The Dragons - Mr Leigh Halford

Leigh Halford

Since birth he has tried to touch the sky. Perseverance is everything,
remember if you aim low you never miss, but if you aim for the moon
and miss you still get to burn up in the atmosphere, making a rather
pleasant fireworks display for your friends and family… and people who hate you as well.

Details

Background Engineer, teacher, visionary, hero.
The road to success Graduated with honours from the University of Hard Knocks.
Relevant experience as a Dragon Once designed and marketed an invention to remove splinters from the feet of Durrell’s Vontsira, a marsh dwelling carnivore found around Lake Alaotra in Madagascar. Amongst others.

Q&A

Name: Leigh Halford
Born: Centre of the known universe, AKA Evesham
Family: Yes
Hobbies: Making scale models of famous buildings out of toenail clippings
Describe yourself in three words: Magnificent, perspicacious, sesquipedalian 
Estimated wealth: Loads-a-moneeey
The one thing I look for in entrepreneurs  For me it is important that they have all their own limbs. If they have to be missing one, nothing more than a toe… oh and ideas.
Worst job I've had: Working in an abattoir
Favourite film/play: Spice World… A classic depiction of the cut and thrust of corporate politics in the late 1990s.
Favourite holiday destination: Big cities
Favourite sport, team and player: Conkers, Ray Kellock 2010 World Champion… A true inspiration for all conkerers around the world
Things that interest me in a business idea: Does the idea identify a problem? Does it solve the problem? This is what I look for in a design.

Leigh’s pitch advice

For impressing in a pitch Design should be clean and efficient. If your design makes the task more complicated then it is a bad design. Remember an elegant solution is always the better option. 

The Dragons - Miss Victoria McGregor

Victoria McGregor

From a very early age Victoria McGregor knew she would run one of the finest Economics departments in Latin America. At only 27, she had achieved her dream.

Details

The road to success: Started out in Bristol teaching Marketing to the fat cats of Hewlett Packard and British Aerospace.  Undertook my teacher training PGCE whilst lecturing an FE college. Then, motivated by money, I worked my way up in two insurance companies one in England selling Buildings insurance and one in Australia selling health insurance.  I made my fortune in bonuses from selling insurance to old people who didn't need it.

Relevant experience as a Dragon: Have judged a panel of stock brokers at Bahrain Stock Exchange directed by the American Chamber of Commerce and have written a business plan and break even chart for a successful languages school. 

Q&A

Name:.Victoria McGregor
Born: 1993
Family: Plenty
Hobbies: Lots including yoga, running and fortune-teller
Describe yourself in three words: Mum likes me 
Estimated wealth: Squillions
The one thing I look for in entrepeneurs: a good attitude (willing to learn)
Worst job I've had: Door to door sales
Favourite film/play: The Thomas Crown Affair
Favourite holiday destination:.Thailand
Favourite sport, team and player: Hockey
Things that interest me in a business idea: Anything original
Best advice you've been given: Be yourself.  The people who mind don´t matter and the people who matter don´t mind. It is nice to be important but more important to be nice.

Vicky’s pitch advice

For impressing in a pitch

I am looking for an authentic entrepreneur, someone who will take a risk and really believe in their idea and themselves.  They will put all their energy, money, heart, mind and soul into getting their product or service to market. The best pitch will be someone who has considered their market, financial position, human resources and have proactively considered the pragmatic constraints of producing their product keeping sustainability in mind.

Maths meets the Fun Theory

Here are the details for what promises to be a superb Maths session. If you are going to apply, make sure you read the following carefully. 

Stage 1: Design

- This session is available to everyone in Sixth Grade, Form I and II

- You need to organise a group of 3 - 4. Collect a proforma from DF NR or PE

- Choose a doorway Plan Verde

- Design and create a simple product that will change people’s behavior. You should watch the following video clips, visit The Fun Theory then sit down, plan, draft, and hand in your completed proforma by the end of school on Monday

Stage 2: Quality control

- Present your pitch proformas to DF NR and PE

- The best pitches will be chosen for Stage 3, The Dragon’s Den. You will then be given the Mathematical criteria on which to based you business plan.

Stage 3: Presentation

- The selected groups will be given the Mathematical criteria that they need to apply to create a business case for their product

- The Dragons (Mr Bhoja, Mr Abbott and Miss McGregor) will then judge the best product 

Let's see what you've got!

The Trade Game

After the introductory session last month, it was time for the first department to step up to the plate and hit the kids for a metaphorical home run, and - thanks to the expertise of the Humanities Department, namely Mr Matt Eames and Mr Lawrence Hill (featured right) - expectations were more than achieved during The Trade Game.

The session was fairly simple:
- Divide into groups of 3, 4 or 5
- Have a look at the multitude or scarcity of resources (paper, rulers, protractors, rulers, scissors) on your table
- Learn that the bank will buy only professional products: perfectly cut, industry standard 'squares', 'semi-circles' or 'triangles'.
- Start trading.  

Start

Ready, steady... trade. 

Here's the catch... In order to mimic global inequality, not all the groups start with equal resources. Some start with a veritable mountain of paper, scissors and everything else they need to start trading immediately. Others start with almost nothing - a couple of sheets of paper, or one pair of scissors. 

This, as you would imagine, throws up a number of issues, as illustrated here:

And within about 5 minutes, pretty much everyone has taken to their new reality - the 'haves' and 'have nots': 

And after an hour, as you would imagine, we sat back and watched the students' experience what it feels like to be resource rich, resource poor, and for those fortunes to change. We saw how they adapted to new elements, how they formed 'trade agreements', were tempted into crime as there was 'no other way to get into the game'... and a whole lot more.     

The first 'trade agreement' is born.
Problem: we only have paper, you only have scissors.
Solution: a trade agreement.
Problem: what percentage does each party get? 

Variables

And, around half way through, a couple of rogue elements were added. A new element found its way on to the stock exchange. Hidden beneath some of the tables were blue sheets. No other information was provided, but it didn't take long for word to spread about... 'blue'. 

The first group that brought some blue to the bank were paid 5 times its value. Chaos! Whole countries binned whatever they were doing to trade only blue. It all broke kinda bad: suddenly all anyone wanted was blue, and they would pay well over the odds to get it.  

Then, the bank was told that they had enough blue, and to stop buying. More chaos. Countries who had gambled everything on blue were suddenly plunged into debt - countries who never had blue in the first place were suddenly wealthier.   

Close of trading

At the end of the hour, students were asked to reflect on their experiences, expertly facilitated by Eames and Hill, proving once and for all that Geography teachers really do do more than teach kids to colour in maps. Who knew?

Prompt:

Reflection:

All in all, this was a superb session, meeting every one of the standards set at the start of the year. To give the students a real life experience, something wider than the curriculum, to work in vertical groups of students across year levels, for total involvement with a high quality outcome, and to enjoy the rewards of hard work.  

Here's my quote of the session, to the question: 

"What I learned was that I wouldn't like to be poor... Even though this was only for an hour, I found it frustrating, we couldn't do anything... we just watched all the other groups trade and we couldn't do anything. In the end we managed to use our resources... but we were basically stuck. And no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't do anything. That wasn't a nice feeling at all.     

Two other observations from Mr Matt Eames:

1. Waste. When you looked under the tables at the end, the countries who started with the most resources... under their tables, it was a mess. The countries who had very little had used every available millimeter of paper, their tables were immaculate, and under their tables was nothing. Is this like real life - click here.

2. Equality. No group gave any of their resources away. Compare this to the global picture here.   

Make you think, doesn't it? If you were involved in the session, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the session. Next session will be announced fairly soon - if you haven't already, please sign up for email updates. That way you won't miss out on anything.  

Dougal Fergusson & Ned Riley

MAAT