Rocky Mountain Business Seminar

The Cause

Our idea is a business conference from the University of Alberta. The Rocky Mountain Business Seminar (RMBS) is Canada's longest running student-led business conference. Every winter reading week in February our executive team, 100 delegates and corporate professionals attend a week long conference hosted at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. The whole mission of our conference is to promote personal self growth within each student that attends and to gain invaluable professional knowledge from the numerous workshops and keynote speakers. This conference promotes diversity and inclusivity, by accepting 30 external delegates from Universities across Canada to interact and grow alongside 70 of our internal University of Alberta delegates. During the week our conferences hosts networking luncheons and dinners during the week. This provides a very intimate setting for students to work on their interpersonal skills with corporates. There are also multiple workshops and keynote speeches. There are numerous workshops that students select based on their preferences before the conference. They range from learning technical knowledge about an area of business to interactive sessions related to elevator pitches and building your personal brand. The keynote speakers are all very diverse, with different professional and personal life backgrounds. The first founder of RMBS gave a closing speech in the prior year, on how far this conference has grown and improved. There are also very motivational and inspirational ones about lessons learned during a marathon or a "Hell Week" simulation put on by Navy SEALs. And of course there are informational based speeches that provide delegates with information that cannot be learnt in a standard classroom setting. Many students in the past have made massive strides in their confidence and character development after attending this conference. Due to the fact all members of the executive team must have attended the conference in the past, we are working on providing an even better experience next year to every student.

Who Will it Benefit?

The major individuals who will benefit would be the delegates, our executive team and the corporates who attend our conference. The delegates benefit through the experience of the conference and everything that is attached to it. They gain lasting friendships from people across Canada, and students in their own University they would not have met in the first hand. They also gain very useful technical and interpersonal skills through all our events put on throughout the week-long conference. Us, the executive are benefiting immensely by putting on the conference. Most of us have not had the experience of organizing and executing a conference of this size, or of any size before. This is an amazing opportunity the eight of us have, and we are all working extremely hard in order to provide the best possible experience to the delegates for 2020. Our corporates will also benefit from this conference as well. They have the pleasure to listen to all the keynote speakers while also networking with very competent and professional students. A majority of our corporates who attend also have their own time for personal growth, as they have the opportunity to speak in-front of all 100 delegates and other corporates, as well as host smaller, more private workshops. The workshops act was a great chance for corporates to connect with the students in a smaller setting, interacting with each one individually. They are able to share their professional or personal stories and knowledge for the future generation which is rewarding in itself.