While the Questrom School of Business auditorium was often bustling with classes and conferences before the pandemic, events held in 2021 are largely quiet affairs.
But despite the virtual setting, the 2021 IDEA Conference overcame challenges and provided participants an interactive experience.
Boston University’s Innovate@BU hosted the fourth annual “IDEA Conference” Saturday, featuring TEDx-style presentations from young entrepreneurs, workshops with experts in various industries and networking opportunities for attendees from across the world.
Keynote speaker Malia Lazu, founder of The Urban Labs — a diversity and inclusion research agency — encouraged attendees to challenge business norms and dedicate their work to the “betterment of society.”
“Dr. King reminds us that through our technological genius, we’ve made the world a brotherhood,” Lazu said during her speech. “Yet, through our moral genius, we have failed to find one another. Let’s do that now.”
Lazu’s speech was followed by an hour of afternoon networking sessions with each of the speakers, held in virtual chat rooms.
Wendy Swart Grossman, creative practitioner-in-residence at Innovate@BU and strategic director of IDEA Conference, said the event featured students or recent graduates as “Ignite” speakers, and who have created successful ventures.
In an interview, Swart Grossman said it is crucial to go beyond one’s expertise and explore multidisciplinary collaborations.
“We think of ourselves as being these islands,” Swart Grossman said. “Nobody wants to be in a box … the interesting part is the cross-disciplinary conversation.”
Ignite speaker Vipul Patel, a BU Spark! Fellow, spoke to attendees about his startup JustTransfer — an app streamlining course credit transfers so universities can better track data and college students have greater odds of receiving more accepted credits.
The idea for the app, Patel said, stemmed from his own year-long process of waiting to hear about his credits after transferring to BU and learning that not all his credits carried over.
“I was horrified when they told me that I would need to retake classes,” he said at the talk. “It was a gut punch. Each class at BU was about $6,000 at the time.”
Eventually, Patel pitched the idea as a problem worth solving in a class, and created the first version of JustTransfer, which helped himself and his friends save time and money.
“I used the first version of JustTransfer to successfully claim my denied credits,” Patel said during his Ignite Talk. “Then I tried it for friends. For one in particular, the net savings was $80,000.”
After a long, “rough” process of creating the app by himself, Patel is now working with a team to leverage their business to help solve educational difficulties during the pandemic.
“Now we’re focused on the needs of this current moment,” he said, “building software to help students during the pandemic find cheaper courses that can count towards a degree.”
While JustTransfer is “still very much in its early stages,” Patel said the project taught him about the importance of mentorship, teamwork, persistence and applying his skills to make “real positive impact.”
Mars Hovasse, a fellow Ignite speaker and 2020 graduate of the University of Michigan co-created Wellnest Journal — a guided journaling app that emphasizes mindfulness and mental health — after being inspired by her personal experience to create her venture.
A self-proclaimed “seasoned journaling professional,” Hovasse said she started researching by asking student opinions about their emotions and seeking advice from therapists.
After talking with therapists, Hovasse and her team found that college students often share many of the same emotions, such as feeling “lost, confused, like imposters, and oftentimes lonely” — which journaling can help with.
Through the pandemic, the team worked to create an app that could help people find “introspection.” They officially launched the Wellnest Journal app Dec. 1.
“With all this research once COVID hit, we had more time than we expected to go full steam ahead,” she said. “Today, we have around 5,000 downloads, 180 five-star reviews and even BU is offering this to their students for free.”
As an entrepreneur, Hovasse said in an interview networking with fellow students is just as important as reaching out to professionals in your field.
“People in their fields can help guide you along the way, but the people who are actually making things happen are your peers and those around you.” Hovasse said. “Especially in college, everyone’s really passionate, extremely motivated.”
Swart Grossman said the intention behind this year’s conference was in part to answer “how do you create community during a pandemic?”
“IDEA Con 2021 is a fabulous example of how this can be done in a way that’s inclusive, exciting, uplifting and inspiring for folks to attend,” Swart Grossman said.
The goal, she said, was to foster engagement and excitement, especially during such an isolating time.
“[I hope they] see that they belong, to feel connected to something bigger than themselves,” she said. “And to meet other people who are actually [sharing] that excitement about putting something new in the world.”
