DECA members embrace new season, possible new slogan at leadership conference

“Iowa DECA, lock it!” DECA members yelled out at this year’s Fall Leadership Conference. The leader behind the new catchphrase is DECA member from Tripoli, Rowan Carlson.

On Sunday, Oct. 18 and Monday, Oct. 19, DECA held its yearly Fall Leadership Conference. The conference consisted of a keynote speaker, many workshops and lots of networking between highschoolers. DECA is a business organization that allows high school students to explore leadership through careers like marketing, business management, finance and many more. 

Every year DECA creates a slogan to help guide students. This year’s slogan is “Maximize Your Momentum.” One student took this more literally than others. 

Throughout the conference, Carlson would yell at people to “throw it up,” which was a hand sign of a triangle, to signify the symbol of DECA. Then he would yell, “lock it” where he then collapsed his triangle to make a handshake type motion. 

At first, many people laughed at him. No one had any idea what he was doing. Then he got some people to follow him and do it with him. By the end of the conference, he had all of Iowa DECA doing his hand signal and yelling at the top of their lungs, “Iowa DECA, lock it!” 

“Maximize Your Momentum” means to start something and create a momentum to make others follow you, essentially a butterfly effect.  In business, this might mean to start a business and have it become popular by marketing and promoting your business. But for Carlson, it means using his sense of humor and outgoing personality to create unity all across Iowa, and possibly a new slogan for next year.

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.