Fanshawe students finalists in international competition
Two Fanshawe marketing management
students will be making
their way to Slovenia where they'll
be among other international competitors
in the Challenge:Future
finals.
Out of 951 business schools and 1,669 students, Eryk Gabriel and Jeff Palmer beat out other notable schools like Stanford and Johns Hopkins and will be competing against the University of Singapore and University of Bucharest at the finals on May 14 to 18.
The Challenge:Future competition is a youth think tank that encourages students to develop creative ideas and solutions to the proposed challenges.
Gabriel and Palmer, with their Glamorgan University partner, Jake Jones, developed a web solution, linkativity.ca, as part of the IdeeaLab Challenge. This particular challenge asked contestants to develop an online virtual “marketplace” where corporations, government groups, and more, could collaborate with students.
With linkativity.ca, the students thought about how to make this idea of an online community more engaging. To do so, they established a “level up” system, much like video games. Businesses, for example, could pose a challenge on the site — such as “how do we minimize our sales staff while still having the same results?” — while tagging things like “multiculturalism” or “team-building.”
Students who are part of the site can participate in said challenges, increasing their skill level in certain areas.
“It's taking resumes from 2D to 3D, making them tangible,” said Palmer, adding that it gives more support to one's “resume's claims.”
It's also a way for companies to get feedback on products or future plans, helping them to “gain goodwill” with consumers, said Palmer.
The project started with Gabriel being selected by his instructor, Rhonda Payne, to participate in Challenge:Future, and he brought Palmer along as his teammate. This year it is more of a pilot project, and next year it will likely be open to the entire class, said Gabriel.
The boys are competing for a prize of $27,000 (Cdn.) when they head to Slovenia and present their business plan to a panel of judges — featuring some big names like Coca Cola and Microsoft.
In order to get to this point, they had their project voted on — but for the finals, the votes only count for a small portion of the overall mark.
To check out their project, visit http://challengefuture.org. Their project is Glamorgan-Fanshawe.
Out of 951 business schools and 1,669 students, Eryk Gabriel and Jeff Palmer beat out other notable schools like Stanford and Johns Hopkins and will be competing against the University of Singapore and University of Bucharest at the finals on May 14 to 18.
The Challenge:Future competition is a youth think tank that encourages students to develop creative ideas and solutions to the proposed challenges.
Gabriel and Palmer, with their Glamorgan University partner, Jake Jones, developed a web solution, linkativity.ca, as part of the IdeeaLab Challenge. This particular challenge asked contestants to develop an online virtual “marketplace” where corporations, government groups, and more, could collaborate with students.
With linkativity.ca, the students thought about how to make this idea of an online community more engaging. To do so, they established a “level up” system, much like video games. Businesses, for example, could pose a challenge on the site — such as “how do we minimize our sales staff while still having the same results?” — while tagging things like “multiculturalism” or “team-building.”
Students who are part of the site can participate in said challenges, increasing their skill level in certain areas.
“It's taking resumes from 2D to 3D, making them tangible,” said Palmer, adding that it gives more support to one's “resume's claims.”
It's also a way for companies to get feedback on products or future plans, helping them to “gain goodwill” with consumers, said Palmer.
The project started with Gabriel being selected by his instructor, Rhonda Payne, to participate in Challenge:Future, and he brought Palmer along as his teammate. This year it is more of a pilot project, and next year it will likely be open to the entire class, said Gabriel.
The boys are competing for a prize of $27,000 (Cdn.) when they head to Slovenia and present their business plan to a panel of judges — featuring some big names like Coca Cola and Microsoft.
In order to get to this point, they had their project voted on — but for the finals, the votes only count for a small portion of the overall mark.
To check out their project, visit http://challengefuture.org. Their project is Glamorgan-Fanshawe.
