Zombies

I decided to take a break from plotting an elaborate revenge fantasy against my cable provider to post another update of the goings on around here.

Last night we had our awards ceremony for the cohort films. So the class is divided into 8 groups called cohorts, and each one makes a film about the school in some way, and they get judged. We got to see the five finalists for best film last night before the award was announced, and I was amazed at the high quality across the board. Apparently, we’ve got many more creatively talented people than I would’ve guessed for a school with a number-cruncher reputation.

They were all really good, it’s too bad only one could win.

But I’m glad that ours did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QNE3qxAsoA

That’s a link to our film, winner of the 2007 Golden Gargoyle for Best Film (also winning for Best Actor and Best Dance Sequence). And since the Writers’ Strike has killed a lot of good new television, you probably need something cool to watch anyway.

If you focused really really hard, you might be able to see me in a very bit part. But you probably won’t, and that’s fine by me. I focused most of my time and energy on collaborating with the directors to create the story. Without spoiling the surprise for those who haven’t seen it, it’s a zombie movie, and it’s pretty darn awesome.

Of course there’s been other stuff going on here apart from movie-making. I competed in another case competition yesterday morning, and continued my tradition of playing the role of bridesmaid (without the dress).

So in my first case competition, the judges didn’t select us to advance to the finals, but told us they really liked what we did and that we were the last team eliminated.

I hoped this one would go better, and was looking forward to it because it was asking us to create a growth strategy for a real company, and required us to actually present it to a panel of real consultants. The last competition didn’t require a presentation.

So our team plotted our strategy, made the slides, and presented yesterday morning. And like last time, we didn’t get selected as one of the three finalists. But I talked to two of the four judges from our presentation, and they both had identical things to say;

‘We thought your presentation was fantastic’

‘You were really creative and insightful’

‘You explained things in a phased approach which clients like’

‘You actually addressed issues that most of the groups largely ignored’

‘If you had put any kind of quantitative numbers in at all as for projections, we would’ve put you through’

Our group didn’t project revenues or costs of our strategies, mainly because we had no information to base it on. Our thought process (and our critical mistake) was that it would be better to keep it qualitative as opposed to making a bunch of crazy assumptions for numbers.
So that was a little disappointing, but it was still a really good experience and a good opportunity to actually present something.

Now that’s it’s over, I actually have some time to do some other stuff, you know, like reading for classes.