Zuckerberg Speaks at BYU

When I heard Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg was coming to town, I jumped all over the opportunity to go listen to what the youngest billionaire in the world had to say about success and technology.

Last week U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch invited Mark Z. to come to Provo and have an informal forum with him in front of a crowd of nearly 11,000. This was the first time Mark has ever visited a college campus to talk. Mark even mentioned how nervous he was to speak in front of so many people. He had never spoken to such a crowd. He quickly got over his shyness and did a good job talking about his company, and the major things he looks for in future employees and entrepreneurs. Senator Hatch is a form BYU alum, and did quite a candid job asking Mark some questions that had been submitted by BYU students.

Some things that stood out to me were a few simple things Mark said. He mentioned that the key to any company is the people who are employed. Make sure that everyone who you hire is great at what they do.

Mark took a psychology class while at Harvard and mentioned how it is the most important course along with sociology. It's important for

people to know what's going on with their friends and family. He just helped to provide the tools necessary to allow this.

My favorite part was the part where he mentioned what he looks for in hiring people. Passion. He said, “We look for people who are passionate about something. In a way, it almost doesn’t matter what you’re passionate about. What we really look for when we’re interviewing people is what they’ve shown an initiative to do on their own.”

What have you taken initiative to lead lately? He wants to hire people who think that his organization is broken and want to help make it better in other ways that they are currently not using.

After this technology forum I got the chance to talk to one of my best friends from Spain, Javier. He is doing an internship with a local Spanish tv station. He wanted to interview a couple people about what they had just heard, so he interviewed me in Spanish, along with a good friend of mine, Cristina. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went.

The Return of OMD

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of music, especially 80s music. I have spent the last few years rediscovering songs from my childhood. I think I've done a pretty good job recovering songs that I can remember hearing when I was a kid. The best part is that all the songs I remember are still big hits. I think I have really good taste in music.

Some of the earliest songs I can remember hearing are songs from Tears for Fears, Animotion, and OMD. How cool is it to be able to attend one of these familiar groups in concert?

OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), A British pop group organized in 1978, came to Salt Lake City on March 23, 2011 for the first time in 23 years, and guess who was there? Me.

I had nearly forgotten how much I love synthesizer-pop music. It's great. I didn't really know what to expect from these guys, but I was very surprised with how hip they still are. The lead vocalist, Andy McClusky, is 51 and had the most fantastic almost spazzy type dance moves.

The concert held at the Depot was sold out. There was a good range of attendees, but I'd guess that the average age was upper 30s.

They put on a terrific show, and I would love to see them again in concert. My biggest disappointment was that they didn't play "Secrets". After returning to the stage to do an encore, my friends and I thought for sure they would be playing Secrets. Instead OMD played a song off their new album and Electricity, their first hit song they wrote at the age of 16.

The band apologized for taking so long to return to Salt Lake, and promised that they would return soon.

A Different Perspective

Recently BYU Forward, Brandon Davies, was suspended from the most successful basketball season to take place at BYU due to an honor code violation. As you can imagine what would happen to a player who plays for a team that is nationally ranked #3, he instantly not only became the talk of the town, but the talk of the country.

Davies' situation has become a number one topic all over ESPN and several news agencies and blogs. He has been one of the top Tweeted topics on Twitter over the past few days, consisting of over 185 million tweeters.

I respect the fact that BYU has a standard and sticks to it, but I would like to point out that Davies has gone through much, much more than what an average student would have had to go through if the exact same rule had been broken. Has his punishment been detrimental? I think so.

The church is centered around the fact that the natural man is evil and constantly committing imperfections that prevent man from returning to live with God someday. Because of this fact, a savior was needed and a gospel was created to give man the opportunity to be forgiven of his sins through repentance. It's a church of forgiveness.

I believe that some kind of restitution had to take place in order to teach a lesson, but was it necessary to take away hopes and dreams, destroy a chance of a lifetime and basically inadvertently defame that crap out of a student just because he had sex with his girlfriend? The school should have taken into consideration the effect this would have on Brandon Davies. Was public humiliation part of the god's forgiveness process? I don't know, God works in mysterious ways, but it's possible.

If you asked me what a proper shellacking would have been, I would have said a suspension from the regular season, and maybe take away the guy's scholarship for next year. This student has had it far worse than any normal student who would have committed the same violation. So if every honor code violation punishment is resolved on a case-to-case basis, why couldn't this case take a slightly different turn to avoid broadcasting a man's sins to the world? Something so personal that should only be known between you, your bishop and God; according to the LDS faith. I suppose Davies knew what he got himself into, so technically nobody should feel bad for him; however, I wonder how many other BYU athletes are sweating bullets right now?

Hanging Loose

I recently returned from an lds singles retreat to Maui, Hawaii. I had a such a good time meeting and making so many new friends. I got to do a lot of fun activities around the island.

One thing interesting that I learned was where the "Hang Loose" came from. I always knew Hawaii was famous for the hanging loose hand gesture, but didn't know what it meant until now. It is actually called the Shawka, because there was once a surfer who had a shark take a bite of his hand, leaving the thumb and pinky finger. Every time he waved to the local people, "hang loose" is all they saw. They called him the "Shawka" because a shark had got to him.

My favorite experience in Hawaii was watching all of the whale breaches. It is whale season and I have never seen so many whale jumping out of the water. One day I was out kayaking with my group, and paddled over to a couple of whales. We were hoping to get a picture of maybe the tail coming out of the water rather than just the blow hole. We were about out of time when all of a sudden the whale started jumping out of the water next to us. It was a momma whale showing its infant how to jump. It was so dang cool! Our tour guide told us that we were lucky. This kinda thing only happens to him once a season. If we were any closer, the whale would have landed on top of us. It was pretty much epic.

The snorkeling was fun to see the turtles and some colorful fish, but there weren't a lot of fish swimming around, so it was hard to spot them. The coral was sweet though.

We went up the Haleakala one morning to catch the sunrise at 10,000 ft. That was pretty cool to be up above all of the clouds.

The road to Hana was a little intense. It is so pretty, but holy cow was it a doozer. I read somewhere that it has over 600 curve turns. Be prepared to get a little car sick, but that part of the island is tropical, so it's worth it.

Having time to travel has been nice. I wish I was able to go with most of my friends who are all jealous, because they're working. But in return, I get jealous of them during the summer when I am super busy working and they all get to go on vacation. Lucky them!

Mini Fiddler

Last week Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband played another phenomenal concert at BYU. I was able to spend nearly an hour in the green room before the show, talking with Ryan and other members of the band. I am friends with most of the guys, so it's always a good time for me to catch up with them, since everyone is always busy with life.

I asked Ryan if he could play a song at my request. He said they didn't know the song. He continued to reject my next two song choices, because they hadn't practiced the songs together. He went on to try to teach me about the theory of concerts. He explained a concert performance like a roller coaster. It has to start high and fast and have low and slow moments, but ending on a high. I knew this, but just wanted them to play something new and different for a change. I went around asking the other band members if they knew the songs, and they all said they did, so I'm no sure why they couldn't squeeze an extra song in.

I saw Ryan's little kid, Trevor walk by with the littlest fiddle I have ever seen. I thought it was a toy, but everyone reassured me that it was real. Trevor is Ryan's Mini Me. He looks just like Ryan, and I'm told that he looks just like Ryan when he was a kid.

Trevor is the kind of kid who wants to be just like his dad. He watches his dad play and gets up and tries to be just like him. With what little vocabulary 2 year old Trevor has, he asked his dad if he could play with them in the concert. Sure enough they let him! Trevor came up during two different songs and played (unplugged) and would occasionally sing into his mini mic. It was so cute! I'm pretty sure Trevor will continue the traditions of his family name and be the 6th generation of fiddlers to be produced by the Shupe family.

I Found a Schmuck!

I was recently talking to a good friend, who I will keep anonymous, about school. He had graduated in December 2008; the same semester I graduated. Since then, he has been going about his business as a college graduate. I have never had a reason to doubt him, until now.

We got to talking about how hard it is to look at a piece of paper, framed on the wall, and make monthly student loan payments for it. I have my Bachelor degree in Communication framed and hung up in my bedroom.

My anonymous friend says, "Oh I never got my degree in the mail." I continued to question him as to why he never tried to figure out why he never got it. He responded, "I just thought it got lost in the mail or something. It doesn't really matter to me, cause I know I am graduated and that's good enough for me." Shocked in awe about how bizarre that response was, I proceeded to tell him about how proud I am of that framed piece of paper that has me $13 grand in debt.

I think that was when the wheels in his head started to turn. A couple days later he came to me saying something about talking to a counselor at UVU and found out that he never officially graduated, because he still has one more class to take. I asked him, how he did not know that? He gave some kind of response that he didn't know. He did say that he had some good news. Since he's an employee of UVU, he can take this class this semester for free! Haha!

Ok so here's my dilemma. How on earth does it take 2 full years to figure out you never graduated?

If you haven't seen the movie "Dinner For Schmucks," you need to watch it.

Does anyone want to invite me and my friend over for dinner?!

Sad Day In Provo

I woke up early this morning to a couple of text messages from my mom and friend letting me know that the Provo Tabernacle was on fire. I immediately thought dang it! What am I gonna do about my date!? I have a date on Sunday night where I was planning on attending the Provo City Christmas concert that is held there annually. To the north side of the the building there is a live Nativity scene that is always a nice addition to the concert.

I grew up in Provo and have been to the tabernacle multiple times. I've been there for stake conferences, concerts, and have even performed there multiple times with the Provo High Band and singing in the Stake Choir. The first time I performed there was back when I was 14 playing the Alto Saxophone in the band. Again I returned multiple times to perform there.

I remember the spirit that I always felt when arriving to the building, and it only grew stronger as I entered into it. It does look, smell and feel as old as it is with each visit. The building was built in 1883. It is a historic reminder that took 15 years for the Mormon pioneers and others to build. It's a pioneer legacy left in Provo.

I hope that maybe some of it can be salvaged and rebuilt. It will be interesting to see what happens with it in the future. (Pictures courtesy of The Daily Herald)