What's Going On?

Well it's been over a month since my last post.  It's been a busy month.  cycleWood is officially funded.  The ink has dried and money is in the bank.  We are moving along with the scaling of our process.  Last week we created the our first film sample literally in my garage.  It's pretty exciting.  We were in Dallas this past week giving a talk at TEDxSMU.  Pree, our chief marketing officer, delivered a very compelling talk.  I think we opened a few eyes in the audience.

This week we have a visitor in from the UK.  He's one of our mentors.  We met him while we were in Winnipeg last year.  We met up in Little Rock and had a short chat with the Secretary of State.

These are exciting times for us.  There are times when things don't move as fast as we would like and there are times when we have trouble catching our breath.  We've learned to take it all in stride and that's all part of being an entrepreneur.  I will try to post more frequently again, but again no promises.  Merry Christmas to all and to all... well that depends on when you're reading this.

Time Flies

Well here I go again, it's been almost a month since my last post. I gotta get better at this. It's been a busy month. cycleWood has been traveling around getting funding. The good news is we could be very close. We've started working with our research lab to scale up our process. It's exciting stuff.

This past week we met up with our "The Ol' Adviser." I think that's a new nickname for her, Dr. Carol Reeves. We met up to do a video for the entrepreneurship program. Some of the other teams from years past were also present; Silicon Solar Solutions, Biologics MD, Tears for Life, and Merchant View. It was great seeing everyone again. These are the folks that helped us get off the ground. Lots of great advice.

We are also preparing for our trip out to San Jose in a couple weeks for the finals of the CleanTech Open. Silicon Solar Solutions will also be along for the ride. Hopefully one of us can bring home the big prize.

In other news, Halloween was this weekend so Sarah and I decided to dress up as Lego Minifigures. We were a hit at the party we went to and won the best costume contest.

A good time was had by all. A couple of my old classmates were also at the party. It's always good to catch up with friends.

The Hogs keep winning somehow. Hopefully they'll break out of their funk this week against South Carolina. The games are definitely entertaining so I'm not complaining as long as we end up on top.

I will try to do a better job of posting but no promises.

It's Been Over a Month

So my blogging has been less frequent of late.  I do apologize, it has been a busy month.  cycleWood has officially obtained the exclusive license for our technology from the University of Minnesota.  We've also converted to a Delaware C-Corp.  We'll remain in Arkansas for the near future though.  We'll see what happens long-term.  We've also moved into a little office space at the Genesis Building in the University of Arkansas Research Center.  We've been fairly busy to say the least.

We just returned from Austin last week where we placed 1st in the Clean Tech Open South-Central region.  Silicon Solar Solutions, another Arkansas-based start-up, placed 2nd.  We'll be headed back out to San Jose to compete in the Clean Tech National competition.

We are currently working with our research lab to scale up the process, so we are moving right along.  We are also working on getting funding and hope to have a deal in place soon.  We are excited and anxious at the same time.

I will try to blog more frequently, but there may be periods of less frequent blogging. 

It's Been a Month

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post.  Time flies when you're busy.  A good bit has happened since my last post.  cycleWood has been moving right along.  The last few months have been a learning experience in negotiating.  While I would love to share the details, it will be a bit before I can fully disclose all the goings-ons.  There is still plenty of work in front of us.  We'll be doing some development work in the next few months.

We've been putting our MBA education to good use too.  All that finance, accounting, and logistics actually comes in handy in the real world.  We've been managing all the financials for our lil start-up ourselves up to this point.  At some point we will need someone else to support those efforts, but until what we learned at Walton serves us well.  On the logistics side we've been looking at different ways to optimize our supply chain.  All that stuff Dr. Hofer taught us turns out to be rather useful.  We think about what service level we want to have and pooling our risk and also modes of transit.  I think the EOQ model has been etched into my brain.

These are exciting times for cycleWood.  I constantly have this feeling of nervous anxiousness.  I wonder what will be around the next corner.

New Elevator Pitch Video

Quick update - we are awaiting the legal documents for our patent license. We are also looking at different blends to develop for varying plastic applications. There's lots of excitement around what we can deliver and we're getting requests from customers for products besides just plastic bags.

In other news, we've produced a new video of our elevator pitch.  It's a little more professional than our last attempt.  This one was submitted to the PitchUniversity competition.  So check it out and "Like" it, add comments too, as long as they're good ones.

You can see from the video where the inspiration for the elevator pitch came from. "The Graduate" is a great movie too, so if you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.  It's an older movie, but still very funny.

That's about all the news for now that I can share.  We'll be headed to Dallas towards the latter part of August. I'll keep you posted on our entrepreneurship adventures.

CleanTech Academy and Travel Woes

The CleanTech Academy ended this past Sunday.  It is now Tuesday and I am still not back in Fayetteville yet.  That's the travel woes part of this post.  I'll get to that in a bit.

The CleanTech Academy and Investor Conference was ok.  The Investor Conference portion didn't have as many investors as I would have thought, but it was ok.  I went solo on this trip.  It was different doing everything by myself, but very manageable.  There was an exhibit fair, it was ok.  The Academy itself provided a good overview of what to do win the competition.  We've been through most of this already due to our great adviser, Dr. Carol Reeves.  We prepared an elevator pitch.  If you've followed us through the competition circuit you know that we did fairly well with our pitch.  There were some good speakers sprinkled throughout the weekend.  I think what made it just ok was that for being in the middle of Silicon Valley there were a lot of technical glitches.  Mics didn't always work, website was very slow, and internet was worst than 56k.  I understand there were a lot of people using up that bandwidth, but this is Silicon Valley.  There was also a lot of information crammed into the weekend and the days were long.  Many of the participants were exhausted by the flood of presentations, most of which were good and some were well... not so good.  I'm sure I could say that about most of the competitions and event we've been to, but part of the purpose of this event is to network.  They skimped on social activities and left little time to network individually.  Overall it was a decent event.  Some things that could make it better is more technical preparation, firmer schedule, and smaller sessions.  For some of the topics smaller groups would've definitely been beneficial, while for keynote speakers it was fine to have everyone in one room.

And now I'm sitting here in Little Rock waiting for a flight to Dallas then transferring to a flight to Tulsa, then driving back to Fayetteville.  I started in San Jose flew to Los Angeles then got delayed by the dust storm in Phoenix, missed my connection to Tulsa and so here I am.

As you can see it was a bit of a beast.  I guess it's been an adventure of sorts.  All part of the roller coaster ride of being an entrepreneur.

Negotiations and Challenges

cycleWood Solutions is in the final stages of negotiation for a patent license.  While this is definitely not a trivial step, it has taken longer than I thought it would.  We've been through several rounds of negotiation and we're getting close to an agreement that works for all involved.  It has been a learning experience.

We have other challenges as well as we move forward in the business.  Some of these challenges we foresaw, while others have sprung up.  We knew there would be things that would come up that we had not anticipated, so in some ways we were prepared for these challenges.  I can't go into to much detail on these as some of the information is proprietary.  One of the necessary skills for a successful entrepreneur is to be able to overcome the expected and unexpected hurdles that arise.  Being quick, nimble, and flexible allows entrepreneurs to navigate their way through the challenges of starting up.

We are somewhat limited in what we can do until the patent license is signed, but we haven't been sitting idle.  We have been talking to investors, mentors, and customers.  We've also talked to suppliers and manufacturers.  These are things that we need to do anyways so we're trying to get a jump on that so that as soon as the deal is signed we're ready to go.  Being proactive saves time and shows initiative.  It's easy to say we're waiting on this to get done or that to get done.  There are plenty of excuses, but in order to be successful you have to be resourceful and efficient.

Speaking of resources, Molly Cunningham with businessadministrationdegree.com recently wrote an article about some specialty search engines that could be helpful for any business student.  Her article is titled "30 Specialty Search Engines and Web Databases for Business Students."  Check it out, there's some good information there.

More Travels and Intellectual Property

I'll be headed to San Jose for a few days this month.  I'll be attending the CleanTech Investor Conference July 14th and the CleanTech Academy July 15th through 18th.  It'll be the first trip I take without any of my teammates.  The main purpose of the trip is to learn and network.  Participation is mandatory to compete in the CleanTech Open.  Silicon Solar participated last year and told us that they found it very beneficial.  One good thing about the CleanTech Open is that you can compete more than once.  So if we don't win this year we could come back next year.

Aside from preparing for the CleanTech Open, we have several other irons in the fire.  We are finalizing our patent license and engaging investors as we move along in the process.  We are also refining our intellectual property strategy.  Fresh from our trip to the LES conference in London, we were eager to put what we learned to good use.  Besides patents, there are several other forms of IP that we can develop and put to good use.  For example, we can develop trade secrets which may be more beneficial than patents.  Trade secrets, unlike patents, are not exposed to the public.  When a patent is filed the technology is open for review by the public.  Other IP that we plan on using our brands and trademarks.  As we learned in marketing, brands add value by forming a bond with consumers.  Consumers trust brands and are willing to pay extra for that sense of security.  These are just a few of the myriad of things that we have been busy working on the last few weeks.  Entrepreneurship is not all fun and games, it can be quite exhausting.

cycleWood Versus Silicon Solar

cycleWood has made it to the semifinals of the CleanTech Open.  One of last year's teams also made it, Silicon Solar Solutions.  We are going head-to-head in the semifinal round.  The top three from each region are selected to move forward.  We are both in the South Central Region along with eleven other teams.  Douglas Hutchings, CEO of Silicon Solar, has a hunch we might both get through to the finals in San Jose.  That would be great for the state and the University.

The entrepreneurship program at the University of Arkansas is developing a reputation of producing real start-ups.  With each coming year the enthusiasm generated by past year's teams creates a sense an expectation and sense of responsibility to carry on the tradition that's been building the past few years.  The meetings for next year's teams have already begun.  Every year Dr. Reeves gets previous team members to come back to share their experience.  The continuity of the program is one of its strengths.  So if you think you may be an entrepreneur, take a look at the University of Arkansas Sam M. Walton College of Business MBA program.

Competition Season Ends

We made it back stateside this past Friday.  I've gotten over the jetlag.  My sole focus is now on building cycleWood.  This should be great news for investors out there.  They've been ready for us to be off the "show circuit" for some time.  School is finished and now so are the competitions.  The only other one that we've applied to is the CleanTech Open which wouldn't be til this Fall.  That would be a different competition as we would compete as a post-graduate team.

So let me tell you about London, first off don't forget to bring your walking shoes.  If you want to see London the best way, in my opinion, is on foot.  You can venture into the old cobblestone alleyways and explore the rich history and character of the city.  Stop at a neighborhood pub and enjoy a nice draft at cellar temperature.  It's not so bad, but I do prefer an ice cold beer.  They do have those as well.  There are bridges, cathedrals, towers, and museums to see.  We explored as much as we could in the spare time we had.  We crossed the Millennium Bridge, Tower Bridge, and also London Bridge.  We stopped at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral.  And we ventured into the Tate Modern, Science, and British Museums.

We had a great time in London, but now it's time to focus.  Good ideas are a dime a dozen.  If you have a good idea, chances are someone else has probably had that idea.  The odds of having a truly unique idea are not that great.  What makes a start-up successful is execution.  There are many talented people who can put together a great plan, but being able to execute that plan is a different story.  cycleWood has a great business plan, but there are unforeseeable hurdles that we must overcome.  It's how we face these challenges that separates us from the rest.  We recognize these hurdles and do what we can to get beyond them.  However, there are times when the hurdle is a wall that, despite our best efforts, is not ready to be broken through.  We try to be as clear as possible to any investor that we have a great team and we have a great plan, but there are still risks.  There is no such thing as guaranteed success, ask Lebron James.

Crossing the Pond to London

cycleWood is heading to London this afternoon for the LES competition.  We are one of six finalists.  The competition is this Saturday.  It's only Kevin and myself headed to this one.  We've never presented with just two before so this should be interesting.  One of us is also going to give the elevator pitch.  This should be interesting considering we've never done it.  It's always been Pree or Jack.  Luckily it's not for a prize, it's just to introduce our idea to the audience.

We'll be in London for a total of eight days.  The competition is only one day.  The rest of the time will be spent at the LES Conference which is supposed to be a great networking opportunity.  We'll be taking advantage of that for sure.  We were also invited to a black tie affair by a friend we met while in Canada at the Stu Clarke Investor Competition.  It'll be good to see him again.  We got tuxes and shiny shoes for the event.  Should be fantastic.

Aside from that we plan on seeing a good bit of London while we're there.  The hotel we are staying at is right by Westminster Abbey.   I bet the souvenirs from the royal wedding will be on sale.  We'll pick up a few to bring home. 

This should be a very fun trip.  Our adviser, Dr. Reeves, is also coming.   I'll make sure to take plenty of pics.  Look for them in the next few days.

GSB Summer Social

The GSB Summer Social is coming up Friday, June 10th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at Powerhouse.  If you are thinking of applying for the MBA, MMBA, or MAcc program at the Walton College of Business you should try to attend.  It's a great way to network and meet some people who will work with you and who have been there.  Some professors will be there, as well as staff and administrators.  So if you have any questions or wondered who was on the other end of the telephone or email here's your chance.  Talking with current and former students will give you a feel for what the program is about.  You can also get a first hand perspective of the pros and cons of the program.  Besides all that, there's plenty of food and drinks too.  It's a good time to be enjoyed by all.  If you do go out there, make sure to say hi to Rebel and tell her I sent you.

Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Competition Results

Well we went out to Las Vegas and we did alright.  We walked away with more money than we came with.  That's always good especially in Las Vegas.  Arkansas did well overall.  In the undergrad division John Brown University swept the competition taking 1st, 2nd, and also the elevator pitch.  Congratulations to Craftistas for taking 1st and Agricultural Food Systems for taking 2nd and also winning the elevator pitch.

cycleWood took 2nd in the graduate division and also won the elevator pitch.  While we would have liked to win it all, the competition was tough.  However, we remain undefeated in elevator pitch competitions. 

Next Thursday we are headed out to London, England.  It should be a very exciting trip.  This will be the final competition for a while.  We have applied to the CleanTech Open, but won't find out if we made it to the semifinals for a little while. 

We are pushing forward with the business.  There are some hurdles we'll have to overcome as we scale up the production process.  This morning I spoke with a supply chain company to see if they could help us in our endeavors.  They do a lot of work for McDonalds and have quite a few connections that could be very helpful.  We have some momentum now and we want to keep that going.  Wish us luck!

Vegas!

cycleWood is headed to Vegas tomorrow for the Donald W. Reynolds Tri-State Governor's Cup.  We'll be competing against teams from Nevada, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.  The other Arkansas team is our fellow team, TiFiber.  There are six teams for each division, undergraduate and graduate.  First place is a $25,000 cash prize.

Next week we'll be headed to London for the Licensing Executive Society competition.  We'll be over there for eight days.  This competition focuses on our intellectual property (IP).  I've never been to Europe so this will be first trip across the Atlantic.  I'm sure there will be plenty to see.  I will definitely be posting some pics from that trip.

We have also decided to enter the CleanTech Open.  This is a competition that focuses on green technologies.  There are regional competitions and a final competition.  Silicon Solar Solutions won this competition last year and said that it was a great experience.

On another note, the weather around here has been very unstable lately.  Last night the severe weather included heavy rain, strong winds, hail, and tornadoes.  A large tornado touched down in Joplin, MO tearing the town apart.  So far, 89 deaths have been confirmed from that tornado.  This has certainly been one of the worst, if not the worst, weather year I can remember.

Commencement

A lot has happened in the last few weeks. I finished up my MBA, took my last test for a while. Commencement was yesterday. It was bittersweet. I'm glad to be finished with my MBA, but I'll miss the wonderful people I've gotten to know the last year and a half. Below are a few pictures from the past few weeks.

As one chapter closes, another one begins. We'll be starting up cycleWood Solutions in the coming months. There's still plenty of due diligence to be done. It's exciting and scary at the same time. We are in the current issue of Fortune. It's their Fortune 500 issue.

While this marks the end of my MBA, I will continue to blog to keep you updated on how we are doing.  Stay tuned, there's still plenty to come.

Need Your Support

We just entered an elevator pitch competition at MIT, but to get to the finals we need your help. The link below will take you to a YouTube page with a video of our elevator pitch. Click on the link and "like" the video. If we get the most "likes" we win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrTQs68cGb0

Hurry, we only have a couple of days. Tell all your friends to "like" it too. Thank you for your support.

Walmart Update

We didn't make it to the finals of the Walmart Competition.  However, we will be presenting our elevator pitch.  It's great if you haven't seen it, you should definitely come check it out.  We'll be presenting around 1:00 pm.

In case you haven't seen it, here's a video of Pree, our CMO, delivering the elevator pitch.

Quick Update

We have been very busy lately. Catching up on classes and competing in competitions.  When I last wrote we had just finished up Governor's Cup.  Well we won, we took the top spot in every event we competed in: 1st place overall graduate level, 1st place agriculture track, and 1st place graduate elevator pitch.  We are undefeated in elevator pitch events.  We've won every single elevator pitch competition that we've competed in.

Last week we were down in Houston competing at the Rice Business Plan Competition.  This is one of the largest, if not the largest, business plan competitions in the world.  The University of Arkansas was very well represented at this event.  Both of our teams made the finals, which also means that both of our teams are in the top 1% of all competing teams.  Not bad, considering we are competing against the best in the world.  We placed 4th overall, while our other team TiFiber placed 6th.  The University of Arkansas is very proud of both our teams.  For making it to the finals both teams will be featured in the May 23rd issue of Fortune, this is the Fortune 500 issue.  Definitely check it out.  I have to send out a special thanks to the Fortune crew, they were fantastic.  We had lots fun with the photography crew, as well as the interviewer, Jessica Shambora.

This week we are competing in the Walmart Better Living Business Plan Competition.  We presented this morning.  We find out tonight if we made it to the finals tomorrow.  I will let you know how we do as soon as I find out.

Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup

Another week, another competition.  cycleWood Solutions just finished up the Donald W. Reynolds Governor's Cup.  This competition is a little different from the others we've been to.  There were no spectators, just judges.  We had a longer amount of time for our presentation, 20 minutes instead of 15.  We also don't find out if we won or not for two weeks.  We feel ok about the how we did, but we're not overly confident.  The two top teams from this competition move on to the Tri-state Competition in Las Vegas.  We are hoping to grab one of those two spots.  The first place prize here is $20,000.  That would be a nice little investment for our start-up.  There will be a luncheon on April 20 to announce the winners.  That's when we'll also have the elevator pitch competition.  The Governor will be on hand to cheer us on.  It should be kind of a big deal.

While we were in Little Rock, we sat down and had a conversation with the Arkansas Secretary of State.  He's a pretty sharp fellow himself.  The conversation was interesting.  We talked about our business, politics, and economics.  The entire staff in the capital building was very welcoming.  We got a tour and talked to several people along the way.  This was all arranged by our Chief Business Development Officer, Jack Avery, who is also an elected constable.

Next week we are headed back down to Houston to compete in the Rice Competition which has over $1,000,000 in prizes.  It's also one of the toughest competitions.  Over 500 teams applied, but only 42 teams were accepted.  The University of Arkansas has two teams accepted, us and TiFiber. 

O' Canada

This past weekend we were in Canada, Winnipeg to be exact, for the Stu Clark Investment Competition.  We won two prizes.  We won the Royal Bank of Canada Challenge Round, winning $2,000, and we also won the elevator pitch, winning a $2,000 dinner.

The dinner was an amazing experience.  It was a five course meal with five wines paired up by a sommelier.  The dinner included a 7 lb lobster that was probably 100 years old, a rack of lamb, ribs, filet mignon, New York strip, Vietnamese tiger prawns, a couple salad dishes, wild mushrooms, carpaccio, creme brule, chocolate cheesecake, and blueberry bread pudding.  There were some other items, but that's all I can remember.  Needless to say we were quite full afterwards.

The experience in Winnipeg was great, we met some great folks up there.  We invited the keynote speaker to come down to Fayetteville this Fall and he agreed.  The advice and feedback we receive is so much more valuable than the actual monetary prizes.  We formally decided to move forward with cycleWood Solutions, LLC.  This is a huge step for us.  We are working with the our Chemistry and Chemical Engineering departments to develop a prototype.

Another piece of good news we received over the weekends is that we have been extended an at-large berth into the Venture Labs (formerly Moot Corp) competition.  So we'll be headed down to Austin in the beginning of May.

Next up for us is Arkansas Governor's Cup.  We'll be headed down to Little Rock Thursday morning.  We present Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.  Wish us luck.

cycleWood Solutions Wins Again

We just got back from the Venture Challenge at San Diego State.  The atmosphere out there was electric due to the success of the basketball team.  The weather was also nice and traffic was not as bad as I had imagined.  San Diego seems like a great place to live.  Maybe cycleWood Solutions will put our headquarters there.  That would be nice.  The beach was great, but the water was a little cold.

So how did we do in the competition?  We won the Green Award for being the best Green team.  We also placed third overall.  It was a busy couple of days for us.  We were the first to present Thursday morning at 8:00am.  Needless to say, we were not on our "A" game.  However, we did well enough to go to the Wild Card round.  There were four tracks and the winner of each track went to the finals, second place teams in each track went to the Wild Card round.  We had to turnaround and present again Thursday afternoon.  We made some adjustments to our presentation based on the judges feedback from the first round.  This definitely helped us win the Wild Card round and move on to the finals.  In the final round we presented last.  This gave us time to practice in the morning.  The presentation was recorded and will be posted on Youtube at some point.

We have a week off for Spring break, which will be spent on revising the business plan some and working on the presentation for Manitoba.  We'll be headed up to Winnipeg next Wednesday.  This will be the start of a grueling stretch of four competitions in a row.  While the competitions are definitely exciting, they also wear us out.  Our endurance will be tested.

First and Last Midterm

Yesterday I took my first and last midterm of the semester.  I suppose that's one of the benefits of taking a couple extra classes over the past year.  The test was in Strategic Management.  Overall it wasn't too bad.  There were a few tricky questions, but nothing unexpected.  The semester is moving along pretty quickly.  Spring break is just around the corner.  Our entrepreneurship team is headed to San Diego Thursday for our next competition.  We have a week off for Spring break then we are off to Manitoba.

Graduation is only a couple months away.  I can't believe it's almost over.  We just had our Spring social last night.  The turnout was good so there should be a reserve of great Walton MBA graduates coming in the future.  To all those currently in the program I say, enjoy your time here it'll be over before you know it.  That first semester was very busy to say the least, but we all learned a lot about business and about each other.  I've got some big decisions to make here in the next couple months.  I'll keep you all posted as I try to figure out my next move.

cycleWood Solutions Wins Again

This past weekend we were in Houston competing in the regional round of the Walmart Sustainability Business Plan competition.  We were competing against a couple other Arkansas schools, Langston, and Rice.  We won the regional competition and will be heading to the finals in Bentonville.  The competition was held at Rice so they had home field advantage.  The campus there is super nice and really big as are all things in Texas.  

These competitions are turning out to be more exhausting than I had planned.  Initially we were trying to go to as many as possible.  Thank goodness we decided to tone it down a bit.  We still have plenty of competitions but at least we have a few breaks before the home stretch.  Our next competition isn't for a couple a weeks and it's in San Diego.  I know, it sounds terrible right?  Then we have a week off before we have a stretch of four weeks straight of competitions starting with Manitoba.  Besides competitions, we have midterms coming up soon too.  It's just a busy time of the semester.

Competition Season Open

We had our first business case competition this past weekend at the University of Louisville.  We are anxious and nervous at the same time.  Overall it was a fun experience.  We didn't win the big prize but we didn't walk away empty handed.  Thanks to our energetic chief business development officer, Jack Avery, we won the elevator pitch portion of the competition.  We received a check for $1,500 and an autographed baseball of all the elevator pitch presenters.

Everyone involved in the competition also received a personalized Louisville Slugger bat.  The team that won the competition got funded, $300,000, by a couple of judges.  They showcased their business and got real investors. 

Next weekend we are headed down to Rice University in Houston for the regional Walmart Sustainability Business Plan Competition.  We got lots of good feedback in Louisville, so we'll being making some adjustments as we move forward.  I'll keep you posted on how we are doing. 

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

So this week has been interesting.  There's been lots of snow...  lots and lots of snow.  While I must admit I enjoy an occasional snow day, but this is ridiculous.  It's been a long time since the University has been closed for the better part of a week.  I feel like I'm living in Minnesota with all this snow, and the temperatures are quite frigid to say the least.

Aside from the weather, other items of interest are our upcoming travels.  cycleWood Solutions, LLC has been accepted to several competitions.  We'll be headed to Louisville in a couple weeks, followed by Houston, San Diego, and Manitoba.  These are exciting times for us.  We want to represent the University well.

Today was the annual business forecast luncheon.  It was very optimistic.  The economy is expected to grow more than last year, unemployment should decrease, and manufacturing is making a comeback (in Arkansas).  As a state, Arkansas is well below the national unemployment rate at just over 7%.  Arkansas is also one of only three states with a balanced budget, which means that we are poised to make greater economic gains during these difficult times.

I've also started my job search.  I guess I actually started last Fall some time, but I've put in a few applications the past couple weeks.  I've got some tough decisions to make in the coming months.  Everything will turn out just fine, I'll fill you in on the details later.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Last night our entrepreneurship team, cycleWood Solutions, won again.  We are 2-0 in competitions so far.  They are internal competitions, but we still won.  Last night we had the University Walmart Net Impact competition.  This competition is for teams that have a business plan around social responsibility or sustainability initiatives.  The winner gets to go to move on to the regional competition which is at Rice this year.  There was an unannounced prize last night as well.  The winner received $2500 to cover travel expenses.  This is very nice since cost is one of the factors that limits the number of competitions we can attend.  So we are headed down to Houston for the Walmart regional competition.  We've also been accepted to the Venture Challenge at San Diego State and the Cardinal Challenge at the University of Louisville.  Hopefully we can keep our winning streak going and provide positive exposure for the Walton College.  I'll keep you posted.

First Snow Day

Today was the first snow day of the year at the University of Arkansas.  They did wait til 9:30 to formally cancel classes.  The roads aren't too bad now, but this morning it looked a little dangerous.  We have another snow system coming early next week, so perhaps another snow day may be coming.

This was the first week of classes, so it's a good time to have a snow day since most professors are just going over syllabuses and course structures.  This semester we have a couple new professors for the incoming MBA class.  Molly Jensen is teaching the Business Analytics class and Steven Kopp is teaching Retail Marketing this semester.  This is their first semester teaching these courses, so take it easy on them.  Although I did hear that Steven Kopp is already assigning presentations.  We didn't have any presentations until three or four weeks into the semester.  It is good practice though.  These skills are required by many employers so practice. 

Get Ready

Orientation has come to a close. The incoming MBA class has an advantage over my class, they didn't have any full days canceled. This class is very energetic and fun for sure. Last night we had the MBA alumni panel last night at Hog Haus on Dickson. It was a good time. Afterward, we went over to Grubs for more food and fun. Below are a few pics from the evening.

The Spring semester is the most crowded semester.  We'll have two full-time MBA classes, MAcc students, and MMBA students all over the building.  It can be difficult to get a study room around midterms and finals.  From everything I've seen so far, we should all get along pretty well.  It should be a fun semester.

Orientation

Well orientation this year wasn't quite a repeat of last year.  Although the Mount Sequoyah overnight stay was canceled, the team building activities were not.  They were moved to good 'ol Willard J Walker Hall.  It was fun.  Hopefully the incoming class got to know each other a little better.  I was in charge of the River team building exercise.  Teams had to work together using "boulders" to get across the river, get their "treasure" and get back to the other side.  Below is a video of the activity.

The next couple of days of orientation involve a little case competition.  This is their first taste of case study work.  They'll have plenty more during the Spring semester.  Friday they'll go on a tour of a Walmart distribution center and store.  Then it's a weekend off before classes start on Tuesday.  It's an exciting time, I just wish it wasn't so cold.

A Repeat of Last Year

As orientation for the incoming 2012 MBA class approaches, I am reminded of our orientation a year ago.  Our orientation last year was shortened due to inclement weather.  It was also bitterly cold with temperatures in the single digits.  This year's orientation is looking similar to last year's.  Our overnight stay at Mount Sequoyah was canceled due to snow.  If we have snow tonight, the 2012 class may also have their overnight stay canceled.  Hopefully it won't be too bad and we can continue as normal.  We have some fun team building activities planned.  This builds comradery within the class and also helps everyone get to know each other. 

As far as preparing for my final semester, I've ordered my books.  Amazon is generally cheaper than the bookstore.  You can also find books on eBay, but often times those books are international editions which usually have the same content with different covers.  So if you get an international edition there is some risk that you might have a slightly different book.

I'm looking forward to this last semester.  It should be fun, with little stress.  Looking back, if you have the opportunity to take classes in the summer or extra classes in the fall it's definitely worth it.  Some of those classes are only offered during that time.

I just remembered I haven't done a review of my Fall classes and professors yet.  I will do that soon.  Probably this week.