Student Enterprise

A student’s view: the Virtual Enterprise Conference

Since the age of 10 I wanted to an entrepreneur. It was an aspiring dream and my final destiny and ultimately a far-reaching goal of my life. After becoming a part of Cardiff University and especially Student Enterprise I could see that dream coming to reality… but the Virtual Enterprise Conference at Glyndwr University (and funded by Big Ideas Wales) was the eye-opener. On a misty drizzling afternoon, we started off as team of 4 people from Cardiff University to attend the event. Just like every travelling experience, there were changing trains, platforms, many people, novels and photographs; the difference was that there was a great learning experience ahead of us.

The conference started at 10′o clock sharp on the 24th February morning. It started off with an amazing inspiration talk by Lauren Currie (@Redjotter / blog ) about how the usage of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc can help us in becoming more enterprising. As soon as she mentioned Twitter, I was so sure to use every opportunity and thus I joined twitter. My very first day of Twitter. Throughout the conference, there were floods of thoughts going on in Twitter. Then moving on we had the famous Twitch-hiker and his life on Twitter, the inspiration here was about networking and how it can take you to place that you haven’t even thought about.

The Million Dollar homepage-the simple straight forward idea about selling pixels on a webpage could can you a billionaire, but the catch here is trying things differently and doing them. So, it’s about initiation and the game plan ahead of the idea that matters. Following that we had a thoughtful presentation by Ande Gregson who had started Media 140 as organization that looks at a deeper and a more insightful perspective of NEWS. He mainly spoke about how social media should be used for enterprising purpose, but focusing on the divergence that has to be created between social-personal life and the enterprising side of you. The small careful tips that need to be kept in mind while using social media as a tool. We also had a talk about what Glyndwr University does throughout the year to promote enterprising activities, how many opportunities and resources are available for us. It is ultimately your choice to decide of what you want to do with these available resource and opportunities.

Day 2- It started with the focus on Virtual life at the name of the conference suggests. The whole new Second Life. It started with a small briefing on second life, the registration process and few technical hassles but as we moved on it got smoother. We very virtually on the Enterprise Island created by Glyndwr University attending a conference from a person in the US. This has been only possible by the usage and advancement of technology and social media. “World has become a smaller place” in its true sense. Here we had a discussion on how we can use virtual and social media packages like Skype, twitter, Facebook effectively. A very interesting finish to the workshop by the initiating the learning into practice.

On ending note, it would be incomplete to describe the event without the team members. Each of us from a different cultural background and an altogether different academic set-up. The heating discussion during lunch hours and dinner and the journey have put a lot of insight into my perspective. This conference has been a good turning point and definetly giving me a true feel of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Every person has the quality and the capability of becoming an entrepreneur, the difference between the people who do it is that they don’t wait for a tomorrow. They have the initiation and the drive to make things happen. By Bhavika Veeramachaneni, March 2011.