On Friday afternoon, I hit the friendly skies to go on a career trek to Las Vegas with the GSB Travel and Hospitality Club..and secretly wondered whether I would be able to behave myself down there. Just to provide a little background, Vegas is a place where I tend to act a fool because of the prevalence of two of my vices: liquor and gambling. Although some of the other GSBers on the trip were planning careers in the gaming industry, i went along because I have had an interest in how things work behind the scenes ever since my first trip there several years ago. Going into the trip, I must admit that I wondered how it would turn out because I had only hung out with one of the 17 other people on the trek before and didn’t know if I’d feel out of place among the rest of the group. Fortunately, it was all good and I had a BLAST on this trip. By the time we flew out on Sunday night, I felt like I’d bonded with every other person on that trip and had initiated some friendships that should extend far beyond the end of this school year.
OK, now that the intro is done, I can get into more of the details of the trip. During the trek, we got access to things behind the scenes at the casinos, restaurants, and shows in Vegas that I never thought we’d be able to get as students. Some of the highlights were:
- a tour of the kitchen of the Bouchon restaurant and bakery in the Venetian
- a 2-hour backstage tour of the new Cirque de Soleil show “Ka”
- a meeting with the VP of Finance of MGM Mirage Resorts who described the upcoming City Center project that will be one of the largest attractions in Vegas when it is completed in 2009
- a tour of the security/surveillance room and money counting areas of the Venetian
- meetings with the VPs of Sales and Relationship Marketing for the Venetian
We did several other things during the trek, but I’m drawing a blank right now on them. The biggest part of the trip was the keynote speech given by Sheldon Adelson, Chairman of the Board and founder of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. He shared advice on entrepreneurship and told us stories of his own business ventures, including his thought process going into planning and breaking ground on the Venetian hotel and casino. He was a funny guy and had us all rollin’ while dropping gems of business wisdom on us. Hearing his speech made the entire trip worth it. I also got a chance to spend some quality time bonding and kickin’ it with the classmates I didn’t know very well going into the trip, which was a huge bonus that I wasn’t expecting.
I guess it has become a trend in my past few entries to have a shout out section, so I’ll continue on with that:
- A congratulatory shout out goes to a Round 3 admit to the GSB who I’ll call “Yoda” in honor of the upcoming release of the new Star Wars movie (she didn’t want me to use her real name). I met her a few weeks ago through one of my classmates and she is really excited about her impending cross-country move to come out here. She told me that I wasn’t allowed to give her a shout out here or else she’d send the mafia to come after me, so, if I stop writing entries all of the sudden, y’all will know what happened.
- A big thank you shout out goes to my classmates Geoff, Kim, and Yasmin for putting together a great career trek to las Vegas over the weekend. As I said above, it was off the hook!
- Another congratulatory shout out goes to all of the first year MBA students who are closing out their first year of Bschool. My girl Maya and her classmates at Columbia just finished up a week or so ago and I think a lot of other schools are finishing up over the next week. (we don’t finish up for another 2-3 weeks…daggone quarter system of classes!!!) Good luck on your summer internships.
- Finally, one last congratulatory shout out goes to my man Keith M. who just gradauted over the weekend from the University of Georgia’s accelereated MBA program. It seems like it was yesterday and now he’s about to go out and throw down on the business world. Keith, I don’t know if you’re reading this, but, if you are, congrats and good luck, blackman!!!
OK, now that the intro is done, I can get into more of the details of the trip. During the trek, we got access to things behind the scenes at the casinos, restaurants, and shows in Vegas that I never thought we’d be able to get as students. Some of the highlights were:
- a tour of the kitchen of the Bouchon restaurant and bakery in the Venetian
- a 2-hour backstage tour of the new Cirque de Soleil show “Ka”
- a meeting with the VP of Finance of MGM Mirage Resorts who described the upcoming City Center project that will be one of the largest attractions in Vegas when it is completed in 2009
- a tour of the security/surveillance room and money counting areas of the Venetian
- meetings with the VPs of Sales and Relationship Marketing for the Venetian
We did several other things during the trek, but I’m drawing a blank right now on them. The biggest part of the trip was the keynote speech given by Sheldon Adelson, Chairman of the Board and founder of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. He shared advice on entrepreneurship and told us stories of his own business ventures, including his thought process going into planning and breaking ground on the Venetian hotel and casino. He was a funny guy and had us all rollin’ while dropping gems of business wisdom on us. Hearing his speech made the entire trip worth it. I also got a chance to spend some quality time bonding and kickin’ it with the classmates I didn’t know very well going into the trip, which was a huge bonus that I wasn’t expecting.
I guess it has become a trend in my past few entries to have a shout out section, so I’ll continue on with that:
- A congratulatory shout out goes to a Round 3 admit to the GSB who I’ll call “Yoda” in honor of the upcoming release of the new Star Wars movie (she didn’t want me to use her real name). I met her a few weeks ago through one of my classmates and she is really excited about her impending cross-country move to come out here. She told me that I wasn’t allowed to give her a shout out here or else she’d send the mafia to come after me, so, if I stop writing entries all of the sudden, y’all will know what happened.
- A big thank you shout out goes to my classmates Geoff, Kim, and Yasmin for putting together a great career trek to las Vegas over the weekend. As I said above, it was off the hook!
- Another congratulatory shout out goes to all of the first year MBA students who are closing out their first year of Bschool. My girl Maya and her classmates at Columbia just finished up a week or so ago and I think a lot of other schools are finishing up over the next week. (we don’t finish up for another 2-3 weeks…daggone quarter system of classes!!!) Good luck on your summer internships.
- Finally, one last congratulatory shout out goes to my man Keith M. who just gradauted over the weekend from the University of Georgia’s accelereated MBA program. It seems like it was yesterday and now he’s about to go out and throw down on the business world. Keith, I don’t know if you’re reading this, but, if you are, congrats and good luck, blackman!!!
now that you know what’s there behind the doors in Vegas, would you like to assemble your group of Eleven?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I thought about that, but, after seeing how those security guys get down, I wouldn’t even risk it. They can pick a potential thief out from wide-view camera shot just from their body language….if I were to get my group of 11 together to pull a Danny Ocean, I know I’d mess up and give us all away to the cameras.