Ain't no free riding in this town

Free riding is the phenomenon whereby someone in a study group doesn't pull their weight, and as I understand it it happens at pretty much every business school. The only way to deal with it is for the students who are on the recieving end to get stroppy and cause problems. The ultimate sanction of taking someones' name off a piece of work is so drastic no one ever uses it.

Following a discussion with the course director (who is an economist and felt that some kind of market mechanism would be sufficient to fix this) Maria and I came up with the following :-

At the end of each term (but before any marks are known) all studygroup members submit anonymous marks out of 10 for each of their study group colleagues.

Those students in the bottom 20% are then formed into studygroups by themselves with the normal process being applied to everyone else.

You could set a minimum score for avoiding this, so if the whole class performs well no one need suffer.

The incentive would be to contribute as otherwise next term you would be guaranteed to find yourself in a group of unco-operative free riders. Worse, while it might not be announced which group is which the class is pretty quickly going to work out who comprise the 'plague ship' making finding NBD and SBP teams difficult for them.

Good news is that this proposal is going forward for consideration in some form and may be applied to next years students. If anyone knows of any similar systems at other business schools or has comments on this idea I'd love to hear about them.

Made me laugh

Well the job offers are starting to come in for folks here at SBS. I'm not saying the markets easy or anything but there are definitely more people who know where they're going and what they're doing than before. Of course that doesn't include me...

So I've decided to try this.

To Whom It May Concern:

Thank you for your letter of [date of the rejection letter]. After
careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept
your refusal to offer me employment at this time.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually
large number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising
field of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite [Name of the Company]'s outstanding qualifications and previous
experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not
meet with my current needs.

Therefore, I will initiate employment with your firm immediately. I
look forward to working with you. Best of luck in rejecting future
candidates.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Places to be

Tim is at a very interesting conference in Boston about blogs and what they can and can't do, and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure. Wish I was, work here is starting to drive me nuts, although a half hour of sending email and trying to organise seems to have seen off lunchtimes massive frustration attack.

One big effort over the weekend and the end will be in sight I think. Oh, and the idea to try and set up some blog related thingumy for next years class seems to be a goer. Might take a little longer than I thought though. Important point is one Tim makes on his blog, if the school does this it can't control it. You only have to see the strings once and a puppet show will never look the same again.

Finally, Tony has mailed to say that the Oxford brand is playing much better for him in the US than it idid in Europe. Which is nice.

More Baghdad Blogs

G, of dear Raed fame now has a blog of his own. Wonder if the Guardian are going to give him a column too?

Bursting the blogobubble (version 0.1)

Aside from being the kind of right wing whiner who makes me come out all revolutionary Instapundit (better known as Glenn Reynolds) is very very very wrong about blogs. He, along with a few others are quietly crowing that it was their blogs which led to the resignation of Howell Raines at the NY Times.

Now much as I'd like to think I could knock out a few killer headlines and demolish Piers Morgan, Kelvin Mckensie and proably the uber editor Murdoch himself I'm pretty sure I can't. I'm pretty sure this didn't happen to Raines either, especially as the story that did for him began as an exclusive produced by a freelance journalist. Now, the story linked above has a few interesting elements that point to why weblogs aren't about to revolutionise anything... The reporter was a professional, paid to write and paid to research, he checked his facts and conducted interviews. More importantly he's a freelance reporter in New York, ten to one the story was an inside tip off or written as a favour to push a grudge. The equivalent of a journalist ringing up Private Eye in the UK to dish out some gossip on the guy who just scooped him / spilled his pint / nicked his bird.

The semi-professional bloggers who reported on this were doing nothing more than playing pundit, rehashing, reworking and commentating on the story, but not actually adding anything to it.

I've already written about how the blogosphere (blogobubble?) overhyped it's own relevance to the war in Iraq and without wanting to sound like a luddite I think a few deep breaths might be necessary before we kill traditional media. (what, again - that's soooo 1999).

More on this later.

Amsterdam, part one

This is getting blogged in chunks, it's late and I'm busy. However I should take the time to tell you all about Boom Chicago, cause otherwise you might go to Amsterdam and not go to see them - which would be a shame. If anyone reading this has seen 'Who's line is it anyway' it was a bit like that - a group of comediens improvising around things suggested by the audience. Unlike Who's Line there was a theme running through the whole show, the full title of which was 'Boom Chicago Saves The World (sorry about the mess), and half the scenes were scripted rather than pure improvisations.

Most of the show revolved around things Boom Chicago needed to save the world from. George Dubya and Tony featured heavily, but some of the best stuff was less political. Boom Chicago saves the world from American/Pop/whatever Idol was fantastic as was the mobile phone sketch. I'd go on, but it'll only be different if you go, whichI suggest you do.

Doh!

Tony has just done this. Which makes me feel bad for not having thought of it myself. Fear not, I shall ensure that one is called ito existance for next terms MBA class. Probably tomorrow.

Back from Amsterdam

Just back from Amsterdam and a weekend of barbeque, beer and improvised comedy. More later today.