This week just flew by! It was a pretty good week, and much fun was had :) Lots of photos ahead!
We started out on Monday night with my Creativity & Innovation team coming over for dinner and a work session on our final project / presentation. We had to come up with a new product that solved some kind of pain that would be marketable and then we had to put together a presentation that talked about the process and displayed the product and gave other information. I had the idea to do the entire thing QVC style as if we were pitching the product on a QVC segment and to give all the information that way along with callers who asked questions about it. The team actually loved the idea and we totally ran with it.
Darren, working on a script after a yummy dinner (if I do say so myself...)
When we started talking about how to do the call-ins, we wanted to do something better than just pretending to call in from the back row. Mostly because we knew we'd crack ourselves up if we tried to do it live. So we ended up coming up with the idea of pre-recording them (there's an app for that!) and then importing them into our presentation and working around them. We loved that because it would actually sound like we were on the phone. We came up with four callers and what questions they would ask. Of course, we couldn't stop there. Each caller also had a very specific accent and persona (the reason we'd crack ourselves up in class). Here's a shot of Brent recording Bob from Winnepeg (as in Bob McKenzie from Strange Brew) on my upstairs landing (our recording studio ended up being upstairs).
We also had Mike as Cowboy Jim from El Paso, Chad was our southerner - Nick from Atlanta. And I got to be Bambi, a valley girl from the O.C. (I swear I lost 10 IQ points during the recording of that segment.) I had lots of help writing the script and it was a trip.
Finally, a shot of Chad building our "set" in Power Point. One of the things we learned in class was about being creative by taking things that were made for one thing and using them for something totally different. We loved the idea of doing a kind of a play with a set rather than a regular presentation.
Chad and I also staged a photo shoot of our product on my kitchen floor, shooting it from every angle so that we could animate it and make it look like it was rotating in a circle. It turned out awesome.
Tuesday, we met before class to finish up and practice a few times before going to class. We ended up going last and I think we were a BIG shock to everyone since no one else did anything like it. Brent was the host and came running in to the Magnum PI theme song and then brought on Darren as the inventor. Mindy ran Darren's "teleprompter" and Chad ran the main presentation. It was a riot. A lot of the class didn't know what to make of the callers, but the professors seemed to love it and we got tons of laughs.
Brent, kicking off the No-Spurt segment of QVC:
Darren, explaining the concept of the No-Spurt and how it came about (we invented a little tool that would open the top of your yogurt so that it didn't splatter when you peel back the lid. It also acts as a freshness cap and a granola holder for mix-ins. We even had a working prototype!) You can see our rotating photos in the background.
And, taking a few calls from the "at-home audience."
Also Tuesday night was the class holiday dinner that my committee and I put together. We had tried to do it two weeks earlier, but "The Great Blizzard of 2010" put a kabash on those plans. Fortunately it worked out and even more people were able to attend with the new date. We had BYU Dining Services come set up a buffet for us in the Tanner Building atrium and then were able to eat together with our professors during our break. I officially apologize to anyone who turned out blurry or who was captured on film for posterity while putting food in their mouths.
Steve and Joann heading up the line...
(Mmmm... BYU brownies... yummy.)
Laura, Todd, Mindy, Darren, Brent and Jeff J. and I think that might be Rick sticking his face into the photo. lol.
I apologize to Alan and Mark (and Jim and Jed in the back) for making them blurry.
And I also apologize to Edgar and Mike (who was cowboy Jim on my Creativity team). They also are not blurry in real life. But I wanted to put them on here anyway :)
And some of the ladies of the EMBA program, Jen, Alison and Melinda (Jen and Melinda are going Middle East with us :)
Finally, the line had wound down enough that I could stop chatting and taking pictures and get some food! Then I got a few more shots of everyone as we ate together. This was a lot of fun since some of us have had no classes at all together for the last 6 weeks and hadn't really gotten to interact.
And finally, my table... you can see my food getting lonely between Laura and Prof. Jackson. So I snapped one more shot and went to join them.
It turned out to be a great success so I think we're going to try and do it again at least once before the year is over.
So now Creativity & Innovation is over, and my class on Building the Service-Profit Connection is the only one left. We had that on Thursday and my team in that class (Todd, Chad & I) stayed late on Tuesday for our assignment due Thursday and then stayed even later on Thursday night to try and get ready for our final presentation due in class this next Tuesday (confusing, much?). Then there's just one final paper due to finish off the semester. That isn't due until the end of next week and thankfully we can work in pairs if we want, so I'm taking advantage of that! So that's just one more week of all the crazy study sessions and we're done until January 4th. Although I'll definitely miss seeing my friends all the time, I'm looking forward to the break. I'm tired. lol.
Now I'm off to see if I can get anything done before I settle in to prepare my Sunday School lesson. Fun!
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