I startled myself this afternoon.  I realized as I was pulling into my parent’s driveway that I hadn’t listened to the radio on the entire ride home from the YES Conference.  The whole drive I simply thought about what I had just experienced.

I went on the YES Conference Facebook group page last night to see what type of activity and discussion there was about the event.  To my surprise there was only 23 people in the group, and a mere 4 comments on the wall.  I then started doing Twitter searches with every combination of search words imaginable to see if people were having any discussion about the event on Twitter.  Of course I found nothing again.

So I arrive at the conference today with no idea what to expect.  Walking in I realize there were only around 100 people there, 98% of which are high school students.  This event was “advertised” for 12-25 year old aspiring entrepreneurs, and only 2% were 19 or older.  On top of that, there were only 2 students from Syracuse University actually attending the event, and Syracuse University was the one putting on the conference in the first place.  That’s not to say there weren’t Students from the Whitman School of Management helping, but I found it very odd that during the keynote speaker these students who are getting “Entrepreneurship” degrees (whatever the hell that even means) weren’t even interested to hear the story of a successful entrepreneur and simply hung out in the common area.

They kicked off the conference by showing Shark Tank (if you like Shark Tank, and I really hope you don’t, please watch This Week in Startups instead because Shark Tank is reality TV and isn’t how things work) and during intermissions they had a fantastic DJ blasting beats forcing you to scream during every conversation which made networking extra easy.

Very disappointing conference, with little to show of what comes out of the EEE program at Syracuse University.  As I’ve heard many people mention, there are only 2 companies in the last 9 years that are even doing anything right now who came out of the Universities Entrepreneur program.  Not the best track record considering how many come out of the program in the first place.  However, there was some good that came out of the day.  I had the pleasure of meeting some of the smartest young guys who are very motivated and I have no doubt are going to kill it one day.  I wish I knew as much as these guys do now back when I was in high school.  It’s just very unfortunate that they will most likely be successful anywhere but Syracuse.  It’s just lost opportunities like these that make Syracuse the dying city it is.