Leaders of Today

Telling young people that they are the “leaders of tomorrow” is so very yesteryear. General advancement, societal shifts and technology, have ensured that today’s generation does not have to wait until tomorrow. They are smarter, more independent, more connected and they can reach a global audience instantaneously. With that said, they are not devoid of challenges, but there is little doubt how much potential this generation possesses for immediate impact.

We got a good reminder of this last weekend at the Link Business Conference – a business and leadership conference organized by Wilfrid Laurier students for high school students in the local area. While I can laud the organizing students to no end, I was most impressed with the high school students in attendance. My City Lives was the basis for the business case portion of the conference and within three days, these students had to absorb crash-courses on business fundamentals, analyze the company, determine strategies related to all its facets and then present their recommendations to large audiences. Impressive, I know.

The winning team of the competition, produced the right mix of passion, awareness of the product and presentation polish but it was truly hard to put just one group on the pedestal, when it felt like each person was making a contribution to the case and the company. Although our big motivation for being involved with the conference was to give back, it would be a lie if I didn’t admit that the access to ideas and research was rewarding as heck. Accordingly, if it isn’t obvious already, being involved in student communities is something I would recommend highly to all start ups.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Link, visit their website and check out this cool video one of the groups made for My City Lives below. If you’d like to see more, there’s a bunch of them you can watch here. The logo we used is this post was created by one of the teams as well.

A final, direct comment to all the leaders of today that we met last week – both attendees and organizers: My City Lives has always been an ‘open source idea’ – the product of collaborators from various diverse communities. While Adam and I officially bear the title of ‘Founders’, your ideas and efforts are now weaved into the founding moments of this company and you are now a part of the My City Lives story. So thank you and the very best of luck.