In October, The University of Texas at Austin DECA officers organized a case study competition prep meeting. The officers chose an Austin original for the case study subject: Austin City Limits. Austin City Limits (ACL) is a large music festival that happens for two consecutive weekends in October every year at Austin’s Zilker Park. ACL has brought in big-name artists such as Cardi B and Travis Scott and is a very popular event for Austin residents.
In years past, The University of Texas at Austin (UT) DECA has used ACL’s potential business hurdles in their practice case studies, but this year the officers wanted to think of new situations. Rather than changing ACL’s pricing for the weekend passbands or asking the members to come up with marketing plans geared towards UT students, the officers decided to write the case study about something completely different: safety. There have been real concerns in recent years at ACL about safety ranging from fence-jumping and mosh pit injuries to personal theft. UT DECA members were tasked with creating a public relations campaign focused on one or more of these safety concerns.
Members were randomly paired in groups of two and given 15 minutes of prep time to prepare a presentation to share with other members. The UT DECA officers served as the judges for each team. The members came up with creative solutions to these safety concerns such as innovative walls that prevent climbing, ACL fanny packs that prevent stealing and mosh pit barriers for each concert stage. Ultimately, these case studies served as an important teaching tool for UT DECA. They taught the members to demonstrate their problem-solving skills to tackle case study prompts that they might not expect. One thing all case study competitors know is how unpredictable the prompts are and the UT DECA officer team believes this competition prep meeting has helped prepare UT DECA members to succeed at future competitions.
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