Mark Estee On The Value Of Relationships For Business

I want to share with you another video from one of our TEDxUniversityofNevada speakers, Mark Estee. In this video, Mark discusses how relationships are the key to his success. Strong relationships with suppliers, customers, employees, the community, professional advisors, and family help Mark’s business thrive.

I am a raving fan of Mark and his business, Campo Reno. Oddly enough, the first experience I had in Mark’s restaurant was not a good one. But I gave him another chance after he reached out to me personally to try to recover, and I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with Mark and his business ever since.

I hope you take the time to watch the video and hear from Mark first hand his advice for success. After doing so, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Laura Zander At TEDxUniversityofNevada

The Online Executive MBA program at The University of Nevada was the sole sponsor for TEDxUniversityofNevada. The event was held January 25, 2013 on the campus of the University of Nevada. There were 18 total speakers from the community, 100 registered participants, and about 30 volunteers. By all accounts the event was a big success.

One of the speakers in the business and entrepreneurship session was Laura Zander of Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno. In her talk, Laura briefly discusses how she started her company and has quickly grown it to a seven figure revenue stream. Laura gives examples from her own life about how the ability to dream big and stay flexible are important entrepreneurial skills.

Take the time to watch this video – it is very insightful. After you do, please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Responsible Online Gaming

In this video from TEDxUniversityofNevada, James Kosta of 3G studios shares how the next generation of young adults will be very attracted to online gaming. Kosta identifies the “3R’s” of regulated gaming as risk, randomness, and reward, then explains how online platforms will excel at providing this experience to users. Because of this, Kosta makes a call for a fourth “r” – responsibility.

Kosta provides extensive research and insight in this 15 minute talk. Take the time to watch it and then share your thoughts in the comment section below.

No Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy

 

The Online Executive MBA was the proud sponsor of Reno’s first ever TEDx event, TEDxUniversityofNevada. The event was held on Friday, January 25, 2013 and featured 16 dynamic presentations in the topic areas of health, education, entrepreneurship, and bold ideas.

In this talk, Dr. Michael Morkin of Renown Health discusses the 2011 Reno Air Races Crash. Dr. Morkin helped treat patients in the Renown ER that day. In this video, Dr. Morkin describes how good planning helped the community respond effectively to this crisis. His main points are you can’t micro-manage a crisis – you have to have a team of good people and trust everyone to do  their job. Thick books full of plans to cover every contingency just won’t work, because no plan ever survives contact with “enemy”, or situation is was designed to address.

Please watch the video and share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Statistics for Decision Making

My name is Bahram Adrangi, and I teach BADM 700 Statistics for Decision Making. I have been teaching a variety of statistics, econometrics, and forecasting classes for over thirty years. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to class, and hope that this will be a productive and enjoyable learning experience for all of you. I also want to say a few words about statistics and its uses and applications in life.

I am aware that statistics is often viewed as the bogeyman of most schools of business. I try in my classes, online and on ground, to dispel that image. Statistics has also been confused with probability theory, drenched in combinatorial arithmetic that students suffer through and forget about after finals. I must say that I have been able to dispel that one too. While statistics is imbedded in probabilities, it is more than esoteric probability problems. Furthermore, I cannot remember a single student of mine from schools of business who pursued a career in actuaries.

In my years in academia, which has coverd my entire professional career, I have applied some form of statistics or econometrics in my academic research, forecasting, and limited consulting. I hope I can bring my years of experience to this course. Ultimately, I hope that some of you will put these skills to immediate use. We will cover data analysis, graphing, descriptive statistics, making inferences from samples about populations, and see applications of regression analysis in almost all fields of business, from management to production and finance. Furthermore, our course constitutes a strong foundation for some to continue and be certified as quality control engineers. I have had a few students, undergraduate and MBAs, who pursued that path very successfully. I am excited to work with UNR EMBAs for the first time and hope that the excitement will be mutual.

 

Bahram Adrangi is professor of economics at the Robert B. Pamplin School of Business Administration, University of Portland. He received his BS in economics in 1973, his MBA in 1975; and a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon in 1982. His areas of research interest are financial economics, transportation economics and international economics. His published papers have appeared in the Journal of Futures Market, Financial Review, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, Applied Financial Economics, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, Transportation Journal, The Logistics and Transportation Review, and Journal of Industrial Organization, among others. He is also a regular presenter at economics and finance conferences nationally and internationally.