Out of Gas...

At some point in Accelerator, everyone just simply "hits the wall..." The adrenaline and coffee wear off. We captured this "quiet moment" with Brad Cayer. Brad is one of our 10 Coaches that have provided help and guidance for our students throughout the program.

Brad and I were here till after midnight last PM. He's done an amazing job coaching our teams on the great research library here at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt. This particular "cat nap" was only about 10 minutes.

I've captured about 20 shots like this so far. My goal will be to get a "..zzzzz...." picture of each participant by the end of the program. It's sort of a "right of passage" of the program.

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 12: June 9, 2009

We opened our doors at 7:00 am this morning for breakfast and promptly jumped into an Operations studio with Professor Nancy Lee Hyer. Professor Hyer’s session focused on teaching our participants how to increase productivity of operational systems and involved a simulation to demonstrate this point.

Throughout the morning, our Accelerator participants had their professional photos done by Gomez Photography. These will be used as our student participants become involved in interviews with our partner companies.

After her session, our students finished any last minute details on the Arrington Vineyards project and presentations started at 1:00 pm and all of the presentations were fantastic. 5 of the 8 teams had a first place vote! Therefore, it was extremely difficult for our Arrington judges to determine which team idea was the best because all of their ideas were so strong and applicable to the company.

After reminding our judges that we could not have a five-way tie for first, Arrington awarded Team 3 first place honors with Teams 1 and 7 coming in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Team 3’s members consisted of Nick Cromydas, Mary Beth Gribble, Geoff Miller, Melinda Moyo, Raul Perez-Gurdian, Rachel Sullivan, and Cat Wearn. 2nd Place in the presentations was awarded to Team 1. Team 7 was awarded 3rd Place.

In addition to judging our teams on the best overall idea and presentation, the core faculty and library coach judge the teams on their storyboards and quality of their research. In the 2nd round of competition, the winning Storyboard was awarded to Team 1. Members include: Priscila Arellano, Alex Dowd, Katie Grumbles, Donny McCunniff, Eppa Rixey, Will Parker Roe, Riley Strong, Fark Tari, and Patrick Widen. Team 3 was awarded 2nd Place for their Storyboard and Team 8 was awarded 3rd Place for their Storyboard.

In the Research Category, the best research was awarded to Team 2. Members include: Austin Campbell, Christina Chen, Jenny Duty, Jamie Kaplan, Stacie Pawlicki, Meaghan Rymer, Stephanos Stroop and Jens von der Linden. 2nd Place was awarded to Team 8. Team 7 was awarded 3rd Place in Research.

Our teams also determined that their MVPs for the Arrington Vineyards project. MVP’s for this 2nd Round of Competition for Arrington Vineyards were: Eppa Rixey, Jamie Kaplan, Rachel Sullivan, Fred Tang, Adrian Rossi-Mastracci, Mallory Mahan, Ali Thompson, Hewsan Pang, and Abi Stavrand.

Teams are also graded on their ability to “predict” which recommendations the client (Arrington Vineyards in this case) would find most appealing (after seeing all the presentations). The teams that won this aspect of the competition were: 1st Place: Team 2 and Team 7 Tied, 2nd Place: Team 5.

After our Arrington Vineyards judges left thrilled with the final product, Professor Kimberly Pace led the faculty again in helping our students improve their presentation skills and Professor Brian Griffith assisted our teams in addressing their team dynamics and learning how to become more effective as a team. After a quick break for dinner, our teams continued their work on the Nashville Chamber of Commerce project. We will present the project on Friday and know that our teams will continue to “wow” our clients with their projects.

Tomorrow we launch a new project with Sony Music!

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 11: June 8, 2009

Happy Monday everyone! Breakfast began at 7:00 am this morning and our opening studio session on Strategy Tools was led by Professor Furse. These tools will help our Accelerator teams with their projects for Sony Music and Cisco – Presidio.

Tomorrow we will be presenting our Arrington Vineyards projects and our teams were furiously working on their handouts, presentations, bibliographies, and story boards throughout the day. After spending the rest of the morning working on Arrington, we broke for lunch at 12:00 pm. While a couple of teams had finished their materials in time to have a relaxing lunch, the majority of the program continued to work formulate their ideas on how to create a multi-functional space plan for the winery to use to accommodate larger corporate and social groups.

For a change of pace after lunch, we broke up the groups up into two sections. Teams 1 – 4 joined Professor Michael Lapre for his now famous “Beer Game.” The “Beer Game” is an operations / process flow simulation that aimed to teach students the importance of communicating between different sectors of the process line effectively. While Teams 1 – 4 worked with Professor Lapre, Teams 5 – 8 spent two hours with me as I explained my business philosophy and how I navigated my life from by birthplace in Booneville, MS to where I am today. At 3 pm, the two sections switched and Teams 5 – 8 joined Professor Lapre, while Teams 1 – 4 joined me.

Dinner was served at 6:00 pm and we started Arrington Vineyards team dress rehearsals promptly at 6:30 pm. Once again, each team had 10 minutes to present our core faculty with their expansion idea for the winery. Afterwards, our core faculty provided the team with feedback on how to improve their presentation before they present their ideas to Arrington Vineyard’s judging panel. All of the presentations looked great tonight and I can’t wait to see how our young men and women perform tomorrow afternoon (especially as some of our students chose to stay until 1 am last night to continue to perfect their project!).

Hopefully we will all get a little more sleep 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

What Have We Consumed Thus Far?

In running a program like this, the conversations always turn to "so how much does a crowd like this consume?" For those of you following the story, I thought I'd share some fun facts with you.

Thus Far, We Have Consumed:

2,660 Meals (about 1,064,000 Calories)
3,600 Bottles of Water
2,304 Cans of Soda
36 Gallons of Juice
18 Gallons of Milk
6,542 Cups of coffee
1,492 Bags of Chips, Candy Bars, Snacks
27lbs of Hot Tamales, Skittles, Gold Fish, M&M’s


Calorie Consumption in the First 10 Days:

Juice & Milk: 86,800 Calories
Soda: 133,920 Calories
Snack Consumption: 658,732 Calories
Meals: 1,064,000 Calories

Total Calories: Approaching 2,000,000 Calories Consumed.

Favorite Snacks:
Fruit Snacks, Hot Tamales, Gold Fish, Skittles and Peanut M&M's.

Favorite Beverage:
Coke Zero, Coffee and Red Bull

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 10: June 7, 2009

For the first time in over a week, our students got to sleep in and relax! We started our day at 12:00 pm with a traditional southern Sunday lunch – Fried Chicken, potatoes, green beans and banana pudding.

At 1:00 PM, Professor Dave Owens taught our young men and women about innovation in the first studio of the day. We have two presentations during the upcoming week – so our teams will be using the content of his studio to prepare for both their work for Arrington Vineyards and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce.

After the teaching studio, the teams spent the next couple of hours in team breakout mode working on their Nashville Chamber of Commerce project. Before taking a break for dinner, the teams had their final session with Professor David Franklin on entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.

After dinner, our participants finalized their projects for Arrington Vineyards – working on Storyboards, Bibliographies and PowerPoint presentations. We shut down the building just after 9 pm.

We have a huge week ahead of us with two project launches (Sony Music Entertainment and Presidio / Cisco), two project presentations (Arrington Vineyards and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce), and another Business Breakfast Friday.

Personally, I hope the students had a relaxing night off last PM and this AM - because we are about to “Accelerate” into high gear!

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 9: Talent Show

After the immense success of last year’s first talent night, we decided to bring the event back this year and give our participants a chance to relax and get to know each other in a non-business environment. With over 20 student acts, almost every student participated in one of the funniest two hours event in Accelerator history.

Eric Bilbrey, one of our coaches, kicked off the evening with a rewritten patter song that named every participant, coach, and staff member in the program and followed that up with a country classic. During the course of the show, we also had comedic acts from Vince Nord, Fark Tari, and Eppa Rixey. As well as vocal stylings by CoCo Chalfant, one of our staff members, and spoof songs about the program written and performed by Thomas Bernstein, Brad Cayer, AJ Axelrod, Ethan Dunham, and Greg Harvey (aka “The Non-Coaches”).

The night really started to get going when Westley Taylor performed a snapping feat (difficult to explain but memorizing to watch) and came in third play overall! Rachel Sullivan wowed and surprised us all with a belly dancing number. Charlie Boyd and Geoff Miller serenaded one of our coaches, Macee Bumpus, with the classic Righteous Brothers hit “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling”. In another high light of the night, Prisiclla Arellano and Raul Perez-Gurdian came in second with their steamy Salsa routine. Fred Tang made us laugh by making farting noises with his stomach and our Communications Professor, John English, got the crowded clapping and on their feet by singing and playing the harmonica to a Ray Charles classic. The night was Tommy Crespo and Erin Steigerwald’s though. The duet played a medley current and past hits with Tommy on Bassoon and Erin on the keyboard and was the overall winner of the night.

In addition to our individual acts, we had a team competition as well with the prize being an extra hour of sleep during the upcoming week and our students went all out. Team 5 started up the night with girls dancing to “Macho Men”, dressed in basketball shorts, t-shirts, and ties and the guys dancing to “Pretty Woman” wearing phenomenal dresses. I have to give Westley Taylor, Tanner Rice, David Jogwe, and Ryan Stutler particular praise for wearing the dresses, lipstick, and heels so well. Team 3 serenaded our Marketing Professor, Cherrie Clark, and got her dancing with a performance of Enrique Iglesias’s “Hero”. In honor of their newly-wed coach, Jeff Freude, Team 6 chanced the lyrics of “Jesse’s Girl” and sang what will surely be an instant hit, “Jeffrey’s Girl” while Team 1 went the more traditional route by singing another classic song, Bonne Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Team 7 got creative and re-enacted Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” with flash lights. While all of the team acts were amazing, Team 2 was the big winner of the night with their comedic skit spoofing all of the core faculty and professors.

We knew our participants are extremely bright, dynamic, and driven; however, we were all taken aback by their creativity and wide range of talents. It was an incredibly fun night filled with some priceless moments and a great way for everyone to learn more about each other. A special thanks to all of our participants who were brave enough to take our stage, Eric Bilbrey and Eppa Rixey for loaning us their personal sound equipment, our fantastic judges, and Erin Anderson and CoCo Chalfant for coordinating the evening’s event.

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 8: June 5, 2009

Today was a huge day for our students in our very busy program. Our Accelerator participants started at 7:00 am this morning and were joined by executives from 41 companies at the first Business Breakfast Social of the program. Participating companies this year included Bernard Health, Credence Health, Habitat for Humanity, Nashville Business Journal, Now Playing Nashville!, Inception Captial Advisors, US Cyrogenics, Caterpillar Financial, Zumi Sushi, and many more.

After successfully navigating their first networking event, we proceeded to Averbuch auditorium at 9:00 am to present the projects for Video Gaming Technology (VGT). 4 representatives from VGT joined us including their CEO Jon Yarbrough and Doug Edwards, Chief HR Officer. The teams presented their ideas in order they selected based upon the time they completed their “deliverables” for VGT. Each team had 10 minutes to make their presentation and 5 minutes for Q&A with their clients. Following the presentations, the teams left the auditorium and ranked the presentations themselves and voted on their most valuable player (MVP) for the project while the VGT representations studied the teams’ Storyboards and Handouts and ranked the teams from best to worst in their project designs and presentations.

Overall, VGT was thrilled with our exceptional students and their ideas and found it incredibly difficult to choose a winning presentation. Upon finalizing their decision, all of the Accelerator participants came back into Averbusch and VGT presented their decision. Starting with 8th place and moving to 1st, VGT highlighted the parts of each presentation they enjoyed and provided the student with feedback on areas that they could improve.

While all of the presentations were strong, Team OneShot (Team 1) came away with the win in 1st round of competition. Team members include: Priscilla Arellano, Alex Dowd, Kate Grumbles, Donny McCunniff, Eppa Rixey, Will Parker Roe, Riley Strong, Fark Tari, and Patrick Widen. VGT gave each of Team OneShot’s members a glass slot machine styled trophy and $50 gift card. Team 7 and Team 3 came in second and third place respectively.

The “Best Research” recognition went to Team 4. Team members include: Alexandra Brown, Christopher Cooper, Ryan Foley, Courtney LeBow, Nicole Quinn, Mark Shesser, Erin Steigerwald and Fred Tang. Team 2 and Team 5 came in second and third place respectively.

The “Best Storyboard” recognition went to Team 2. Team members include: Austin Campbell, Christina Chen, Jennifer Duty, James Kaplan, Stacie Pawlicki, Meaghan Rymer, Stephanos Stroop, and Jens von der Linden. Team 3 and Team 7 came in second and third place respectively.

Each team also selected MVPs (Most Valuable Players). MVPs for this first round of competition: Priscilla Arellano, Austin Campbell, Nick Cromydas, Catherine Wearn, Erin Steigerwald, Ryan Stutler, Tyler Hagen, John Zic, Lyle Holmes and Vince Nord.

Following the award ceremony, Kimberly Pace led the faculty in evaluating the presentation skills of each team before breaking for lunch (yes, they did all of this before 12:30).

After lunch, the students attended Steve Hoeffler’s marketing lecture. Mr. Hoeffler introduced the students to a couple of the extremely successful marketing campaigns (Burger King, Dove, and BMW specifically) and how to use the internet as an effective marketing tool. Students then had their first team feedback session where they focused on identifying the successes and failures of their first project and how they could improve for their next 6 projects. Our participants spent the rest of the day working on the Arrington Vineyards project we will present next week and we closed up the day around 9 pm.

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 7: June 4, 2009

We kicked off the day at 7:00 AM with breakfast in the Owen lobby with the coach’s introduction to the Business Breakfast. This was followed by Day 3 (the Final Day) of Froebonomics - Prof. Luke Froeb and his famous “Rational Actor” paradigm. Next, Prof Steve Hoeffler continued his work with our teams on marketing and branding strategies.

Following these AM Studios, we took a short break and then moved to our team rooms to work on the Chamber of Commerce project. Our Accelerator teams are working on a campaign to brand Nashville as an entrepreneurial city. This team session continued through lunch.

At 1:00 PM, David Furse led a studio on Strategic Tools in problem solving (Porter’s 5 Forces, etc). This was followed by a studio with Kimberly Pace on Personal Brand. Our teams did their final work on elevator pitches in preparation for the Business Breakfast tomorrow AM.
After a short break at 3:45, our teams moved back into the team rooms to continue their work on the Arrington Vineyard project.

Following dinner, we began dress rehearsals for the Video Gaming Project. The teams were so impressive in this first round of presentations – and I know that with a bit more work, they will be really amazing by the morning...

Our laundry / dry cleaning came back today. The photo above gives you a bit of insight to the volume of dry cleaning and laundry for the first few days.

We ended the work day very late (about 11 PM) – a bit bleary eyed, but filled with excitement for Business Breakfast and the first presentations of Accelerator to Video Gaming Technology. I can hardly wait!

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009

Day 7: More News Stories on Accelerator 2009

We received some wonderful press regarding our project with the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and a working plan to brand the city of Nashville as an Entrepreneurial Center. We were also on the evening news with the local NBC Affiliate - Channel 4. Our teams are really looking forward to working with the city of Nashville on this project. The link the newspaper article is below:

Nashville enlists students in Vanderbilt program to brand cityThe Tennessean - Nashville,TN,USABy Naomi Snyder • THE TENNESSEAN • June 2, 2009 The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce is working on a new marketing or "brand campaign" to get people to ...See all stories on this topic

Day 6: Local Press in Nashville's Tennessean

We received some nice press coverage on our visit to Arrington Vineyards. Here’s the Arrington Vineyards story link in today’s paper:

The Tennessean: Brooks turns to grad students to plan for winery expansion
Country music singer and entrepreneur Kix Brooks of Brooks and Dunn is turning to students from the Vanderbilt Accelerator Summer Business Institute to create a physical space plan and operating plan for Arrington Vineyards.

Day 6: June 3, 2009

We kicked off the day at 7:00 AM with breakfast in the Owen lobby. This was followed by Day 2 of Froebonomics - Prof. Luke Froeb and his famous “Rational Actor” paradigm. Next, Prof Steve Hoeffler continued his work with our teams on marketing. Today he focused on branding and ads that work vs. those that do not – we saw several examples of the types of marketing that really connect with the audience.

Following these AM Studios, we took a short break and then returned to Averbuch Auditorium for a preview session to our real estate and space development project. Our guest was Mr. Thom Meek, a noted local architect (famous for his work on the Delta at Opryland, the Wildhorse Saloon, and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center). He lead our teams through a discussion of what to look for in the site plan and how to think about the planning and development of a specific site from an architect’s point of view.

Following a quick boxed lunch, we boarded the charter buses at 12:30 PM for the drive to Arrington Vineyards. Arrington is about a 40 minute drive, located off the 840 loop on the south side of Nashville. We arrived at Arrington Vineyards and was greeted by Kixx Brooks & John Russell (Owners), Christel Foley (Business Manager) and Ryan Cochran (General Manager).
We had a 2 hour briefing with the owners (Kixx Brooks of Brooks & Dunn led the discussion) – outlining their vision for the expansion of the Winery & Vineyard. Following the overview, the Accelerator teams had a tour of the wine production process led by the Ms. Christel Foley, Business Manager for the Winery. Mr. Brooks stayed around all afternoon to answer questions. We also had the opportunity to walk the property to gain a full perspective of the space.

At 4:30, we head back toward Owen for dinner and to complete break-out sessions to launch this project. After dinner, our teams spent the evening clarifying the data from the launch and gathering the additional research required for this great project.

We ended the work day at 10:00 PM – the energy in the building was just off the charts. Tomorrow will be another amazing day!

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

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009