RECESS, which is the world’s first college and music festival, was held at UNC Charlotte Oct. 6-7.

RECESS consisted of four parts: a Concert, which featured superstar artists, Pitch, a business competition, Playground, an all-out networking affair, and Office Hours, which consisted of well-known guest speakers. These four parts incorporated business experiences, arts and entertainment and quality learning.

UNC Charlotte was the only university in the south and one out of ten in the nation to host this event.

The Following UNC Charlotte organizations organized & executed the program: 49er Foundry, ALPFA, AIM and Radio Free Charlotte.

This year the concert was held at The Fillmore Oct. 7 at 9 p.m. The concert featured dates with superstar artists including Adventure Club.

Office Hours, was the speaker series that was focused on disruption, innovation and inspiration. Sebastian Solano, who is the co-founder, CEO and President of the Life in Color; the largest EDM paint party concert tour in the country 7 Forbes 30 Under 30 was the key-note speaker at UNC Charlotte.

Also included in Office Hours was a panel discussion on how to kickstart a career in social media and digital marketing featuring Shara Senderoff, CEO of Career Sushi and Callan Green and director of social media at L’Oreal Paris.

The Pitch competition gave students the opportunity to take their business ideas and transform them into reality. The team that won the competition was given the opportunity to take their ideas to Los Angeles, California and pitch them to major investors, meet potential mentors and win other future opportunities.

There were five UNC Charlotte teams that got selected to pitch and the top 3 teams were all 49er Foundry student startups. All competing teams received $1000 in cloud storage, free credit card processing up to $10,000, two month license of founder suite and two months free on shopify.

The Winning team Nona had members from UNC Charlotte’s school of Business, Engineering and Computer Science. Nona is a home 3D printer that prints custom size clothing items. Nona received $10,00 dollars worth of cloud storage & an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles to pitch major investors & meet potential mentors.

Student founders from last year’s Field Trip have gone on to raise aggregate seed funding of over $12 million from Tim Draper, Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff and others.

For about five hours students were able to speak with multiple vendors throughout the student union that gave quality information as well as provided possible future opportunities for students during the Playground networking fair.

Around 500 students visited the first part of the program, which was the playground, at the Student Union

“The 49er Foundry is happy to be a sponsoring organization for the RECESS stop at UNC Charlotte. We at the 49er foundry constantly strive to connect students with networking and career opportunities. RECESS is a great way for students to network with like minded entrepreneurs, get connect and be advise by top executives from across the states.”-Miguel Avila, who is a student employee at Ventureprise and 49er Foundry.

Harvard, University of Miami, University of Southern California, University of California Los Angeles, University of Texas Austin are other school set to also host this event during this fall semester.