New MBA Blog found!

While checking to see who links to me (can you tell I'm avoiding doing all this writing) I found a new MBA Blog. Lucky Goldstar (surely another pseudonym?) is at Insead where among other things he has fallen asleep in finance class. Hell, if we'd spent thirty seconds longer on stripped bonds I'd have fallen asleep in finance class too.

Welcome to the blogroll lucky.

MBA Goon

I feel like I'm in Archers Goon. Archer wants his words by Friday. Only in my case Archer is the rest of my NBD team (words needed today) and the business school (many many words needed by the end of the week). Stuff I've promised to write includes pieces for the next school magazine and copy for forthcoming recruitment brochures. (In an earlier life I was an occasional copywriter)

So coming your way are

The final write up of the Oxford Business Forum
The write up of Herman Hauser on why the future is wet
The big write up on Synesthesia

The thing I'm working on at the moment is the job skills needed for Heritage Theatres new marketing manager. What I want to say is "The ideal candidate will have several years experience of marketing for publishing companies, preferably in the education sector. Key skills will include the ability to screw distributors and media sellers alike to the floor while maintaining good enough relationships that they want to work with you again." and when I was allowed to write recruitment ads I occasionally got away with this kind of thing. (nothing as good as Ogilvy's legendary "Wanted, Trumpeter Swans" ad though). Sadly this is a business plan, and you can't say things like that, .
time to break out the dictionary of marketese and weasel speak.

But only after I get over my first jogging expedition of the year. I really should remember that if you stop it gets harder again.

Things get grim in Baghdad

Salaam Pax is providing better coverage of whats going on in Baghdad than any of the media channels. Worrying things to come out of his latest report are the failure of the Iraqi authorities to properly sound air raid alerts and the definition of targets adopted by the west. He seems to think that so stealthy and frequent are western attacks that the authorities are having trouble knowing when to sound alarms and all clears, I guess this means people are getting caught outside when the bombs start to fall.

The fact that we bombed an officers club is scary too. Sure its a legitimate target since our strategy is to go after the Iraqi leadership, but he says it was in a residential area, and that we missed it, but hit surrounding areas. Since our precision munitions are precise to 35m (admittedly bloody good from 30 000 feet up) its not hard to see how we could start hitting civilians in large numbers when we go after things like this.

This war is grim and getting grimmer, but unless we're very lucky it'll get a lot lot worse before its over. I think our military expected that, but I'm not sure the western public has been prepared for this at all.

Crunch Time

So what happens if you lock five MBA students in a room, during the first *really* nice weather of the year and tell them to write a business plan? Well, they do it, but all of them wish they were elsewhere. To be fair the school becomes absolutely lovely in summer, all light and space, and the rather harsh stone quad becomes surprisingly attractive. Just waiting for the trees on it to develop leaves, and all that climbing ivy to get done climbing.

Anyway, a couple of days have gone by and we've thrashed out a lot of the detail for Heritage Theatre's future plans. Along the way we've discovered that even a rigourous process of 'does this number look right' for each and every assumption in the model still leaves you with an incredibly optimistic result which needs revising to handle the demands of reality. Still, many spreadsheets later we're all happy and tomorrow is the all singing, all dancing presentation, complete with video footage. (anyone know of good DVD ripping software? Answers by midnight or not at all please)

After that its just a case of write the business plan up nice and tidy and this term will finally be over.

What, you were expecting more from me about the war? Sorry, too busy to watch the CNN /BBC/Fox websites and blog. Take yourselves to Technorati's current events material and find more opinion than I can muster written by bloggers with a lot more time on their hands than I have right now.

OK, just the two links. Dear Raed is the weblog of an Iraqi man calling himself Salaam Pax, he's in Baghdad writing as it all happens. Some people aren't convinced he's real, obviously if he is he doesn't want a visit from the Baath party. So he can't provide evidence. After a bit of research Paul Boutin has concluded that he's probably real. Sooner or later weblogs will produce their own Anne Frank. For now though add Dear Raed to blogs like the UN worker in Afghanistan and the Homeless Guy in Nashville. Showing you lives you can't imagine living.