I. Developing a Stronger Community

Annual E-tower Retreat

Each year the E-tower embarks upon an entrepreneurship retreat. One major objective of the retreat is to welcome all of the new members who were accepted into E-tower over the summer and at the conclusion of the previous year. Through community building activities like challenges, get-to-know-you games, and bon fires, the E-tower strives to leave the retreat a stronger community with strong momentum heading into the next two semesters.

Annual Winter Dinner

Toward the end of the first semester, usually just before or during reading days, the E-tower hosts a winter dinner for all of the members of E-tower. During this dinner, E-tower members sign-up to cook for "a family style meal." Each member is responsible for leading or helping with the cooking of one course of the meal (e.g. appetizers, the turkey, salads, side dishes, desserts, snacks, and so on). Every one then comes together and eats the wonderful meal. After the dinner, we complete the gift distribution for our E-tower Secret Santa. Once all of the gifts have been distributed, we take part in our annual "tree hunt" tradition and conclude by decorating our E-tower tree. This event is often one of the highlights of the year!

Open Lounge and Open Office

We pride ourselves on the importance and power of our central resources in E-tower. These resources are very important for building a strong community. We plan to do everything in our power to preserve the lounge as a place for uninhibited sharing of ideas, discussion, and simply brotherhood and sisterhood.

II. Maintaining our Commitment to Serving the External Community

Teen Leep Involvement

The E-tower strongly believes in serving the external community. We recognize that as a group we have a very strong mix of business talent and expertise. Two years ago, the E-tower founded a relationship with the Teen Leep organization. Teen Leep is a unique organization located in Waltham, MA that accepts teens graduating from foster care programs and enrolls them in a book selling business run by and organized almost completely by the teens. This used book selling business is operated mainly out of their More Than Words book store in Waltham. Our objective as the E-tower is to meet at least three times throughout the school year with the Teen Leep kids to help lend our advice on idea generation, marketing, selling techniques, and any where else we believe we can help. We also strive to attend many of their special events with a small group of E-tower members to show our support when they are applying their knowledge.

III. Fostering Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Entrepreneurship at the Retreat

The retreat isn't entirely about fun and games. This year's retreat has a strong focus on entrepreneurship and idea generation. Activities will be structured around brainstorming, entrepreneurial challenges, E-tower business presentations, idea generation, and discussion of how we can improve the E-tower and its goal of entrepreneurship. Of course, the main objective is still to have fun while pursuing our entrepreneurial dreams.

Wake Up... It's Monday!

Every Monday, the E-tower hosts in our lounge our high energy, high motivation entrepreneurship meeting. The structure of the meeting is built around the idea that entrepreneurship is happening all around us and each entrepreneur is experiencing different successes and different difficulties unique to their business. For each stage of venture development, we have a section of the meeting built to serve that aspect.

• People who don't have businesses can conduct an idea generation session where we help send them down the right path.
• People who have a new idea but need feedback present a "rocket pitch" that opens the floor for real comments and feedback on the idea, the pitch, and its feasibility.
• People with businesses that need help can conduct a brainstorming session to solve a problem they are having.
• People who have had business successes are encouraged to present "business updates" in which they inform the E-tower of what they have been up to and where their business is heading.

In addition to this, the E-tower also opens the floor for people to announce special events and share helpful resources they have found during their entrepreneurial endeavors. Lastly, most entrepreneurship meetings end with some motivational speech, article, or whatever. This year's Monday meetings will hopefully become the strongest meetings the E-tower has ever had!

Babson Entrepreneurial Exchange (BEE)/E-tower Relationship

We strongly believe that the BEE and E-tower should work hard to coordinate joint events between both organizations. In the past, we have only successfully held one joint event per year. This year, the goal is to hold at least two events jointly.

Rocket Pitcher's Bullpen

Jointly hosted in the E-tower lounge with the BEE, this year's Rocket Pitcher's Bullpen should be fantastic! With at least five rocket pitchers and at least two professional judges and three other E-tower/BEE judges, we are planning to host a high energy rocket pitch feedback and competition event. The objective is to invite rocket pitchers up to the E-tower from within the Babson community. They will have a chance to pitch for the audience. Once their pitch is over, the floor will be opened for questions and comments to help flesh out the idea and improve the pitch for the upcoming Rocket Pitch event in Olin Hall. In addition, we will be judging the pitches to find the "best overall pitch." The winner will be awarded a $100 cash prize.

E-tower Speaker Series

In the past, the E-tower has hosted small business speakers in the E-tower lounge for a more intimate and fun speaker setting. We have invited the likes of the Fresh City founders and even President Barefoot. Our goal this year is to bring back the speaker event for at least one speaker during the year, probably during second semester.

Babson-Olin Networking

One of our less tangible goals is to help forge a relationship among the entrepreneurs of Babson and the entrepreneurs of Olin College. We intend to invite them to our meetings and participate in joint events between the two colleges. This is really a vital objective here at Babson, and we hope the E-tower is on the forefront of this collaboration!

Encourage Participation in E-ship on Campus

During the year, the E-tower has always prided itself in its involvement with all entrepreneurship at Babson. We will have E-tower members represented at the Rocket Pitch, Business Plan competition, SBIA, ACE program, Hatchery, and the E-ship curriculum.

Centralized Resources

We are planning to improve upon the E-tower centralized resources for the sake of improved business operations from within the E-tower. We currently have an office equipped with simple office supplies and a powerful printer, but we want to expand upon this to include supplies for better entrepreneurial development. Resource may also include stipends for attending entrepreneurial conferences outside of the Babson campus.

IV. Improving our External Image with Students, Faculty, and Staff

Organization Carnival

A first step toward successfully improving our campus image is to hold a strong representation at the organization carnival. This will help the E-tower build interest in the new students and rekindle interest in the current students who have lost interest in the ideals of the E-tower.

E-tower Mailing List

In the past we have not had a mailing list for Babson students who are interested in applying to E-tower or simply attending events. We must create this list and use the list to advertise events and distribute other information.

E-tower Newsletter

We intend to create and distribute two newsletters, one per semester. This newsletter will be distributed to members of the E-tower mailing list, Babson faculty, Babson administration, and to the E-tower alumni. We fully believe this newsletter will build a stronger relationship will all recipients and help to cement our reputation for innovation and pioneering ideas.

Open House

We intend to host two Open House events for faculty, staff, and administration. These events will be a chance for the non-student population of Babson to get to know what we are doing as a community and to get to know our wonderful businesses. We want to showcase the best of the best in entrepreneurship in the E-tower. By hosting this meeting, we believe that more influential people on the Babson campus will have a positive view of our organization. This will help build sustainability.

Meetings with Administration

The community manager is expected to hold meetings with key administration including the Provost, Chair of the Entrepreneurship Division, the President, the Vice Provost of Entrepreneurship, the Vice President of Student Affairs, and any other influential administration at Babson who should know more about our objectives and how they fit hand in hand with Babson's vision as a college.

Open Meetings

We will be continuously inviting students, faculty, staff, and administration up to the E-tower for our meetings. We are operating this year with the idea that the best way to inform people about the E-tower is to bring them up to our community and show them what we are all about!

V. Continuing to Build the Highest Quality Membership

Current Student Applications

This year marks one of our highest amounts of turnover in the E-tower history. Because of the high turnover, we have to focus good efforts on finding and accepting the best of the crop at Babson. Our application process for current student application will be structured around three ideas:

• The process needs to be simple. In the past, we had a process that was too complicated for busy Babson students to easily complete. We need the system to be easy.
• The process cannot be intimidating. Many great applicants to the E-tower have decided not to apply because they were too nervous about the application process. We need to make sure the process is challenging and fruitful, but not over the edge scaring applications away.
• The process needs to be spread over time. Having all the events packed into a few days makes it hard for people to devote a huge chunk of time. We need to spread things out to give people a chance to actually partake without forgoing their classes and their sanity.

Applications from Freshmen

We plan to reformat our application process for freshmen because the past process has not provided consistent and strong members. We are unsure of what we plan to do to improve the process, but changes will be made.

Accountability among Current Members

This year, we are building a system to make certain current E-tower members are contributing enough to the community to remain members of this highly competitive and highly coveted organization. Some of these accountability measures include meeting attendance, involvement in community events, and entrepreneurial venture creation. These "requirements" will most certainly be built into our Constitution.

VI. Preserving our Traditions for Sustainability

Constitution

The E-tower has operated for the past five years and beyond through the use of our informal and incomplete Charter. This document was developed to found the E-tower and now many of its details do not apply to the organization the E-tower has evolved to become. Therefore, a constitution will be completed by the end of the first semester. Once it has been completed, we will operate within its boundaries to build a sustainable organization.

E-tower Historian

Probably the biggest aspect of sustainability and continuous improvement for any organization is institutional memory. The idea behind this concept is that the strongest organizations preserve and record their progress. They record what has worked and what has not worked so that future generations do not make the same mistake. To do this within the E-tower this year, we will be instituting an E-tower historian position that records the events and discussions that occur in the E-tower for future generations to follow and learn.