Yesterday I made the trip from Pittsburgh to Syracuse to attend the Syracuse University iSchool’s SXSW Report (and to see some family, but that doesn’t make it sound as cool).  I really had no idea who these students were or why they were doing this presentation nearly a week after SXSW but I figured I’d give it a shot.  I was greeted by cool people and beer so I knew it wasn’t going to be a complete bust.  Come to find out, the SU iSchool actually paid for the entire trip for these students because they recognized how important the event was.  That completely blew me away, an educational institution that realized how important and relevant SXSW was for its students that it sponsored them 100%.

Kate Holloway (@KatiePunkin), Shay Colson (@shaycolson), and Andrew Farah (@andrewfarah) did a great job sharing their experiences of SXSW.  As an entrepreneur I was happy to hear them say that they recognized how many small companies that were there that were simply building and hustling as opposed to going after large amounts of investment to start their venture.  They said that seemed to be the theme with most of the companies, a lot of them were bootstrapped or had received a very small amount of funding to start up.  I think a lot of people are finally realizing how cheap it is to start a business and aren’t writing huge business plans, instead choosing to get their hands dirty and build it themselves.  They also confirmed that Mark Cuban is indeed an asshole all the time, not just at Mavericks games and on his blog.

It was really great meeting the people from the iVenutre Upstate Forum, I think there is a great thing going on there and I hope to see a lot more people start to contribute to the discussions.  I must say my heart has officially moved to Pittsburgh but I like to do anything I can to help create opportunities like the one I have been given from Alphalab in Syracuse, and last night proved that the right things are being done for that to happen.

Again, it was great meeting everyone last night and thank you for opening the event up to the public.  I really enjoyed myself.

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.

Wow, this is some awesome viral marketing.  A video response to the “Jizz In My Pants” song by The Lonely Island called “Puke In My Mouth.”  This is advertising a fake engagement ring that ladies can wear in order to keep creepers away.  This is going after an incredibly small market so making a video like this is almost necessary to make some noise and get the word out about a product. I think traditional advertising is worthless when there is such a small market for your product. I guarantee this video will have over one million views by the end of May.  These people probably got a better response than paying for ad space somewhere, and it cost them nothing. Well done.