SchwartzBlog

Today I embark on what will surely be the greatest journey of my life. I will be traveling throughout Europe for a little under 6 weeks. While I will not be able to receive any communications, I will be using a prepaid cell phone to tweet and update my Facebook for those of you who would like to follow.

For those of you who do not feel the need to follow my every tweet (which I completely understand), here is my complete itinerary:

June 29th – Fly From JFK to Geneva, Switzerland

July 1st – Travel to Les Deux Alps, France

July 6th – Travel to Verona, Italy

July 8th – Travel through the Dolomites, Italy

July 13th – Travel to Interlaken, Switzerland

July 15th – Travel to Saas Fee, Switzerland

July 19th – Travel Back to Geneva, Switzerland

July 20th – Travel to Zurich, Switzerland

July 22nd – Travel to St. Andrews, Scotland

July 26th – Travel to Budapest, Hungary

July 28th – Travel to Prague, Czech Republic

July 31st – Travel to Hluboká nad Vltavou, Czech Republic

August 1st – Travel to Český Krumlov, Czech Republic

August 3rd – Travel to Dürnstein, Austria

August 5th – Travel to Vienna, Austria

August 8th – Fly back to JFK, New York.

This is going to be the greatest experience of my life. Pictures, tweets, status updates, and blog posts to follow.

See you all in August…

These past 2 months I have had one game that has ruled my life. The winner of the game was Vincent Groppa. Below is an article I wrote on the matter. Enjoy

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For those of you who haven’t heard of Assassins, ask a Senior. Because Senior year, assuming there is someone willing to run it (my advice, don’t), you will be part of the most complex “cat and mouse” game you have ever seen. Assassins has been the focus of my existence for the past few weeks, so what I have decided to write is the complete guide to how this game was put together. Enjoy.

When I was asked to run Assassins, I realized I could think of it as a challenge. I had heard in previous years that the game had lost some of its competitiveness because in the end, the rules were easy enough to bend and if you wanted to be honorable, your chances of winning would slip. I knew there must be a way to run this game without a hitch. If everyone knew they had a fighting chance, more people would fight. So I started on a journey I would end up regretting more times than I would ever imagine.

The first step was to organize communication. With 220 players, I needed a way for people to report kills without contacting me directly. Each player was given a game card with their name and a passcode. When there was a legal, legitimate kill, the victim would simply hand over their card to their assassin. The assassin would then go online and fill out a form that would automatically check the passcode with the name. This gave me more time to focus on other topics in the game. From that point, I would only need to address disputes.

The initial rules were simple: Nothing at school. Unfortunately that was the only easy rule. So I asked the people who really were into it. I wanted this game to survive, but that didn’t mean I needed to write the rules. In my mind, I just interpreted what others wanted.

When I started planning this game, I thought all I would need to do was plan it. I figured once I started the game, it would run itself. In short, I could not have been more wrong. I found that for quite a few people, it was simply easier to lie about a kill then forfeit. In addition, a lot of players chose to use the smallest water guns possible. The problem is it’s easy to stay dry when you are being shot by a water gun the size of a fist.

The biggest issue I have had to tackle is dealing with everybody. With 220 players and 1 of me, it is easy to say that I was getting quite a few phone calls each day. I will point out that some people did volunteer to help me. However, most of them volunteered at a time when my only task was resolving disputes, which is a task that I cannot delegate to anyone else.

I had three different types of communication with people that could lead to an argument. The first was registration. Since I had to make game cards for everyone in the game, assign and distribute targets, and study for APs at the same time, I needed to get all of it out of the way early. But after I closed registration, I then got a wave of students who still wanted to play. When this happened, I took a very simple approach. Anyone that contacted me, apologized for being late, and asked politely was given a spot in Assassins. After registration, 40 players were admitted to the game, and 1 was denied. The one exception was for people that asked me after targets were given out. At that point I couldn’t take any more teams and still be able to study for my APs.

I knew that once I made one rule, ten people would ask me to create rules that were similar. Furthermore, I didn’t want the Assassins rulebook to be a paperback. I took the same approach in dealing with new rule requests as before. Anybody that asked politely for a rule to be created, I took a long look at. Astonishingly, quite a few of my friends seemed to think that they could just tell me the rules they wanted in the game and I would just go along. I got calls at any hour of the day, and some requests as late as after the game had already started. All in all, my goal was not to impress my friends. It was to create a game that would give everyone a fighting chance.

The last communications I received were after the game had started. Rule clarification, protocol clarification, and dispute resolution. This needed a different approach. In prior scenarios, I had more time on my hands and less people getting in contact with me. Once the game had started, I would receive 50 or more communications per day. When I received a communication from someone who knew the rules and had a question that could only be answered by me, I normally answered it within minutes. What I simply could not deal with were people that would ask me questions that could have been answered by the emails I had already sent them.

Assassins has been a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I have had to start turning off both my phone and computer at 10pm because I am just too tired to keep talking to people. On the other hand, I have changed the way people think about Assassins.

Most people knew I was in contact with the school administrators about this game. Most people don’t know I was also in contact with the New Castle Police Department. When I first started talking to them about Assassins, they told me I was the first organizer to ever bring it to their attention. In addition, I found that this year, the amount of issues the department had to deal with were “reasonable.” In their minds, the game hadn’t become completely safe, but it was on its way.

Assassins is played all around the country. Some games get a lot of scrutiny from adults, and some get none. My goal for this game was to make it in such a way that in the future, it could be played openly. We wouldn’t need to hide it from the administration or the police.
That was my goal for this game. Only time will tell if I succeed or not.

In summary, Assassins was a huge undertaking. But If I had the choice, I would do it again.

Just kidding. I will never do this again.

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Thank You For Reading

Over 2 years ago I ran into a man whose name is Tom Krieglstein. I can’t give you intimate details because at the time I had not previously met Tom ergo I did not have a blog.

Tom’s message was incredible, that with the right level of intensity, a group of people could change an entire campus. It was a revolutionary idea to me, so I made sure I “ran into him” again the next morning.

The next morning I went up to him at breakfast and started a conversation. I told him I was interested in bringing him into my school, and he seemed slightly intrigued. I ended up giving him a copy of my Wall Street Journal. I know now that he doesn’t read the newspaper. But he got a kick out of the fact that a 15 year old gave him one.

The following year I was on Student Council and thought he would be a great keynote speaker. I made the calls, got the contract signed, even met him for dinner in New York City one night to discus the details. For Tom, it was the first time he had ever spoken to a school where he only communicated with a student prior to his speech. Most of his speeches are at colleges, so the fact that this happened at a high school was even more surprising to him.

At the end of Seminar Day 2010 he offered me the chanced to come intern for him. I had a little time before I went away for the summer so I agreed. It was an amazing experience. I won’t go into full detail because it is at the beginning of my blog.

Now I have another story to tell. Last June I was approached by my assistant principal about an idea. He runs ideas by me all the time, but this one in reticular intrigued me. He had this idea to take a group of seniors after AP Exams and let them do some internship instead of having to spend the last 5 weeks of school in a classroom. I loved the idea and told him as such. The following fall that idea took form. It was called Senior Experience.

Again, I am not going to go into huge detail on Senior Experience because it is in another part of my blog. But even before Senior Experience became real, I had already spoken to Tom about it. See, I had known about Senior Experience before its inception, so when my mini internship ended last summer, I told Tom there was a good chance it would not be the last time I entered his office.

As it turns out, it would be the last time I walked into that office because they moved. But that is beside the point. For the last 5 weeks I have been working for Tom. And what a 5 weeks it has been.

As you might recall from previous blog entries, I started my internship listening in on sales calls. I would take notes on only on the business part of the conversations but also the personal aspects of the conversation. The idea was to know the customer in every sense, to connect to them on a personal level. Because personal connections are unbelievably stronger than business connections.

Further down the road Tom recognized a skill of mine. While I was good at taking notes, it was not my specialty. Tom started sitting me down and pitching me ideas. I was a springboard. If you gave me nothing, I would give you nothing back. But if you gave me a small idea, I could turn it into something bigger within minutes. It was the same thing my assistant principal had been doing with me for years. The difference is, Tom was able to point it out.

The last week of my internship was spent at a Social Media Conferenced called Likeable U. In those two days I attended various Keynotes, Seminars and Panel Discussions. I heard from CEOs, Public Relations experts from the NBA, and even a current NFL punter. Full disclosure, the punter is the current punter for the colts, and the colts rarely punt. Still, he was a cool guy.

One of the most important things I learned at Likeable U was that it was more than possible for me to excel in the job market at a young age. I met people who were not more than a year older than me and had already started in the market while they were in college. They told me that my enthusiasm would be a bigger factor than my age if my enthusiasm was big enough.

I learned that the best core ideas don’t come from a boardroom, but from the most unlikely places. The boardroom is where those ideas are further developed or implemented, but not initially created.

The people I met at this conference were the people I wanted to become. Those that didn’t let their age get in the way. They just kept moving forward until their goals were achieved.

This internship gave me 3 key advantages. First off, I learned a lot more about social media. How to avoid its potential downfalls, and more importantly how to further use it to my advantage.

Secondly, I learned how to sell. I spent weeks on sales calls understanding what techniques worked and what didn’t for each type of customer.

Lastly, I learned about myself. I learned that I am not the kind of person you want creating something. Rather, someone who will take an idea and run with it. This internship gave me an understanding of what I am going to be in the years to come.

That was my Senior Experience 2011. And I promise I am going to talk about assassins soon…