This past Tuesday we served as an audience for a practice presentation given by three students from the Faculty of Business at the U. of A. These students will be competing as part of a team in the Not-For-Profit strategy section of the business student competition known as JDC (Jeux du Commerce) West. It began as a way for students of Business Administration to meet and compete against students from other business schools across Canada.
Each team is given a case study with about ten pages of information, and will have three hours to prepare a professional presentation which would be presentable to stakeholders that would hopefully be funding the not-for profit proposal. They are not allowed to make use of any outside resources during the three hours they are given to prepare. Each team has been preparing and giving presentations every week for the past twelve weeks.
The team of Kevin, Alycia and Sarah, who gave the presentation to us, have been coached by Conor Pilz. The team is judged by a panel of coaches and peers in the competition and they were happy to have an opportunity to present in front of an outside audience. The presentation they gave was handled in the same way as it would be for competition, in that they were given the case study only three hours prior to presentation and had no access to outside resources during that time. They gave us a very professional presentation using powerpoint slides, with each of the three team members making separate parts of the presentation. The case study was for a not-for-profit organisation to provide clean water for a region in Africa. They did an admirable job of breaking down the presentation to cover all of the major areas that would be of concern to prospective stakeholders. Identify the problem and related issues, present an analysis of the core issues, make strategic recommendations, present a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis and present a plan for implementation including costs and resources that would be needed.
They presented their proposal for a clean water initiative in a very clear and organised fashion, and included a surprising amount of detail, considering the time restraint on preparation. They were all very adept at public speaking and did an admirable job, both individually and as a group. I am sure that everyone present was impressed by their ability to make such a complex presentation ‘on the fly’. We wish them well and look forward to hearing how they do in the competition to be held in Calgary in January.
