1. 11/7-8-afternoon/15:
The Lavin Retreat
a. Woke
up bright and early for the Lavin retreat! Slept on the 2.5 hr bus ride.
b. Arrived
in a remote camp with no service. Loaded stuff into dormitory, then embarked on
a crazy day of activities.
c. Moving
speech by entrepreneurship professor, a very happy fellow who extolled the joys
of passion-motivated ventures.
d. Minute-to-win-it
competition! Our team, led by the enthusiastic libertarian Josiah from
NextSeattle and succinctly named “TRUMP”, won.
e. Awesome
icebreaker—speed-questioning. The questions were very well chosen. Examples:
“What, to you, is the most beautiful language?” “What meal would you choose to
be your last if you were on death row?”
f. Snacks.
g. Pitch
competition, health-themed. I was put on a team with the infamous Michael
Petrochuck, who is extroverted and self-promotional beyond even the social
limits stretched by Lavin members, and who, at a recent StartupUW event, gave
the now famous “Tinder for Fighting” pitch. I anticipated, and endured, a lot
of conflict, as the Petrochuck supported a pitch based entirely on moonshot
data analysis tech that would use an iPhone extension camera and spectroscopy
to return, in real time, a nutritional analysis of an arbitrary plate of food.
Eventually, a more sober strategy prevailed; a simple app to sell to general
practitioners, dentists, etc. that would notify patients who signed up, when a
cancellation occurred. Better cancellation filling, I later learned, could save
a ridiculous amount of money in the medical industry at large. Joan, you’ll
have to let me know what you think—is this really a problem? What is the
current state of the art for filling cancellations?
h. We
managed to put together a decent pitch at the last minute, winning third place
and dinner with the entrepreneur who founded CoinStar and now runs a venture
group J J
i. After
the pitch competition, we did another get-to-know-everybody event that I
thought was ingenious. When we signed up for the retreat, we all entered a fun
fact about ourselves. The advisors made a Bingo sheet out of the fun facts and
had us go around filling out the Bingo sheet with signatures of people who
entered the fun facts. I know so many names now—it’s crazy.
j. Then we had a fire, some good conversation,
made s’mores.
k. And
then we watched a movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley. It was fun,
if a bit disjointed. While watching the crazy antics of Gates and Jobs, I
happened to glance to my right at the other Lavin students, and thought, these
are the insane shmids who might just try stuff like this!
l. Went
to bed late and got only 6.5 hours of sleep. Again L.
m. Woke
up, ate delicious breakfast, took short hike. Actually got a bunch of people to
play Ninja Tag. You know what my lifetime success rate at the NT question is?
Not high. But this group, they jumped right in J
n. I’m
writing this on the bus right now, 20min away from the UW, ready for a day of
hw and grading. LEEROY…
o.
Best of luck and life to y’all!
In regard to the cancellation issue, it is a real problem. You can divide the problem into three categories: office staff, practitioner, and patient. It is a laborious and time consuming task for office staff to call patients to notify them that there is a cancellation. You can imagine the problems: some individuals are: not available to take the call, some cannot make the appointment, and others are delighted to take the appointment. From the practitioner view the issue is the half-hour void in the schedule. It is a win for the patient who wishes to be seen earlier than the planned appointment. Your friend has a great idea, every nurse practitioner, physician, dentist, psychologist, etc. will gain from increased efficiency in scheduling and filling cancellation vacancies. Always fun to hear what you are doing.
ReplyDeleteRight! So our uninformed guess corresponds to your experience :) Awesome! Hoping to see you fellows on the way to Thanksgiving!
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