caches. It has made me think of some more variants which might make it to popular culture…or not:
Was on a summer school run by the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre this week. It’s a week long intensive course run by the university for postgraduates to teach business and entrepreneuring skills. This included having to devise and plan a business and also several lectures on related issues. Over the week we had talks from numerous external presenters on things like Intellectual Property law (patents, trademarks and copyright), Business finance, how to write a business plan, marketing, how to create a company from university research and presenting and others. We were split into teams the whole week (6 teams of 6 or 7, randomly selected) and the first thing we had to do was invent a business idea. I became the unofficial captain of my team, mostly because I was the first to take authority. To come up with the initial idea, each team had a bag of junk dumped on their table containing some balloons, a piece of wood, teabags, cotton pads, some leaves, a ball of wool and other equally useless stuff. We invented the idea by not taking the contents literally and staring at it for 5 minutes. An idea of stuffing a tea bag inside a balloon led to a portable teapot which evolved over 5 minutes into an idea for a survival kit. Our “hook” was that it would contain an electronic locator beacon of some variety to help rescue workers find people in sites of natural disaster. We were team number 5 which led to the idea of “5 ways to stay alive” and the cool team name: Sur5ive.
For the competition each team had to present the business idea and plan the same as organisations do on Dragons’ Den. This meant we had to do a full presentation including a business plan, cash flow forecast, market analysis and strategy and explain how we would be profitable and how the investors’ money would be spent. The week was very intensive and I was so tired during the middle of the week. It was worth it though since I was team leader and Sur5ive won! That was a really good feeling. Also, it looks good on a CV! Might post some photos on f/b sometime. We finished early on Friday which allowed for plenty of drinking time in Staff House with people from other groups. It was interesting talking to the captain of our main rival and discovering we had both picked each other out as the main competition after only a couple of hours on Monday. There was another very strong team from the first part of the week but they didn’t seem to give a very strong presentation at the end and I think that was their undoing.
It was also a very good opportunity to meet other people from other disciplines and I’ve met some very cool people over the week and learned loads about business dealings that I didn’t know before. I don’t really want to start my own business in the near future, but having this understanding is particularly useful. Especially as it’s a common complaint among employers that university graduates (especially postgrads. like doctoral students) have their head in the clouds; they are intelligent and know lots about their field, but have no idea of how business actually works with not enough professional experience. It’s the eternal student syndrome. Doing this ensures I am not one of those.
Over the weekend I have been taking it easy to make sure I have enough energy recovered. Swimming filled Saturday morning as it usually does at some point now. Had my first taste of Geocaching this weekend as well and it was really enjoyable. We covered 4 caches in Lickey hills and left some dinosaurs for someone to find in a couple of caches. It has made me think of some more variants which might make it to popular culture…or not:
- Geohashing: Not invented by me. See XKCD for the explanation. Note that this is real now and people do it! Geohashing
- Geo-mashing: Geocaching where you deposit a sachet of instant mash potato in every cache - or fill the cache with mashed potato for the next person to find.
- Geo-crashing: The result of hunting while heavily inebriated. Note this is not recommended.
- Geo-smashing: What can happen if attempting to locate a particularly fiendishly hidden cache. In the end you get too frustrated and smash the GPS unit in with a hammer/fist or rock.
- Geo-thrashing: A common part of normal geocaching, the process of locating the actual cache amongst thick undergrowth when at the cache location.
- Geo-bashing: Trash talking the hobby if you don’t enjoy it.
- Geo-cashing: Enjoying increased sales of GPS units off the back of the popular passtime.