USF Professional Development Day

So on Friday, USF MBA students had a great day of presentations, panels, and discussions at the downtown Westin.  I arrived too late to hear the first presenter, but heard it was a great presentation.  I mostly heard that during our second presentation, because she was having a bit of difficulty grabbing our attention.  To be fair, we were all on twitter - #usfprofdev if you want to read more.  But, as I heard before, these days you have to assume your audience is otherwise engaged.  If they aren't, then they hide it well.  

Anyway - returning to the day - the 3rd and 4th speaker were fantastic.  

Mitch, formerly of VMWare, talked about the importance of start ups and working with them.  Working at one as an un-paid intern - I definitely understand the risk.  In fact, I think most interns understand this.  We love the company, the energy and the fact that we can take on so much responsibility in such a little time - but we also understand that this usually leads to little return.  Oh well, thus the life of a student.  I notice the same with non-profits.  And also, I can imagine some greener business models are met with either resistance (therefore not much revenue and a lot of risk) or are met with open arms at first until they need money.  Green is usually more expensive up front - but saves over time, people don't seem to like that.    

Moving on to our next speaker - economist, Jim Shaw.  He too has a hash tag #jimshaw.  One of our favorite professors.  He mentioned that a recession is like a cleanse.  I interpret this as the fact that possibly bailing some of the companies are not helping the cleanse, that the reason some industries drop is because they aren't needed anymore - so why are we holding on to the old way of life.  This reminded me of natural resources - we are so dependent on these resources, so we cling to them as they are being rapidly depleted.  So we need alternatives.  Of course, as my professor says, "If you get the business card of somebody when you need them, it's already too late"  So now that we are thinking about alternatives - it's too late.  (Of course, they were talking about this back in the 70s, but now it's much worse of course)  We need to make sure to integrate alternatives now - so that when the big cleanse comes, society as a whole and the economy doesn't get hit as hard is could.   Jim Shaw believes that the time is coming for that.  And it's already too late.  I agree we are in a crisis and it will only get worse -   the economy will collapse but so will society as we know it.  These alternatives to our current way of life better be ready - or  ready to grow and fill in the gaping hole the depletion of resources will leave.