The 2008 Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization (CEO) National Conference was held November 6-8, 2008. One of the premier events for young entrepreneurs, this year’s conference drew over 1500 undergraduates from multiple countries. Guests attended workshops, participated in competitions, and networked with successful entrepreneurs. The conference was a great success – IEA members wrote in their post-conference evaluation reports that they “benefited greatly from networking at the conference” and were “really glad that [they] got to...absorb information from the intelligent and talented speakers.”
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE 2008 CEO NATIONAL CONFERENCE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TRACK SESSIONS!
Forty six IIT students attended this year’s conference; all of them received full or partial scholarships from the Entrepreneurship Program at IIT and The Coleman Foundation to offset registration expenses. As in previous years, the Entrepreneurship Program at IIT created and sponsored a two-day dedicated science and technology track. This track was one of the many highlights of the conference and featured speakers from companies including Grubhub.com, Hunter Douglas, Inc., and Atlas Material Testing Technology, LLC. Topics covered included such diverse areas as risk management, raising capital, bootstrapping, and intellectual property.
Many members of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Academy served as session moderators, and volunteers. IEA members Ty Caughell, Purvag Patel, Avelo Roy, and Ed Suda participated in the CEO elevator pitch competition.
Additionally, the IEA’s onsite business card creation booth was a hotbed of activity during the conference as students, faculty, and entrepreneurs either realized that they had forgotten their business cards or ran out of cards during one of the numerous networking breaks. This example of entrepreneurial thinking earned the IEA the CEO’s ‘Best Chapter Business’ award – an impressive feat given that there are over 135 active CEO chapters. This is the second award that the IEA has won in as many years; at the 2007 CEO conference, the IEA was honored with the ‘Best Chapter E-Diffusion’ award for its efforts in promoting entrepreneurship to non-business students.
2008 CEO Science and Technology Track Sessions
- Web 2.0, The Groundswell, and How You’re Gonna Make Millions*
*Millions Not Guaranteed, Dave Van de Walle, USphere, Inc. - Challenges and Risk Management, George Ribet, Hunter Douglas Metals, Inc.
- How and Why to Bootstrap Your Venture, Christopher Hill, PerkSpot
- Raising Your First Round of Capital, Matt Maloney, Grubhub.com
- Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, and Your Global Competition,
Joel Goldberg, Atlas Material Testing Technology - Life Science Entrepreneurs: Le Mans Driving on the Road to Commercialization, J. Donald Payne, Nanospectra Biosciences, Inc.
- Finding Opportunities in an Open Source World, Dr. Michael Ostrovsky, MedGadget.com
- Research, Development, Innovation, and Intellectual Property, Wendell Colson, Hunter Douglas, Inc.
2007 CEO Science and Technology Track Sessions
- Starting a Technology Venture, Neil Kane, Advanced Diamond Technologies
- Expanding a Technology Venture, Jerry Filipiak, Comarch North America
- Exiting a Technology Venture, Chuck Templeton, OpenTable
- Innovation with Web 2.0, Michael Evans, Grubhub.com and Jeffrey Kalmikoff, SkinnyCorp
- Chicago Innovation Chase, various previous participants
- Innovation in Sustainable Building Design, Dave Choy, Arup
- Using Design Strategy to Foster Innovation, Jeremy Alexis, IIT Institute of Design
- Ventures in Biotechnology, Gail Naughton, Advanced Tissue Sciences
2006 CEO Science and Technology Track Sessions
- Is Technology Entrepreneurship for You, Jon Morris, Internet Marketing Initiative
- The Open Source Economy, Matt Asay, Alfresco and Chris Gladwin, Cleversafe
- Innovation and Rapid Prototyping, Thomas Stat, IDEO
- National Inventors and Innovators Alliance, Tom Porter, NCIIA
- The Idea Validation Process and Initial Evaluation, Helen Greiner, iRobot
- How Product Design and Development Vary in Different Entrepreneurial Settings, Homaro Cantu, Cantu Designs and Denis Weil, McDonald’s
- Selling Your Idea: The Corporate World vs. the Individual Entrepreneur, Elliot Goldman, Communication Coil and Bill Shipley, Air2Access
- Where Will the Market and Innovation Drive Entrepreneurship in the Next Ten Years?, Peter Nicholson, Foresight Design Initiative and Alan Rae, Nanodynamics, Inc.