MIC Project Competition Winners Announced

Months of hard work and dedication all came to an end on the night of Dec. 8, as the four final teams competing in Quinnipiac University's Media Innovation Collaborative (MIC) competition came to together one last time to fight for the grand prize of $2000 and the bragging rights that come with that.

The competition was part of a semester long class in which students had the unique opportunity to develop a business that centered on media products. At the end of the semester, each group of students gave a 15 minute presentation to a panel of judges that consisted of media and business professionals and past competition participants. Professors Brett Orzechowski of the journalism department and David Tomczyk of the management department created the interdisciplinary course at Quinnipiac last year.

"We both realized that Quinnipiac had everything we needed to make this class work namely the School of Communications and the School of Business," Orzechowski said.

Each group's presentation highlighted different aspects of their business such as targeted market, industry analysis, projected income and costs and of course, the product itself. This year's products included: Qustir, a mobile app for coupons; Reel vs. Reel, a bracket style film and journalism competition; The Social Broker, a social media site to help young brokers trade with one another; and U of You, a website dedicated to streaming online tours of universities across the country.

"The really nice thing about this class is that you don't know exactly what you are going to get until the presentations. It's a testament to our students about how hard they all worked to perfect their projects," Orzechowski said.

While each team was shooting for the grand prize, this was not the only prize money given away to contestants during the final presentation. Members of the audience were able to choose an audience choice award by going onto their mobile phones and voting for their favorite project. This competition's audience choice award went to Chris Koop who single handily created The Social Broker, winning him the $500 prize.

"This award really meant a lot to me. At the beginning of the semester I thought I had a really great idea going and to get such a positive response from the audience tonight was amazing," Koop said.

Much to the surprise of many in attendance, the second place prize of $500 was split in half between Qustir and Reel vs. Reel. The judges thought the two projects did equally well during their presentations but both still had flaws that needed to be worked out.

"I would have to say that we put over 120 hours of work on this project over the semester. This was an extremely beneficial class in so many different aspects," said John Healy of Qustir.

Shortly after announcing the second place winners, U of You was announced the winner of the MIC competition. The judges stated that while the project seemed a little lofty, the team was able to fill an empty market that today's consumers are looking for.

"Winning this competition was awesome," said Conor Boland of U of You. "Everyone put in so much hard work and when we heard our name it was just so exciting."