April 8, 2015

By Rumasa Noor

For his Media Arts Game Development (MAGD) Capstone course, senior Nick Pook decided to orchestrate the informative TED Talks-style program, COBE Talks.

College of Business and Economics (CoBE), in association with MAGD Capstone class, has organized the program that debuts on April 17.

The program will consist of six speakers who will give 10-minute presentations followed by a Q & A session.

The presenters will include K. Praveen Parboteeah, Megan Matthews, Todd W. Loushine, William Dougan, David Gee and Carol Scovotti. COBE Dean John Chenoweth will also give an overview of the college of business.

“Purpose of the event is to showcase business outside of classroom,” Pook said. “Showcase how faculty are involved outside of the classroom.”

Pook said the speeches would revolve around the real-life experiences of presenters, their case studies and projects.

“The idea came off this past summer when we were talking with a couple of people in the college about how to show what faculty are doing outside of just teaching,” Pook said.

The program will cover a wide array of topics such as entrepreneurship, global communication, occupational safety, literature and working with creative indiviuals.

Information Technology and Supply Chain Management professor, Dr. Choton Basu, will serve as the host and moderator of the event.

“Dr. Dougan and Dave Gee are going to be presenting together,” Pook said. “They are going to be talking about student entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in general and how that has become a popular thing in the last couple of years.”

The Director of Doctorate of Business Administration in COBE, Dr. K. Praveen Parboteeah, will talk about the need for business professionals to read literature, Pook said.

“I kind of wanted to talk about it [literature] in terms of what it can bring to you as a person, as a societal citizen,” said Parboteeah.

“I was interviewing one of the faculty members who loved Shakespeare and we had some conversations about that. When you think about competing for a job, these little things make a big difference, so even from a workplace standpoint there are advantages.”

Arts and Business Management professor Megan Matthews will discuss the significance of knowing how to work with creative people in business, Pook said.

“Dr. Todd from the safety department is going to be talking about occupational safety in the workplace and how it’s not just a compliance and how, when done correctly, you can increase your bottom line, increase employee management and relationships, overall be good for your business,” he said.

Scovoti, professor of Marketing, will discuss global communication and why members of an organization don’t need to be in one place to achieve common goals, they can operate from multiple places, said Pook.

He said he wants to lay this program as a foundation for future COBE Talks.

“The way we structure the project from the beginning is we are going to organize, create stuff for the first one and then lay all the groundwork for this to become an annual event,” Pook said.

The show will livestream at uww.edu/cobe/cobetalks/live-stream for those who can’t attend it in person, said Pook. It will also be filmed by UW-W TV and Wisconsin Public Television.

Pook said he has received positive feedback from everyone involved in the program.

“From everything I am hearing people want it to continue,” Pook said.

Dr. Parboteeah said he would like to see alumni being invited to the program in the future.