We did it. A summer camp for one day, 5 challenges, six students competed in the craziest, widlest, most fun business challenges. In the end we had to crown one winning team.

What a day. The six students who participated should be given a huge thank you. These guys battled, never gave up, never hesitated, and always with a positive attitude. Three of the six are going to post secondary institutions, University of Saskatchewan, University of British Columbia and even one star athlete going to Oregon State. That’s pretty amazing if you think about who will be a part of the Big Idea Alumni some day!

A huge thank you to Jordan Mcfarlen. This guy is a thinker and easily one of the best teachers I’ve ever come across(university included). Big Idea Camp was Jordan and my baby, it’ll be bigger and better next year but we never would have got this far without Mr. Mcfarlen. Just one of those examples of life is what you make it. As a teacher it’s never about just the way you are in your classroom, it has everything to do with all that you do outside the classroom.
Life’s about going above and beyond, about following your own big idea.

Friday 9am start time
The teams were picked, t-shirts and notebooks were distributed, and they had 4 minutes to come up with a team name and team song.

It was Blawesome (team song: everything is awesome) vs Sloths in Suits (team song: Waka Waka)

We started the day off with “3 in 30”. You had to introduce yourself by telling the group 3 things about yourself for 30 seconds per thing. It’s harder than it seems! The instructors had to do it too. It’s a great intro of you want to relax a group of people and learn some interesting facts about them.

Next was the Instagram Mustache challenge. Each team had to take a picture with a mustache in it and the team with the most likes, comments and shares (we developed a formula) by the end of the day would win.

Our next Challenge was The Curious Case of Carmichael Outreach with a special judge from Carmichael Outreach. They were given a page writeup about Carmichael and a challenge “make the Friday cleanup more appealing to businesses”.
They had half an hour to come up with a 3 minute presentation to the Communicaitons VP of Carmichael.

Just like a small business they went to different coffee shops in the area to work.
The presentations were great! We specifically told them “don’t make it academic” make it fun and inspiring. Tyler Gray from Carmichael was impressed, and we got one idea that may actually happen… Look out for “trash art” it’s all the rage right now!

The last challenge before lunch was Negotiation 101: the sticker trade challenge. They were given 4 stickers and 25 minutes to trade for the most valuable something. They ran all over the Cathedral area, in and out of businesses and got to talk to business owners and shop keepers alike trying to trade them for their stickers.

This one always gets an interesting response. I first did this challenge myself in downtown Victoria during a conference at the University of Victoria, UVic Leadership. We had to sell a UVic sticker, it wasn’t easy but dammit did we have fun!

For lunch we didn’t just want to eat, that’s boring and not really Big Idea Camp style. So we held a lunch challenge. Each team was given $30 and you had to make the best three course lunch.

Big Idea Camp Lunch

One team ran off to Safeway the other team to Victoria Park to the food trucks. It was a tight race but the food truck burger and fries ended up the winner. Special shout out to Mr. Spuds Poutinery who gave the students extra fries!

We barely had finished lunch when a Ford-F150 and GMC Sierra pulled up to take us to the final challenge. The Capital Auto Mall Mystery.

It wasn’t really a mystery, the challenge was to create and present the story board for a minute long YouTube video promoting their truck of choice. They learned about the two different brands Ford and GMC, got a tour of the brand new facility including the picture studio that has a turntable for vehicles, yeah it’s pretty cool.
They had 20 minutes to come up with the idea and then presented it to the marketing manager and a couple others in their marketing department.
The presentations were amazing! The only negative feedback we got was the students just wanted to actually create the commercials. Next year guys, next year.

We headed back to the Strategy Lab office to tally the points and declare a world champion. By a mere 10,000 points team Blawesome won.