This past April, my Entrepreneurship New Venture Development group won 3rd Place and $5,000 cash at the annual Oklahoma Governor's Cup!
But let me back up... New Venture Development is a capstone-level class for Entrepreneurship majors at OU. Many of OU's Entrepreneurship classes prior to this one were focused on how to recognize, research, and develop new business opportunities. NVD builds on what students have learned in earlier Entrepreneurship classes and its main focus is to write a business plan that is entered in the annual Governor's Cup.
So from the middle of this past January to the end of March, four students and I worked on piecing together a business plan for our group's product. Some of the parts of our business plan include:
Industry Analysis
Customer Research
Product Implementation Plan
Competitive Advantage
Management Team
Critical Risk Factors
Financial Statements
My group, dubbed "Fifth Slope", developed a new ultra-comfortable ski boot liner called the "Zeph-Air." The Zeph-Air uses air-cell technologies to provide a more safe and comfortable skiing experience. The Zeph-Air replaces traditional ski boot liners and its air-cells are slightly inflated to provide a snug fit between the skier's foot and ski boot. When it comes time for a break from the slopes, the Zeph-Air can be quickly and easily deflated, allowing the user to pull out their foot (with the Zeph-Air still on their foot) from the ski boot. This allows the skier to more safely and comfortably walk around in their Zeph-Airs (which have a durable and water-proof sole) instead of walking around in heavy and uncomfortable ski boots.
Not only did my group have to write a business plan, we also had to give a 20 minute presentation and handle 20 minutes of Q&A from a panel of judges (potential investors). Out of over a hundred submissions, only 30 teams made it into the Governor's Cup. Then only 6 or so made it to the final round for a more difficult presentation and Q&A and the chance to win one of three top places.
The NVD class and competiting in the Governor's Cup was an excellent experience. It was satisfying to start basically from scratch and end up with a fairly well polished end product. I also got additional presentation practice which is something I've really grown to love to prepare for and do. The entire experience also re-ignited my entrepreneurial spirit and showed me how some of the best facilities and opportunities are right here at home in Oklahoma!
I bought my first Mac about a month and a half ago during Spring Break: a 24" iMac!
A couple weeks before that, Apple refreshed their iMac line with better processors and 4GB DDR3 RAM standard... all for a lower price! I had been planning on building a desktop to replace my nearly four year old 17" HP Laptop. The new iMac offerings and my interest in learning to use OSX (and supported software like the iPhone SDK, Garageband, and iMovie) prompted me to make the jump and switch to a Mac.
It really was an easy transition. I can do everything just as well on my iMac that I used to do on my PC. While I'm sure advanced OSX users will tell me differently, I don't see any justification for why OSX is better than Windows XP or vice versa. For average use, both operating systems function just fine for me, though each of course have their own minor differences and annoyances.
Here's my short complaint and praise list for my iMac/OSX after a month and a half of use:
Complaints (most of these are minor annoyances... but the devil's in the details!)
You can't cut files... only copy/paste or drag and drop. Ridiculous. When I want to move a file, cutting and pasting it is so much faster than drag n drop.
The Home and End keys don't go to the beginning/end of a line of text by default... they go to the beginning or end of the entire DOCUMENT. Luckily Evan helped me fix this with Double Command.
Speaking of the Home and End keys, they no longer exist on the keyboard Apple shipps with its iMacs. Instead, Apple has begun shipping a mini, notebook-like keyboard for its desktop computers. Apart from some minor cost savings for Apple, I have no idea why the company made this change. Having the arrow keys crammed in under the rest of the keys as well as no home, end, or numeric keys prompted me to shell out an ADDITIONAL $50 for a full keyboard. While you can get a full keyboard for free if you order via Apple.com, you can't if your purchase is made at an Apple Store as mine was.
Praises
I love the all-in-one design. This was a major factor in deciding to get an iMac. I wanted more processing power and screen realestate than my laptop, but still a level of mobility when needed. I also love the integrated iSight camera and microphone... fewer peripherals and the mic works great when I'm playing games like Team Fortress 2.
I love Dashboard and Expose. While I'm sure there are Windows third-party apps that provide similar functionality, it's great that so much of this is supported out-of-the-box in OSX. Much less hastle.
iPhoto is excellent... now I have a great way to organize and view my photos and the photo recognition is really pretty damn great.
GarageBand is sweet. I was able to create a quick song in under an hour without ever having used the software before. I'm looking forward to buying a keyboard soon to use with my Mac/GarageBand.
I've also found several other little things quite useful on OSX, like the integrated Downloads stack. On Windows, I never used the downloads manager in Firefox because it bogs it down after a while... but the OSX Downloads stack is really nice. I just wish it'd auto clear itself every few weeks or so.
And unsurprisingly, applications like iTunes and Quicktime work flawlessly on OSX, unlike their dinosaur ports for Windows. Everything moves smoothly and scrolls like butter on OSX.
Overall, I am very satisfied with my iMac purchase and I'm looking forward to learning more about GarageBand, iMovie, and Automator during the next few months.
Please comment below with any app or system tweak suggestions you have!
However, this week I began the switch back to MS Office.
For most tasks, OO.org and Thunderbird get the job done. Yet I've been forced to use MS Office for various projects throughout college.
I downloaded a free trial version of MS Office '07 a few months ago when I needed its extended features and themes to create a professional presentation for the Bruzzy Westheimer Competition. Recently, my MS Office trial expired and I have found that I have been spoiled by the features and UI and cannot switch back to OO.org. Additionally, OO.org suffers greatly from slow load times. While I do indeed need to upgrade my computer hardware, OO.org's JAVA-based software can take tens of seconds to load compared to MS Office's nearly instantaneous file loads.
While each of these pieces of software have their own unique benefits, I have found that I can usually create higher-quality material much quicker with MS Office (I'm a big fan of the new '07 Ribbon UI). Addtionally, OO.org has made great strides in compatibility improvements with MS Office, yet formatting and placement issues can still cause a lot of headaches, especially when sharing files within large groups.
The switch from Thunderbird 2.0 to Outlook 2007 will take some getting used to. While I use Outlook exclusively at work, Thunderbird is the only desktop client I have used at home and I enjoy its lightweight and simple interface. The primary reason I am trying to switch to Outlook at home is because of the built in alerts functionality. While similar extensions exist for Thunderbird, nothing seems to beat how easily and quickly I can create a task reminder in Outlook... something I depend on at work.
While I don't see myself returning to OpenOffice.org anytime soon, Thunderbird 3.0 is set to be released within a few months. Once it is released, I will make a new blog post comparing it to Outlook.
Why do you use your current document processing and email software?
Over the past few weeks I've been working on integrating Facebook Connect with the ONEsite platform, specifically for blog posts. Facebook Connect allows external sites to access certain Facebook user data, publish stories to minifeeds, and much more!
For this blog post, I chose to also have it published to my Facebook minifeed for all my Facebook friends to read. Facebook Connect is only available on the Team.ONEsite network but we plan to roll out this functionality to other networks in the future.
Soon you will also be able to update your Facebook Status from our networks as well as publish stories to your Facebook minifeed when you upload photos on our sites and much more!
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My group, dubbed "Fifth Slope", developed a new ultra-comfortable ski boot liner called the "Zeph-Air." The Zeph-Air uses air-cell technologies to provide a more safe and comfortable skiing experience. The Zeph-Air replaces traditional ski boot liners and its air-cells are slightly inflated to provide a snug fit between the skier's foot and ski boot. When it comes time for a break from the slopes, the Zeph-Air can be quickly and easily deflated, allowing the user to pull out their foot (with the Zeph-Air still on their foot) from the ski boot. This allows the skier to more safely and comfortably walk around in their Zeph-Airs (which have a durable and water-proof sole) instead of walking around in heavy and uncomfortable ski boots.
