NOBE National Meeting Descends on Drexel

The Drexel Chapter of the National Organization of Business Engineers held its national meeting on Drexel’s campus February 24 to 26. A total of 35 to 65 representatives from the University of Southern California, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Purdue University and University of Wisconsin were in attendance. This year marked the fourth national conference for the organization.

The event began with a kickoff dinner hosted by Drexel. Opening remarks were given by Alex Keating, Drexel national representative to NOBE; Neil Desnoyers, Drexel faculty advisor; as well as by the conference sponsors, including Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson and CloudMine.

Following the dinner, attendees participated in a fun competition called Trash to Ca$h in which teams had to create a marketable product for prizes. In addition to a host of networking events throughout the weekend, attendees participated in a workshop sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and a Microsoft Cloud competition that asked participants to create a product that solves a worldly problem. SMS Maternal, an application intended to answer maternity questions from around the world, took top prize.

Finally, participants had the opportunity to listen to a successful group of entrepreneurs during the “Start-up Panel.” Yuriy Porytko, Frank Taney and Mel Baiada shared their wisdom with the group, emphasizing the importance of networking in developing key business relationships. The event concluded with an announcement of a new NOBE Executive Board.