IronJacket7
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 2,544
This is a recap someone did from gojacket.com. There is a lot of interesting nuggets from the recap of what Stansbury is wanting to do. The person who did the recap below was also late to the lunch bunch so no telling what other interesting points were discussed. Thought I would share with you. Recap by LegalBee.
If anyone on here was able to attend please add to for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, I was 30 minutes late because of construction traffic on Roswell Road. Took me another 45 minutes once I got to I-285 and Roswell Road.
Others please fill in what I missed and make any corrections:
- When I came in, he was talking about how GT needs to embrace and champion our uniqueness, not do what everyone else is doing. We have no peers and should not look to others for how to do things. Our academic peers (MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie-Mellon, etc) do not participate in major athletics, and our athletic peers do not have our academics, so we should stopping pretending we are comparing apples to apples and make it clear that they are all apples and we are an orange. If you want an orange, this is the only place to get it.
- Our target is 14 to 18 year old kids. They do not read the AJC or watch local TV, so we should not care how they report us. We now have the ability to go around the media and tell our own story directly via video and other technologies. Recent viral video of swim team in snow got us more publicity than anything in traditional media could have. Wants in-house division dedicated to selling Tech directly to our targets.
- GT is changing uniform supplier. Who exactly is still under discussion. Older fans can never understand the importance of uniforms to the kids.
- Have to get students more involved in athletics. Studies show if they have not attended a live sports event before the ago of 20, they most likely will never attend one in their lives. Really need to target kids under 10 in order to have a chance for them to become lifelong fans.
- Can never make attending game same as on TV, so need to make attending game something you cannot experience on TV.
- We need to be innovative in everything we do. Wants to create a "sports incubator" to develop new way of doing sports. Looking to create our own "Gatorade" that changes how sports is done. Innovation was very common theme.
- We should make easier for potential athletes to find Tech rather than Tech finding them. While at Oregon State, their woman's BB team went to final 4 due in part to a 6' 6" center from a small town in British Columbia. She graduated with a 4.0 in engineering and studied rocket science for fun. No way Tech could have ever found her, but she should have found Tech.
- Graduation is not the finish line, but the starting point. Need to focus less on graduation rates and more on what graduates are doing 5 and 10 years later.
- There is always good debt and bad debt, but we need to work on having any future debt having a dedicated funding source (donations or revenue) before incurring. Also feels like we have current mind set that we are missing too many good ideas because afraid we cannot afford them. If it is truly a good idea, we can probably find the funding.
- Hired a Disney executive while at UCF to help with game day experience. Learned so much from that they will apply to GT.
- Cannot control some things, like Atlanta traffic. So instead of fighting it, use to our advantage and target people already in downtown to stay and watch a GT event instead of heading home.
- New uniform colors will be controlled much more closely. Currently 30 to 35 colors available in book store and even 10 to 15 versions of GT logo. All will be limited to highlight our brand. Wants anyone seeing GT gear to immediately know it GT and no one else.
If anyone on here was able to attend please add to for discussion.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, I was 30 minutes late because of construction traffic on Roswell Road. Took me another 45 minutes once I got to I-285 and Roswell Road.
Others please fill in what I missed and make any corrections:
- When I came in, he was talking about how GT needs to embrace and champion our uniqueness, not do what everyone else is doing. We have no peers and should not look to others for how to do things. Our academic peers (MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie-Mellon, etc) do not participate in major athletics, and our athletic peers do not have our academics, so we should stopping pretending we are comparing apples to apples and make it clear that they are all apples and we are an orange. If you want an orange, this is the only place to get it.
- Our target is 14 to 18 year old kids. They do not read the AJC or watch local TV, so we should not care how they report us. We now have the ability to go around the media and tell our own story directly via video and other technologies. Recent viral video of swim team in snow got us more publicity than anything in traditional media could have. Wants in-house division dedicated to selling Tech directly to our targets.
- GT is changing uniform supplier. Who exactly is still under discussion. Older fans can never understand the importance of uniforms to the kids.
- Have to get students more involved in athletics. Studies show if they have not attended a live sports event before the ago of 20, they most likely will never attend one in their lives. Really need to target kids under 10 in order to have a chance for them to become lifelong fans.
- Can never make attending game same as on TV, so need to make attending game something you cannot experience on TV.
- We need to be innovative in everything we do. Wants to create a "sports incubator" to develop new way of doing sports. Looking to create our own "Gatorade" that changes how sports is done. Innovation was very common theme.
- We should make easier for potential athletes to find Tech rather than Tech finding them. While at Oregon State, their woman's BB team went to final 4 due in part to a 6' 6" center from a small town in British Columbia. She graduated with a 4.0 in engineering and studied rocket science for fun. No way Tech could have ever found her, but she should have found Tech.
- Graduation is not the finish line, but the starting point. Need to focus less on graduation rates and more on what graduates are doing 5 and 10 years later.
- There is always good debt and bad debt, but we need to work on having any future debt having a dedicated funding source (donations or revenue) before incurring. Also feels like we have current mind set that we are missing too many good ideas because afraid we cannot afford them. If it is truly a good idea, we can probably find the funding.
- Hired a Disney executive while at UCF to help with game day experience. Learned so much from that they will apply to GT.
- Cannot control some things, like Atlanta traffic. So instead of fighting it, use to our advantage and target people already in downtown to stay and watch a GT event instead of heading home.
- New uniform colors will be controlled much more closely. Currently 30 to 35 colors available in book store and even 10 to 15 versions of GT logo. All will be limited to highlight our brand. Wants anyone seeing GT gear to immediately know it GT and no one else.
. Can't ever get to the finish line if you can't find the starting line. I feel like TS knew where the starting line was before he was hired and is off the blocks with a burst.
