UW DEC Cleans Up At State!

After the great time our Delta Epsilon Chi chapter had at the Fall Occupational Leadership Conference in Leavenworth, we were all excited to go back this weekend for the State Career Development Conference. Out of the eight members we brought to the conference, everyone placed either first or second in their event. Our chapter president and myself placed second in International Marketing, and we and the rest of our chapter will be going to Orlando for the International Career Development Conference this April.

Go Huskies!

Six Degrees of Rafi Mohammed

I've talked before (on the Marketsync blog) about one of my Intro to Marketing textbooks, The Art of Pricing, by Rafi Mohammed. It's a fascinating book, and one that I've thought about while going through some interesting pricing challenges in my work. I consider Rafi's work right up there with the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Steve Levitt in terms of insightfulness.

So I was surprised to receive an e-mail from the author today. What! A famous author reads my blog? Wow! Rafi told me that he's launched a website companion to his book, with useful pricing tools and a blog of his own. His most recent blog post was about his pricing conversation with rock legend Don Henley. It's a mildly amusing story, if only because I've learned form personal experience that sometimes the best brushes with fame come from suppressing your desire to gush like a starry-eyed fan and try to have an actual conversation.

Then it struck me. I'm now just two degrees of separation from Don Henley! Thanks, Rafi!

Another tiny anecdote ... Rafi's sister teaches in the Nursing program here at UW Bothell. What a small world!

Wii-kend

Went to UW Bothell yesterday to work on some posters for Delta Epsilon Chi, and then proceeded to watch the first half of the Apple Cup. Good turnout, although the crowd was a bit subdued. At halftime, I had my wife drop me off at the Game Crazy in Redmond so that I could meet up with Andru and get in line for the Wii. That was a 6PM.

Game Crazy (Hollywood Video) was pretty good to us, always coming by to take drink and snack orders, I mean, why wouldn't they want to take our money? Nintendo was there, tossing out tons of swag. I got a black Nintendo polo that says "PLAYER" on the back of the next, which is pretty sweet. I've also got a cubic assload of silicone Nintendo "PLAYER" bracelets. Andru and I were about 60th in line, but it was still 2AM before we managed to get our Wiis and get out of the store. Did find out that the Huskies managed to beat WSU, so it was a very good night.

Got the Wii home, set it up, although I had to really hack some things together since my entire AV setup is going through S-Video and there's no Wii S-Video cable yet. Setup was flawless, and it immediately grabbed a couple of network updates. Popped in Wii Sports and played a game of Bowling and a game of Boxing before we headed to bed.

All day today, I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The game is absolutely phenomenal ... not perfect, but incredibly damn good. I don't know if I'd call it better than Ocarina of Time just yet, but it's very close. I'm definitely feeling more drawn into the story at this point.

I played a brief round of Super Monkey Ball just to get a feel for the controls, and it's pretty awesome too. Unlike the GameCube game, there are 50 minigames and they all appear to be available from the get-go ... no earning points in story mode to unlock them. They sort of had to do that, since there are so many other competing games in the "mini game" space on Wii at launch.

It'll be very interesting to see how Wii does in the months ahead. Will the unique controller be a gimmick, or will it be embraced by the development community. Will Wii live up to its potential, or will it suffer a fate similar to the GameCube? Most importantly, will there ever be anything that plugs into the USB ports?

Child's Play

I'm very proud of the work my friends over at Penny Arcade have done with Child's Play. For those of you still under a rock, Child's Play is their way of proving to the world that gamers are more than anti-social, car-stealing, hooker-beating blights on society. We have money, and we like to spend it on games, even if that's just to give games to others, especially to kids suffering from serious illnesses.

That's why I'm pleased to announce that UW Bothell's Delta Epsilon Chi club, in conjunction (and competition) with Cascadia Community College's Business Club, is holding a Holiday Toy Drive, with all of the collected toys and games going to Child's Play. I can't think of a more worthy cause, and I'm thrilled to be able to be a part of it.

Our drive will be going from November 27th to December 8th, and if you live in the Seattle or Eastside Washington areas, please feel free to bring a donation to the UW Bothell Library, and deposit them in the UW Bothell collection bin (or Cascadia, if you prefer). Please note that all toys and games must be new and unwrapped, and that we are unable to accept stuffed animals of any kind, as they harbor germs and are dangerous to immune-compromised kids.