Talkin' 'bout my g g g generation

"This house believes that 'the free music mentality' is a threat to the future of music", was tonights' debate at the Oxford Union. Now somewhere along the line I'd got all excited about the prospect of seeing Chuck D and Bruce Dickinson in some kind of celebrity death match showdown over digital music. You know, The Trooper vs Terminator X or something, but never mind, they both cancelled, leaving us with a number of record industry bigwigs to do the talking on both sides. Here's a quick rundown of the speakers...

In reverse order..
Ronnie Gurr, Founder of Richard Branson's V2 label (Against)
Jay Berman, President of the Federation of Phonographic Industries (For)
Doug D'arcy, Chrysalis (Against)
Chris Wright, Chairman, Chrysalis Media (For)
Nick King President of Nielsen Entertainment (Against)
Hilary Rosen, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) (For)
Will Harris, Student, Keble College, (Against)
Nick Pacheco, Student, Christchurch College (For)

Now, my original plan was to assemble some kind of coherent summary of the whole debate, notes about each speakers performance and so on. However I forgot to take a notepad, and to be honest, most of what was said has already been said plenty of times. For the record though Nick Pacheco may have come second in some world debating contest but until he learns to speak slowly, breathe between sentences and deliver his arguments in a manner that makes them somehow listenable he's never going to come first.

Fortunately the industry figures were up to snuff, presumably years in business provides an ability to talk that the Oxford tutorial system hasn't quite replicated yet and they were clear and cogent across the board. Both sides wasted no time in proving that they'd heard of Napster, Morpheus, Gnutella and co, but the technical debate got no further than that. Indeed aside from Hilary Rosen's insistance that no copy protected CD has been issued in America there was no desire to talk - or even mention tech in anything but the most general terms. So, what did they talk about?

On the for side was an impassioned plea to spare the music business, after all - without them who would find, distribute and publish the new music? Do we know, we were asked, just how long record companies back artists? It could be years, three, maybe four albums before they turn a profit, and as was quite sensibly pointed out, just because you can make money in the music business doesn't mean you can't lose it. I should say that I believe these people when they say they care about music, that much did come through. Its easy to say that the music industry is what pays their wages, but I'm pretty sure that at some level they believe that what they're doing is right. They have of course made huge emotional, financial and personal investments in the companies they run. You'd be surprised if they hadn't, but one or two cynics may have realised that at least to the managers (if not the shareholders) its not all about the money.

Against the motion was a combination of lambasting the industry for stifling creativity, foisting pop-stars, pop-idol and co onto the unsuspecting public, profiteering at the expense of the artists and - one of the more common words of the evening - 'incompetence'. It seems pretty clear that there is some commercial interest in embracing new ideas - maybe not at the level of the big five, but music distribution is on the agenda at some places. Doug D'arcy of Chrysalis even made a plea for a return to the 60's when musicians had to choose between playing free gigs (he assured us they wanted to) and playing paid gigs (they too had to pay the man...). The suggestion was a simple one, copy protection for those who want it, and the right to distribute for those who don't.

Now the last two speakers get their own write up - cause they were worth it.

Jay Berman is one of those old American businessmen who exude charisma just by opening their mouths. Make no mistake, the guy may have known he was on a losing side but he was a damn fine speaker. He didn't say much, probably the shortest speech of the night, and when he pointed out that everything that could be said had pretty much been said you got the feeling he wasn't so much talking about the night - as the last few years. He's heard it all and he's standing his ground, period. His one message though was this

"Each generation has had their own music. For your generation it's filesharing. And I think thats a pretty terrible thing"

I may be misquoting slightly, but thats the sentiment, we're going to be defined by our theft of intellectual property. It was powerful stuff, delivered with plenty of bombast, but to the audience it was just be a sign of how far the music industry has gone from its roots. This years kids? they're not cool anymore.

Ronnie Gurr summed up against with a pretty long speech, and while he took his time getting started (a mild scottish mumble of an accent didn't help the first minute or so) he turned it round in the end. Its all about the "Whats that?!" moment he said. That point where you hear a tune and have to have it. He said nice things, he told us we weren't criminals for downloading music and he had enough command of the evidence to make his case well. He also had the ace in his sleeve, Howard Berman's bill to legitimise hacking by copyright holders and the massive donations he's recieved from the music industry. 'Pure coincidence' he assured us. Given that Berman had opened by telling us that "the music industry never hacked anyones computer" the introduction of the evidence that it was just waiting till it could purchase the required legislation pretty much ended the debate.

There was a final kick of defiance as Ronnie Gurr summed up with what was one too many assaults on the record industry's management, 'personal and offensive' was the gist of what Chris Wright was trying to say before some student shouted him down on a point of order. It didn't matter, most of the audience had gone to the bar, the result had been decided before the debate started, and whatever Bruce and Chuck had done with their evening off, they probably weren't regretting it.

Further coverage...
Need to Know
Nick at Magdalen

Always end with a quote

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

Speak MBA

Strategy class today. Now I don't have too much of a problem with what we're being taught - Porters Five Forces model, Levett's Customer Defined Markets, this kind of thing. The main thrust of it all is the creation of sustainable competitive advantage which is pretty much the unchallenged paradigm within which strategy discussion takes place - a robust enough concept on which to build a discipline. All in all, what you'd expect.

However a few things came out today which I was less happy about. One was the notion that we should develop our rhetorical skills so we can deploy and use these theories on future potential clients. The phrase for this? "Learn to Speak MBA" Strategy is after all open to a lot of interpretation and its going to be a tough sell. Well, OK, rhetoric is an important part of any non-scientific subject. But to suggest that these theories can be presented as nothing more than temporary con-tricks, fashionable ideas that can be manipulated to win business or alter stock prices is crass. What we need is to be provided with an intellectual model within which we can evaluate, criticise and create theories, and if the end result is theories that are difficult to apply or understand well so be it. You don't find sociologists and historians trying to explain capitalism with single powerpoint slides.

At the end of the day though the market in strategy is messing up not just implementation (probably unavoidable) but the teaching of the subject. If things are complex or demanding then tell me so and give me the tools to understand them. Don't fob me off with a simplified version and an assurance that combined with a little rhetorical flourish this is all I'll need to make my way in the world. I don't want to know when an idea is fashionable, I want to know when an idea is right.

An American Dream?!

Yesterday was People and Organisations, which I pretty much think of as the class on how to make people happy and productive, or at least productive (and most enlightened theory seems to say that happy people are productive). Anyway, we had a discussion of Nordstrom's labour difficulties which opened with the rather theatrical question :-

"Is Nordstrom the American Dream or the American Nightmare"

and about hallf the class said dream. Now, maybe its my left leaning upbringing, but in the late 80's there was a culture of systematic employee abuse by middle management at Nordstrom. Can bloggers be sued? I'll say it again "there was a culture of systematic employee abuse by middle management at Nordstrom". Now frankly once you've got that I don't care about Earnings Per Share, or whether some employees had massive opportunities to earn, because the only way to get them was to trample over the rest of the labour force.

Fortunately in this case the courts agreed with me, but I do wonder. Do some of my classmates think Nordstrom's only mistake was to get caught?

In other news

Quick roundup. This Thursday I'm planning on going to see Chuck D and Bruce Dickinson duke it out at the Oxford Union over whether digital music and file swapping a la Napster is a good thing. For a number of reasons I'm getting seriously interested in this - and much as I like Maiden, I'm coming down with Chuck D on this one, either the record companies get with the program or its welcome to the terrordome...

Todays recommended reading is this, on technology, progress and economic revival. It's also the best treatment of the now hackneyed 'internet as railroad' analogy that first emerged sometime last year.

Food at the business school continues to be good stuff. Don't remember getting served chilli prawns and linguini when I was an undergraduate. And last week we had polish day in the cafeteria - complete with shots of Vodka (no wonder I can't remember the finance lecture).

Finally >Jenny Brown thinks I'm an OK MBA. I'm guessing this is progress - certainly makes me feel a little better about having crashed her blog with random comments...

And just when are you going to do your revision?

That was the challenge from our revision professor for finance. As he put it, most of us sat through last weeks lecture thinking, this is cool, I understand this, no worries. So today he gave us a pop quiz. What is the meaning of accrual? How much dividend can a company legally pay? And while we kind of knew the answers we weren't providing the word perfect exam standard answers we're going to need. Revision required - starting tonight. You see we've got eight weeks of lectures - then the exams, no break, no chance to write notes. You know it then - or you fail.

CV Writing, ludicrous laws and ambition

We've been working on our one page CV's this week. Apparently there is a standard, one page CV format that all MBA recruiters will expect to recieve our CV in. On Friday we had an hour brief on this format, half an hour of which came down to whining. Turns out that in the US firms can be sued for asking about your age, race or origin. It also turns out that firms are now so paranoid about this that they will turn down any CV applications that might provide them with this evidence, so the Americans on the course were worried that the schools file of MBA CV's might be binned by US firms as just too damn revealing.

I'd like to start by saying that this is pathetic, on behalf of the firms, the overblown political correctness that got to this situation and an entire culture that thinks the courts are the answer to anything. One day someone will work out how much damage lawyers do to the American economy, they may even notice how dumb this stuff is. Anyway, it might be a good point and it might be worth changing the CV's but it wasn't worth thirty minutes of tarting about.

The real point though is this. Those of us with MBA's are supposed to be special. We're supposed to be achievers, we're supposed to be the ones who are going to make things happen in the next twenty years. We are not supposed to be sending STANDARD CVs to the USUAL recruiters, to get the SAME jobs that everyone else has. I do not want to be in Investment Banking, Management Consultancy, Finance, Strategic Consultancy or any of this other hum drum boring crap. I want to **do** something, build a brand, found a company, launch an idea, develop a product. I want to contribute, and when I need a financier, an investment banker, a management consultant or some strategic guidance these folks can damn well realise that they're working for me. (even if they are making ten times as much money)

The only famous consultants are the ones with their names over the door.