Utah Business Week 2008

I spent the last week up at Utah State at Utah Business Week. This is my third year going up as an advisor and every year I am blown away by the program. I had 11 kids in my group this year and they were really sharp kids. They were from all over the state and they were all High School Juniors and Seniors. We were Company F and during the week we were required to create a product and design a logo and radio commercial for it. We also participated all week in a Business Simulation Game where we learned about production, advertising, quality management, stocks, etc. We took second place in the radio commercial competition and also second place in the Business Simulation Game.

This is a picture of the interns and some of the other advisors at UBW 08.

Here is a picture of the logo that my Company came up with. Our product was Fuecon, it was a converter that changed your garbage to gas. The kids came up with this clean looking logo and their radio commercial was very clever. It was a phone conversation left on a friend's voice message getting mad at her for not leaving her garbage in her car after lunch. The kids were quite creative and they were really sharp.

Here is a picture of my Company after we were given our UBW 08 hoodies. I came home with a slight injury however. The advisors can get a little rowdy at night after the kids all go to bed and one night about 1 a.m. we decided to pull out some break dancing moves. I pulled off a sweet move but I am paying for it now. I am old!

I learned a few things from the kids that I thought you might want to know just so that you are in the loop.

Dank: new word for cool. The music you listen to is so dank.

Boys these days seem to like to wear really tight fitting jeans, in most cases they are actually girl jeans. Hmmm.

Texting is an addiction. I have never seen such desperation in a kid's eyes as when I would have to ask them to put their phones away and quit texting!

The 80's are making a huge comeback. I haven't seen that many neon flouresent colors in a long time, not to mention the boys wearing white shorts and pants. Again hmmmm.

And finally the use of the word "like" seems to be inevitable in every sentence uttered out of their mouths.

Our future is in good hands, I think!