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We recently replaced all the computers in the Masters Lab with iMacs running Windows XP

Faculty Lounge

Kyle Field from Mays

A few photos I took this Easter (more here). It was actually snowing for a while, which is a first for Easter here in Austin. I went down to the lake to take a few photos because it looked surreal.

(here’s the rest of the photos from Startup 101)

Today was the last day of Startup 101, a business seminar about starting your own business. I thought this day was more interesting than the last one because rather than just a general summary of starting up, it focused on financing and marketing (speaker was Mike Kolar of Kolar Advertising).

Now to summer plans…I had been planning on staying in College Station this summer and working on Coursevote.com because I didn’t have much luck finding work in London. But today Andy Budd emailed me saying that his company, Clear Left, is going to offer an internship this summer and that I should check it out. This is an amazing opportunity – Andy, Jeremy, and Richard are three of the best designers in the world – but I’m not sure if it’s too late to try and get a work visa, housing…all the other things.

I’m gonna give it a go and see what happens. If it doesn’t work out I’ll stay here and spend 3 days a week in College Station and the other 4 in Austin at my lake house. Not too bad of a summer either way.

I’m thinking about trying to start a photowalking here in College Station. Photowalking is where you get a group of photographers, pick a location, and just go shoot. Thomas Hawk and Robert Scoble have been doing quite a few over in San Francisco and it looks pretty fun. Anyone interested?

More photos at Mays Business School’s flickr page.

This is why I like taking photos for the business school – I get to listen (and shoot) some really interesting speakers. The Senior Vice President of Lowe’s came to speak to Marketing MBA class and gave a great presentation on Lowe’s marketing strategy. My undergrad classes now are a waste of time, I learn much more through things like this.

Speaking of learning experiences, we’re starting up a Refresh College Station. Check out the site for more info. I’ve been going to the Refresh Houston’s and have met a ton of cool people (including whurley and Matt Mullenweg, CEO of WordPress).

So if you’re in the College Station, Houston, or Austin area you should definitely come check it out.

Texas A&M EMS had a fake mass casualty event as a training exercise today. More photos here.

(more photos at the Mays Flickr Page)

I’m not going to go into the details of his talk – it was mostly business advice. But I really liked his views on the integrity of a leader. He said something like you must be able to look into the eyes of your employees and know you’re making the right decisions.

People start businesses – not just to make money – but to change the world for the better in some way. That’s why I’ve always been attracted to the idea of working with startups. You find a problem in the marketplace and solve it; you don’t just make money, you make someone’s life better. But with Walmart, they can REALLY make a difference in the world. He said that by switching out a normal incandescent light bulb for a new fluorescent light bulb, over the life of that light you will save 120 pounds of carbon being released into the atmosphere (based on energy usage). This year they plan to push out 100 million of these new lights to their customers.

I have a lot of respect for this guy and I hope to meet more people like him.

We had the Business Honors Program bowling tournament today. It was pretty fun – I actually scored a 144. More photos here.

Last week BP held a trading competition here at the Business School. It was a pretty cool simulation where you trade LNG (liquid natural gas) based on a stream of fake news that updates every couple of seconds.

Most of my photos recently have been from the business school. Since I work here as a web designer and take photos as a hobby, they now send me to all these events to get a few photos to put up on all our sites. I’ve been working a lot and haven’t really had time to do any photography for fun. But hopefully I will soon.

I also made some design changes to my sites today. I wanted a unified design across most of my sites, so I redesigned this one (my photoblog), my portfolio, and erickson media group (where I keep all my other projects I’m working on). I think they all look much better now.

Yesterday we had the Retailing Career Fair here at the business school and I was the designated photographer. The lighting wasn’t that great so I got a lot of really dark or blurry images, but a few did come out pretty well (like the one above). More shots from this event can be found on the Mays Business School flickr page.