Ajaz Ahmed is a very nice man

Despite the fact that I was running a temperature and wanted to do nothing more than curl up with a hot water bottle I made it to London for the meeting with Ajaz Ahmed. Things started well, he hadn't managed to book a room, which upgraded us from meeting in an office, to meeting in the Meridian Hotel - as a side effect lunch was upgraded too, from sandwiches to some very fine hotel cooking. So we met up, me Lance, Jeremy and Jennifer and we chatted for a couple of hours. Which was very cool indeed.

There is something nice about being able to shoot the breeze with someone you're interested in. Less of the thrity seconds to say something interesting you get at networking events and more of the 'hey what about this' or 'what did you make of xyz'. We talked about what we wanted out of our careers -I apparently should start my own company, Jeremy has a future in the BBC, Jennifer needs to leave big companies for agencies and Lance, I forget what Lance was supposed to do. Still its nice to be told you should start your own firm. Much more of this and I will...

And we got bought books. This turns out to be something of a theme with Ajaz. He buys books for his managers and he buys them for clients. He even buys them for MBA students who turned up for a day of networking. I like this. Books are fantastic, wonderful things. Back at Domino I always wanted to give our clients books for Christmas, but it never happened. What I like most about the whole book giving thing is that it sends a whole bunch of signals about what a company is not. This is not a company that is scared of new ideas, this is not a company with one way of doing things, this is not a company where experience always outweighs learning.

Looking at that list you'd think every company would want to be like that, but very few are. I got myself a copy of the Economist Style Guide which I've been meaning to get hold of for ages. Expect my writing to improve dramatically in the next few weeks as it wends it's way into my head.

Off to London

I'm off to London today, for the first bit of networking to fall out of the Oxford Business Forum. Ajaz Ahmed of AKQA has invited us to spend some time checking out his offices, which should be nice. Always interested to see the insides of other new media companies - especially successful ones.

In other business forum news one of the mentors has come back to us to talk about taking the event global and running it in partnership with other business schools in the states. All well and good, as long as they call it the OXFORD business forum.

Demoralisation sets in

If you're going to set twenty one case studies for a course you should at least make them the kind of thing where people feel they're making progress. The marketing cases have not been like this. Each has been carefully selected to demonstrate how little we know about a specific subject area, but due to the tutors refusal to set questions, rather 'just tell me what you would do' nobody ever has anything close to what is presented as the answer in class.

Now this may not actually make too much difference to our marks since there is no real answer and the aim is just to show us things we wouldn't have noticed otherwise. However it does grind you down. A lot. By now our study group meetings are more about doing enough to satisfy ourselves that we tried than they are about trying to crack the case. Five weeks, over a dozen cases written and submitted by hand, in triplicate to the examination schools, and no feedback, no suggestion of progress, no nothing.

I'm sure on paper this looked like a great plan. Real, practical hands on teaching stuff. But when you come to address it its not there. You look around in class and see the blank faces, the resignation and the dejection. You can't teach people by telling them they missed the point week after week after week. I still think I'm learning from this, but I definately think I'm in the minority now. There are just too many trees, and we're too deep in to them for anyone to see the wood without making a real effort.

I'm sure this is having knock on effects as well. If you work quickly and care little a case takes 2 or 3 hours. So thats 7.5 hours a week, plus the lecture of 3.5 hours, plus the reading (maybe another hour or two and ) plus the two hour study group meeting to discuss the things. Thats thirteen hours if you're not trying. If you are trying each case could take four or five hours and it all spirals out of hand very quickly. I've got a gut feeling that this term the exam results will be down, too many people have been stressed out by this work, too tired and too jaded to work through the problem sets from finance or the next installment of Macroeconomics.

Still, its all part and parcel of the start up approach to business school. You try new things, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. This one isn't, but as long as the experiments continue I'm sure we'll be fine...

Feedback is good

Just had an email from a successful applicant to Said who reckoned this site was useful - which makes this all worth while. I've also had some feedback from faculty to the effect that they really like the site, and indeed that those aplicants they've seen this year who've admitted reading the thing have tended to be above average.

So, are the people who do research in advance better candidates, or is reading this site good preparation for the interview ? I have no idea, but I think the best thing I can do is give you some insight into what the place is like. The better informed you are when you decide to apply here or accept an offer from here the more use I'm being.

Victory!

Its interesting what counts for a win in football. But a solid performance, a thirteen goal thrashing and our first goal of the season are definately a victory. Hell the fact we had eleven men, got there before the opposition and put in a good warmup counted. We also added our first booking for foul play Jeff 'Chopper' Pittman doing his best to slice a Pembroke forward in half in a manner that suggested the English game has a certain appeal to the American psyche. Indeed Jeroens rugby induced transformation into SBS's very own Jaap Stam has been a thing to behold.



From left to right (back row)

Neil Chazin, (USA), Daniel Maman (USA), Bryan MacMilan (Canada), Martin Lloyd (Geordie Nation / UK), Wenqi 'you'll never beat the Chinese' Lu (China), Mathew Lawrence (USA?), Serguei 'Russian Madman' Evlanchik (Russia),

Front row

Yimin Jiang (China), Jeff 'Chopper' Pittman (USA), Brent 'foul throw' Hablutzel (USA), Jeroen 'Stam' Ariens (Holland), Narek Harutyunyan (Armenia), Neil 'Skipper' Hunter (UK).

Why was it a win? Aside from all the improvements thanks to our previous outings the opposition needed seventeen goals to go through, and as the second half wore on their increasing frustration and desperation gave the game an edge our previous outings have lacked. As they lost their way we kept our heads up, kept battling and while we finished dead on our feet we went home the happier, not least Brent Hablutzel, scorer of the seasons only goal.

The Business Forum

It was big, we did it and it was a success. Art or Science I don't know but the thing went off with scarcely a hitch, attendees had a great time and a whole bunch of serious business folk turned out to talk to us and they too had a great time. There will at some stage be a big long write up of this , complete with pictutres but for now I'm just coming to terms with the fact that its finished.

They told us about this event on day one of the course and those of us who decided then and there to take part have never known what it's like to be at business school without the pressure to put this thing together bearing down on us. The constant worry that we haven't got enough mentors lined up (by January we had six and thought seriously about cancelling, two weeks later we had twelve which vindicated an awful lot of us)

Oh, and I did the closing toast at the evening dinner, raising a glass to next years forum. It's the start of a tradition, and I was in from the beginning. One of those things that makes it worth coming to school in the first place.