U of I 2009 College of Business Diversity Exchange

Today was the college of business's diversity exchange. They called
it an exchange, but it was a lot like a conference.

They had some pretty cool activities to illustrate some aspects of the
benefits of diversity. I learned a lot.

In the first activity, they gave it person a picture from a series of pictures that kind of told a story. Then they had to put the pictures in order without letting anyone else see what their picture is. The idea was that each person usually only sees part of the bigger picture and that it helps to work together in order to see the whole thing.

The second activity divided the group into smaller groups of 4 or 5 people. Then the gave each group the rules to a card game. The objective of the card game was the same for each table, but the rules were slightly different. At first, there's no problem, but when we had the winners from each table move to another table and told them they weren't allowed to talk, it caused a little confusion. The idea was that sometimes we go into a situation thinking that everyone has the same understanding of something. But with different backgrounds, people often come together with the same objective, but sometimes have a slightly different understanding of the rules.

Overall, it was a pretty good event. It was nice that our company could be a part of it (even though it was a very small role).