BENTONVILLE -- The Scott Family Amazeum may create an event geared toward teens based on ideas presented by four high school students who won the annual Biz+Ed Student Competition on Tuesday.
The Decatur High School team of juniors Ryan Shaffer, Shaney Lee, Bracy Owens and Jafett Puga won the competition hosted by the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce and the NWA Tech Council. Decatur was one of seven teams from four high schools participating.
Competition awards
The winning team received $1,000 to split among members, and the faculty sponsor received $500. Tata Consultancy Services sponsored the second annual Biz+Ed Student Competition, hosted by the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce and the NWA Tech Council.
Source: Staff report
Students were assigned problems Tuesday morning Northwest Arkansas organizations and businesses face. Teams had about three hours to come up with solutions, with guidance from educational and business leaders, before presenting the solutions to a panel of four judges in the afternoon. The event was at the Northwest Arkansas Community College's Shewmaker Center for Global Business Development.
The Decatur team was asked to help the Amazeum better engage teens because most of its exhibits and programming are geared to children 12 and younger or adults 21 and older.
The students suggested an event called Amazeum After Dark from 8 to 11 p.m. one night in July.
The students researched the hours and month to best fit the event, explaining the hours of operation from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. are when teens are in school. Their research also found the Amazeum had the highest amount of Google searches in July.
They suggested the event include two activities -- light painting and vocal visualizing.
"They did a really good job at looking at it from a lot of different perspectives," said Dana Engelbert, marketing manager for Amazeum. Engelbert met with students in the morning and answered questions from them via email throughout the day.
"They asked a lot of questions about what we could possibly implement, what was realistic, and came up with a solution that we can try out," Engelbert said.
The team won because of its ability to explain the problem, the research done to find the best time and the suggestion of having the Amazeum website updated to include more families in the images rather than just children, said Steven Fulfer, one of the judges. Fulfer is an assistant director of technology at Rockfish.
"Above all, we thought this was a solution that could most likely be implemented," he said.
The Decatur students said they learned a lot, especially about time management and organizing ideas into a presentable form.
They said they were excited and in disbelief about winning.
"I heard everyone else's, and I was like, man they came up with pretty decent ideas. They're really good," Lee said.
Avad3, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Mercy Medical Center, Skosay, Walmartvendor.com and Wright, Lindsey & Jennings were the other organizations submitting problems for the teams.
Participating high schools included Decatur, Greenland, Bentonville and Rogers High School. Greenland and Bentonville had two teams participate. There were 32 students in all.
Haley Cleous with Startup Junkie instructed students about how to use the lean canvas methodology to create solutions. Lean canvas uses nine elements, including the problem, customer segments, cost structure, revenue streams, solutions, channels, unique value proposition, key metrics and unfair advantage.
Dana Davis, chamber CEO and president, and Michael Paladino with RevUnit and the NWA Tech Council chairman welcomed students in the morning.
Students also were greeted by a few business leaders who spoke about the opportunities in STEM careers, learning lessons in failure and the importance of effective communication.
Kristen Williams, senior director with Wal-Mart Technology, was the keynote speaker. She told her story of growing up in a small town in Arkansas yet having larger dreams than what was expected of her. She elaborated on how she became a computer systems engineer, earned a masters degree in leadership and how her career has taken her all over the world.
She told students their goals would change over time, but they need to pursue them actively.
"Everything you do is going to have an outcome," she said. "Actions have consequences, and consequences can be very good."
NW News on 05/18/2016