Capstone Summer Intern Conference - Day 3 Recap

122 Interns + 2 Countries + 40 Offices + 68 Universities + 13 faculty members + 4 speakers + months of planning = 1 Great Conference

Planning events like these can often feel like planning a wedding. Months of hard work goes into getting every detail right to ensure a flawless event, and then before you know it, it's all over. They say that time flies when you are having fun, and that was certainly the case at this year's Capstone Summer Intern Conference. This was my first Capstone Conference. I had heard about previous Conferences and was always a bit envious of those who got to attend. I can really understand fully now why these have been so popular. It was 3 long, tiring, fun days, but as our Interns were departing O'Hare yesterday, they looked like they really had a great time. I was able to follow up with a few interns from the Baltimore-DC area at O'Hare, and they confirmed for me just how much they enjoyed the experience.

Day 1 and Day 2 were indeed, long and busy days. Day 3 wrapped things up very nicely. We began the day with more presentations from our intern project teams. Who said that accountants weren't creative? These presentations were well thought out, funny and informative. At the Winter Intern Conference this year the project teams produced videos, and we had them create videos once again at this conference. What was new however was having them develop podcasts and live presentations. This was new to many of our interns who had not dealt with the recording technology before, or who may of been a bit uncomfortable doing a presentation in front of so many people. The results overall were outstanding, the interns all had alot to be very proud of.

Following the presentations, the interns heard again from Ken Bansemer, who continued on his theme from Tuesday by talking about how to live with purpose. "Life is more than just a career..." he said, "How will you define your future and what will make you happy?" Ken's message was that everyone has control over what keeps their life in alignment, and shared personal stories about how he has been able to balance his career, his family and his personal achievements.

John Blumberg came back to discuss with the interns how their Kolbe profiles impacted their project teams, and how they could use their Kolbe profiles after they left the conference. The conference finished with an inspiring message from Rory Vaden, a 26-year old phenom who has been his spreading his formula for personal success to audiences far and wide. According to Rory, successful people do things that failures are not willing to do. Successful people don't take short cuts, they 'Take the Stairs'. Rory also challenged everyone to participate in Rory's Take the Stairs World Tour. I also liked that his organization is called Success Starts Now (sounds familiar, huh?) Rory's inspirational message was a great finish to a great event.

I'm home now and catching up on a few days of work before the long weekend. I hope to have a new slideshow video of the event to share with you here soon. In the meantime, you can check out some more of my pictures below.

McGladrey Capstone Day 3