BEcon conference to take place tomorrow in Nichols

BEcon+advisor+Juston+Glass++tests+out+HTC+Vive+presented+by+Google%2C+one+of+the+highlights+of+the+conference.+The+conference+will+take+place+tomorrow+in+Nichols.+

Courtesy of Haley Tran

BEcon advisor Juston Glass tests out HTC Vive presented by Google, one of the highlights of the conference. The conference will take place tomorrow in Nichols.

by Meena Gudapati, Winged Post Copy Editor

BEcon2016, a business and economics conference, will take place in Nichols hall and the gym from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow to immerse students in business, economics and entrepreneurship.

The program will include a student poster session, sHarker Tank, interactive workshops, a networking lunch, corporate sponsor booths and a virtual reality station.

“My team has put in a lot of effort this year to really bring an experience to all of our attendees, and we really branched out, so we have virtual reality; we have a lot of cool workshops,” executive director Ankur Karwal (12) said. “We have a booth that’s actually a pedal-powered smoothie maker, so you get on a bike and you pedal, and it makes a smoothie for you. When you come there, we want to make sure that you’re able to explore all of your options.”

During sHarker tank, students will have the opportunity to pitch business ideas to a judge panel.

“This year, I think we have a lot more poster sessions and booths that are very different from what we had last year; in addition we reorganized the conference so that we have a really big focus on sHarker Tank,” Haley Tran (11), who is on the marketing team, said.

The event was inspired by popular television show Shark Tank.

“I’m looking forward to the perfect competition game on the economics side and sHarker tank on the business side,” economics representative Shivani Awasthi (11) said.

Speakers at the event will include 19-year-old venture capitalist and entrepreneur Tiffany Zhong, who attended high school in Menlo Park and currently works at venture-capital firm Binary Capital, as well as notable economist and Stanford economics professor David Friedman.

Economics teacher Samuel Lepler recruited Friedman for BEcon and assisted students in coming up with economics-related activities.

“I would say the most exciting thing for me definitely is David Friedman’s talk,” he said. “Milton Friedman, his father, is probably one of the top most influential economists in the last 70 [or] 80 years, so in the economics world, that’s royalty. It’s a real honor to have his son volunteer to come speak to us and share some of his experiences.”

Although BEcon is being held in spring this school year, it occurred in fall of 2014 last year. This event will be Harker’s second-ever BEcon.