2015 VUT Christmas Ball

Several of my guys at work are attending the Brno University of Technology.  In Czech it is Vysoké učeni technické v Brně - VUT.

One of our interns this term had a project to organise their Christmas Ball with IBM as the primary sponsor.



VUT was founded in Brno, in 1899, as the Imperial Czech Technical University of Franz Joseph.  When the school opened it only offered a single civil engineering course.  This was the first Czech institution of higher education in Moravia.

My guys who helped pull this together.

Between WWI and WWII is when the institution was renamed the Brno University of Technology.

With 24,000 students studying in 8 different faculties, VUT is the largest technical university in Czechland.  For several years in a row it has been ranked among the best universities in the world.  The head of the university is the rector and currently that is prof. RNDr. Ing. Petr Štěpánek, CSc.

The rector and I giving our welcome speeches.

Since I've been supporting the guys they gave me a VIP ticket to the ball.  Sweet!  Especially since all I had to do was show up.  Well...we had a couple of things come up so I found out on Thursday afternoon that I need to represent IBM and give a speech to 1500 people.  Not so sweet.

Let's just say that I wasn't thrilled about having to get up and speak but I managed to get through it.  Then After midnight I participated in a raffle where IBM donated a couple of iPhones and a MacBook Air.

The entire evening was simply outstanding!  I can't wait to see what happens next year.  Here's a video that VUT put together of the ball.