Day 14, June 11, 2009

We launched our 5th project of the program, Cisco and Presidio, this morning at 8 am. The challenge for the project was led by Todd Brinegar, Chief Marketing Officer for Presidio Networked Solutions and a team of folks from both Cisco and Presidio. Our corporate guests presented our students with the challenge of developing a marketing message and plan that promoted TelePresence technology as an effective business communications tool among Millennials. After the presentation and Q&A session, our students broke out into their new teams and delve into the material until lunch at 12:00 pm.

From there, our participants quickly switched gears and presented their Nashville Chamber of Commerce projects to a panel of core faculty during their team dress rehearsals. The teams quickly synthesized their critics and finalized the presentations by 3 pm before joining our guest lecture, Professor Tim DuBois.

Professor DuBois has almost 20 years of experience in music industry. He has worked as a producer, record executive, manager, and songwriter throughout his career and has worked on five No. 1 hit songs for various country groups. Professor DuBois gave our students an overview of current challenges within the industry and helped clarify issues to help the participants as they craft their Sony project ideas.

Following Professor DuBois session, we surprised our students with Sony surveys, maps, and tickets to the CMA Music Festival! As we explained on the bus to downtown Nashville, we were going to collect some primary research for the Sony project by interviewing CMA Music Festival attendees. After obtaining the survey results, we joined the festivities and watched the concerts in LP field (where the Titans play) as well, complements of Sony. The line-up for the evening included Brooks & Dunn, Reba McEntire, Rascal Flatts and Brad Paisley. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun today and need to call it a night before presenting to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce tomorrow.

If you want to see our photo library, you may do so at http://picasaweb.google.com/VanderbiltAccelerator

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009