Archives back

At some point I did something that meant the first ten weeks archives vanished from the site. I've just republished them, so now you can see where all this started. Click the archives button on the left.

Just because a jobs worth doing doesn't mean it's worth doing well

That is the only quote I can remember from 'The Soul of the New Machine'. However since I read it at least ten years ago that's pretty good going. It's a fantastic book, and it's on the reading list for the managing technology ventures course. Sadly Microserfs isn't, but that would be pushing it a bit.

Getting organised

Having characteristically failed to get things moving earlier I'm spending today evaluating the summer business projects on offer. I want to work with (in order) marketing, strategy and technology issues. I want to work overseas, and I want a chance to network like crazy. And it's got to be important. I don't want to be working on no side projects here...

Should have done something sooner. Really.

I also need to check which of the electives I'm doing require study groups and start assembling them in an A-team, best of the best kind of way. I need two awe inspiring branding groups and something similar for the technology management course, just as soon as its reading list arrives. Hopefully I'll have got somewhere by the end of the day.

Milton Friedman is a big fat idiot

OK, so I've only read the first page of Capitalism and Freedom but it was so horrifyingly, deliberately wrong, so riddled with polemic and prejudice that I'm not sure I want to read the rest. What got my goat? The mindnumbingly crass statement that social democrats are unable to see the connection between politics and economics.

??????

Is this man seriously contending that a group of politicians who trace their beliefs back to Marx, who care about things like class and the redistribution of income, a political movement which is in many ways underpinned by economics fails to make the connection between politics and economics? Its wrong, just plain wrong. Ignorant polemical garbage. The economics in here may be fantastic, but if that's how he sees the world then there are some serious gaps in the understanding of this nobel prize winning economist.

I guess this is what happens when you get a nobel prize. You can spout your mouth off and no editor will say 'Milt, you couldn't take a moment to check your facts could you?'.

A big hello to all the successful applicants

I've had emails from a few of next years successful candidates, but today I got the details of my student mentees. Here's how it works, each student here is assigned a student from next years class. We're then available to answer questions, provide advice and generally be useful. This time last year I surprised my mentor by living in Oxford and trying to take him to the pub - most people just exchange email.

Anyway, since I imagine they'll be dropping in today welcome to the MBA Experience to my two mentees. I promise, you're gonna love it here.

Random thought... Maybe I could redesign this blog like the cover of Are you experienced? Or maybe I should get on with the jobhunt.

Top notch comics

I found Scary go Round from the links on the Something Positive website. It's fantastically English, set in what's probably Yorkshire and has just the right amount of surrealism, wierdness all round good stuff to keep me reading. I also love the artwork and fact that each and every character clearly has a fantastic taste in music. Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Mark and Lard. In a dark alley. Somewhere near Doncaster. Probably. Good stuff.

It's predecessor Bobbins looks pretty good too.

New Material, New Look

OK, this blog has now been coverted into a big HIRE ME PLEASE sign. Well, that's not quite true. I plan on being incredibly picky about my future employers. So if you're a fantastic company, with a great working environment and an ambition that includes the words 'world', 'leading', 'beating', 'domination', 'unrivaled', 'exceptional' or anything else of that ilk I may be interested.

Gone to Texas

Well, not yet. But in a few weeks my better half (much better two thirds?) will be off to Austin Texas. Her New Business Development Team's business plan has been selected to represent the Said Business School at Mootcorp. I think they've got a chance of winning. This opinion is based on nothing more than the number of 0's in the business plan, the incredible return and the fact that, as they keep saying "This is real, it exists"

I'll tell you more once its ready to be public knowledge. In the mean time my own teams' business plan for Heritage Theatre is pretty much there. Plan is to submit on Tuesday. Meanwhile if you've got a few hundred thousand pounds and would like to turn it into many more through an investment in not just a great business, but something of cultural significance get in touch.

Read my Online CV!

Go on, you know you want to.

Martin Lloyd's CV

OK, now thats finished it's time to see what the slave traders have to offer me.

Ten (thousand?) strong and counting

Jenny Brown may not be a Hah-vahd socialite, but as online doyenne of the MBA bloggers she has unearthed another addition to our ranks. Michael Rutner is at Wharton, and he knows what irony is, so we have to take his claims to be an American with a pinch of salt ;-) Michael is a second generation MBA blogger

"Before starting this blog, I learned a great deal about the life of an MBA applicant / student by reading blogs like these."

and since that was the point of me writing this blog in the first place the emergence of a new set of blogs for the next academic year makes me very happy indeed. Go check out Michaels stuff and see what happens when an innocent lawyer is thrust into the hectic world of Wharton.

Now, any of you Said accepts out there feel like having a go? I promise its not as much work as it looks like...

Jobhunting

My jobhunt starts today. First emails to all those people I can think of who might be useful, and then updates to this site to create an online resume. From that comprehensive document I'll produce cut down .doc's tailored to particular jobs. Before I do that though I have to find the jobs. What am I looking for?

New MBA WLTM stimulating, exciting job in the brand / technology / marketing space for mutual learning, exchange of ideas and the chance to achieve some really cool stuff. Investment banks need not apply

News from the front?

Iraqwar.ru is a very interesting organisation. All anyone seems to know for sure about them is what's available on their 'about us' section. There have been some newsgroup discussions about it, most of which seem to agree that it is more or less what it claims to be with most objectors being broadly disbelieving for no reason, and most proponents cautiously positive. It's not helped that its English translation is by a Russian guy called Venik, who while not responsible for any of the content has a reputation for trolling newsgroups.

So these are the caveats. After an hour of looking through this I can't find a conclusive piece of evidence that the Russian Intelligence Briefings from this site are what they claim to be, namely transcripts of GRU intelligence briefings. On the other hand, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that points towards them being at least partially accurate. Several times the updates predate western media sources by several days, and they successfully predict several Anglo-US offensives. (They are however completely foxed on day 1 when the ground assault co-incides with the air one)

The quotes from soldiers, journalists and others seem reasonable, and their reporting seems to parallel the general pattern of the war emerging through western media. Its also worth noting that while they make Anglo-US casualties sound far higher than has been reported here, they describe the losses as 'militarily insignificant' , while the Iraqi army has lost 8-10% of its fighting power (as of 2 days ago).

So, if we believe the breifings are what they say they are does this mean they're true? Of course not. First Russian intelligence has its own axe to grind. Secondly Russian Intelligence may not be accurate, radio intercepts, spy planes and so on all require interpretation and are easily confused, even by experts. I imagine it's easy to 'hear' the same event repeated times in radio traffic and then imagine (say) multiple reports of a tank being lost. So, read the reports starting on day one, and make up your own mind. But there's no denying that this is more compelling than CNN and if accurate far more detailed information.

Oh, I'm back from holiday. Next things to do, get a job and get on with a freelance copywriting job I've picked up. More on that later.

UPDATE This has just appeared. Whoever the people producing those updates were they weren't the GRU. They may have been ex GRU. They may have been Russian embassy staff, they may even have been Iraqi intelligence, but I very much doubt that. They seem to be claiming to be ex-GRU who wrote reports for the good of mankind. They also seem to have fallen foul of whichever government it is they operate on behalf of. I'm off to archive their material before its removed, and for the purposes of checking it after the war.

There will now be a brief hiatus

Time to pack my bags and abandon this wet and windy island. Well, thats what I thought I'd be doing when I booked a holiday in Madeira, but no. Since discovering that I'm leaving Britain has decided to recreate some kind of arcadian springtime. Oxford is looking truly lovely, the sun has been shining for days and I just hope that Madeira is as nice as this.

I'm logging off. See you in a week or so.

One to read

I made the mistake of picking up the Sunday papers today and found in the Times one of the most harrowing reports yet of what is going on in Iraq. A while ago I wrote that jumpy US marines might kill civilians, and was soundly told that it wouldn't happen, that the war was about liberating Iraq, not killing civilians. Sadly war is hell, and intentions are quickly forgotten and soldiers do things they would not have thought themselves capable of for reasons no one will ever be able to explain.

From the Sunday Times US Marines turn fire on civilians at the bridge of death Registration required to read this.

Lets hope we're closer to victory when I get back from Holiday. Now we've started I believe we have to win, but I wish we hadn't started.

Must be my birthday

At least, I can't think of what else I did to deserve champagne breakfast, smoked salmon, cream cheese, bagels, strawberries and cream. So far twenty seven is a good age to be.

Going back to Brandsville

I don't remember leaving Brandsville anymore than I remember the first time I arrived. I suppose I wandered in slowly through the outskirts and the suburbs. Soaking up the scenery until one day I was surrounded by the skyscrapers and it seemed as natural as the green fields where I'd started out. Years of thinking about, working with and commenting on brands had brought me to a place where although I saw them everywhere it never struck me as odd. In store displays were loaded with meaning about product strength, positioning and the latest trends in graphic design. Phone companies banks, cosmetics, cars, whatever. I saw them all. Always.

Then I left. Packed up my bags, went to business school and forgot about the meanings in the marques and the hidden messages in logotype and straplines. Leaving was a lot like arriving, I sauntered out, barely noticing the transition. I'd given up my citizenship of Brandsville and become a consumer again. If the world was emptier I didn't notice.

Last Thursday I had a meeting in London, and since its a long way on the bus I packed a book from next terms reading lists. 'The New Guide to Identity' by Wolff Olins. I read it, the bus rumbled on and at somepoint it arrived in London. Along the way I'd revised logos, identities, image and projection. I'd been reminded that everything from the lines of a BMW to the smile of a receptionist are there to be loaded with meaning, then aimed at the passers by and the interested with a delivery mechanism so stealthy they'll never even know they've been hit.

When I looked out of the window I realised I'd taken an express train straight to the heart of Brandsville. From the Golden Arches, to the Virgin V and the home brewed efforts of the Feng Sushi diner the world was alive and buzzing with messages and signs and meaning. The words of some new prophet flyposted on a subway wall.

Brandsville. It's been a while.

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.

Decision points

Nothing to do now but watch the news and wait for the next decision point. The thousand or so demonstrators on the streets of Oxford last night may have been a little late to the party, but the start of the war doesn't mean the end of the protests. The question of course is not whether the war can be stopped, but whether the decisions taken by the politicians can be altered. Right now the war is on autopilot and the two armies are being left to sort things out among themselves.

But at some point there will be decisions to be made, and they'll be decisions that go beyond the theatre of war. Perhaps that might not happen till Saddam is gone and the regime broken, or they might come sooner. Wars are too unpredictable for predicitions. Of course the one decision we know we have to make in the UK will come at the local elections. How will we vote, will those who took to the streets take to the ballot box, or will a significant number of British people continue to claim that there's no point voting cause politics is too detatched from reality?

I hope not.

Explain (in one paragraph) the following concepts

1. M1 to M4
2. Total Factor Productivity
3. Purchasing Power Parity
4. The Gold Standard

A few people were foxed by the in one paragraph thing. (it meant a paragraph each) and much email resulted. Jeff Pittman set the tone for last nights discussion

"Hmm, maybe I wasn't supposed to write just one paragraph. Here's the gist of what I wrote:
"1M represents is the liquidity of one bloody Mary, 2M represents Modigliani and Miller who took away my dividends and terrorized my dreams last night, 3M represents an example of my overreaction to stock prices and 4M represents the money supply on steriods. TFP is the residual of the factors which made me feel so low last night, aka two f*ing pints over the convergence of accumulation and depreciation. The gold standard is what I hold my socks' toes to, and purchasing power normalization is what happened when I moved to Oxford and bought into this program.""

As you can tell, we're taking the exams very seriously this time around.

Exams underway

In fact exams nearly over. Only four this term, sat in three papers. Today was a two hour paper on Macroeconomics and Finance II and a one and a half hour paper on Management Accounting. The first and last went pretty well, the Finance paper was, well, tough. Fortunately I spent most of yesterday with my quantitatively gifted girlfriend who patiently explained many of the things I didn't understand, while simultaneously discovering just how little I really know about maths.

How I ever got good marks on last terms finance paper is beyond me. In the unlikely event of it happening again I'll be convinced that our marks are assigned by examiners throwing darts, blindfold at a roulette wheel and have nothing to do with what we actually know. Tomorrow is Operations Management. I reckon passing won't be too hard (hey, fortune, have a hostage) but doing well will be extremely difficult.

Commons debate in real time

Don't worry, I have done plenty of revision for tomorrows exams. This is all a bit more interesting though.

Back later, Jack Straw is summing up and he's showing everything that's wrong with the parliamentary culture. What should be a serious debate loaded with gravitas is turning into a shouting match, a public school boys contest of one upmanship and a frankly obnoxious display. How the hell people are supposed to take us serioiusly after watching this is beyond me.

He's summing up by saying that he 'cannot impune the intentions of anyone in this house' which given that half his speech has comprised character attacks on those who disagree with him and pathetic party political comments has knocked him back even further in my esteem.

hmm, biggest rebellion in modern british political history, biggest demonstration ever and what do we get, nothing. 250 000 countryside alliance supporters was all it took to derail Labours long standing commitment to abolish bloodsports. 1 million suggest killing people is wrong and ... nada

In other news the US published a list of nations it has successfully bribed. "Boucher said the 30 countries on the list are Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Britain, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador (news - web sites), Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea (news - web sites), Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan. "

Sorry, that's the 30 countries who support it. We know Turkey have been promised $16 bn and places like Columbia and Afghanistan are in no position to say no. I'm a little skeptical personally.

Now go here and ask about civil disobedience

Baghdad is big

"The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforseeable and uncontrollable events" - Winston Churchill. (credit for the quote)

Reading CNN I've just discovered that Baghdad contains five million people. That's about 2/3rds the size of London. London is very very big indeed. When Churchill was contemplating a German invasion of Britain he consoled himself with the thought that at least London would swallow an entire German division before being broken. Popular resistance, he thought, would make an occupation impossible. Up till now I've imagined Baghdad as a kind of town, in a desert, the kind of thing you could walk through in an hour or two, not an enormous, sprawling metropolis, thousands of streets, a million houses.

In comparison the US has 250 000 troops in the region, including only 120 000 combat troops, the rest are support personnel for the Army and Navy. The UK adds another 30 000 or so combat effectives. Regardless of whether Saddam goes or not if Baghdad doesn't welcome our forces with open arms, but instead sees them as an occupying power could this city swallow the entire invasion force? There are other cities to occupy, supply lines to guard and all the rest. What if the Iraqi regime survives the initial onslaught, what if the Iraqi people oppose invasion more than they loath Saddam?

What if Baghdad is to become the Arab Sarajevo, beseiged for months, bombarded and surrounded. Starved into submission by the 'liberating' troops? Even worse, what if it becomes the next Stalingrad, plenty of people have proved willing to die for obnoxious regimes before now.

Perhaps this is why Stormin Norman turned back at the approach to Baghdad, perhaps this is why so few US generals think this is a good idea. Perhaps this is why the US army wanted so many more troops before they went into action. For a year there have been suggestions that the US military is not happy with the plan it is being asked to follow, is this why? I don't know where I'm going with all this. I oppose the war, I don't think we need it. On the other hand, if it has to come lets hope Bush is right. Lets hope Saddam goes, the Iraqi's elect a benign government, the Kurds are happy with whatever they get, the Shia's and the Sunni live in peace and the monstrous Ba'ath party is consigned to history.

Lets hope Baghdad doesn't swallow all our hopes.

That Robin Cook Speech in full

I never quite got what people meant when they talked about Robin Cook as an impressive politician and a prime ministerial candidate. Well, his resignation speech made that, and a whole lot of other things very clear indeed.

Told you so

Worth some friendly coverage in the Guardian. Thats what I said would be the minimum payoff for the first MP to get a blog. Actually I think his payoff will be several hundred constituents who feel they have a relationship with him, talk to him and promote him. Expect this mans majority to be unassailable by the next election.

Can weblogs get a good man a great job

Well Tim seems to think so. Read all about the latest attempt to expoit networked blogs for the benefit of mankind here
Can Weblogs Get a Good Man a Great Job?

[update] Hmm, #17 on Blogdex and rising. If the usual rules hold and each step up the results ladder doubles the traffic a few more links will see this generate loads of traffic. Not sure its going to result in a job offer though. I am of course ready to be proved wrong.

Maybe he should try Phill Wolff's bloggers for hire page instead.

Pages not big enough

My theory that Finance II is the toughest course going has just received a boost. With the exception of a single lecture in Finance I I've been able to compress the content of any lecture to a single side of A4 for revision purposes. Obviously you lose most of the meaning, inflection and nuances of the stuff, but you've got the mechanics down. (you can get last terms revision notes through the 'doing the mba section'.

Finance II however is blowing this theory out of the water. Well, not the first four classes which dealt with corporate governance, dividend policy and such, but the second half, which dealt with debt, options and currency hedging. Unless I develop a maths degree overnight I'm not going to get anything useful onto a single side of A4 no matter how hard I try. I feel a long and finance shaped weekend coming on here.

In other news the 'everyone chip in with exam notes' section of our shared drive is starting to develop a sense of humour. Latest additions to Macroeconomics include 'why my peso is worthless' (inflation) and 'money is everywhere but not in the bank' (money supply). Cheered me up no end.

Back after these commercials

Elvis Costello sang this when standing in for David Letterman. Who could disagree

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?


So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

Viral Marketing?

It's got nothing to do with Reebok, but this will be doing the rounds of offices all over the world pretty damn soon. I bet someone had to fight very hard indeed to stop Terry Tate, Office Linebacker (big download) turning into a product focused love in.

I'm not sure quite what I make of this. By itself it probably won't sell that many shoes. But if they can turn Terry into some kind of cult figure and build the shoe connection slowly over time. Maybe. Here's a link to the support website. Looks like they're trying to turn this content into permission, but to be honest seems all the budget went on films.

Where are...

The Terry Tate office posters to print out?
The Tate intimidation generator? (press here for twenty intimidating words to scream at your co-workers)
The "what kind of fool are you?" Terry Tate quiz?
The nominate a co-worker for a TT smackdown competition?
Or, the have TT in your office for a day competition?
The Terry Tate Blog?

On this last point... Raging Cow copped a lot of flak for using blogs badly, but here's what I'd do. I'd hire a copywriter, a good one. And I'd pay him to hunt out the best bits of business news and office gossip on the web, and then discuss it Terry Tate style. The content should be good enough that genuine business folk might read it, and the thing should link to real news stories. Just like a real blog.

Terry Tate is a big guy. He could have been a whole lot bigger. Now... must do some revision.....

Seth Godin thinks I'm wasting my time

You can read about his ideas for a New Order Business School here. As for me, I've had my classes on presentation already thanks. Prioritising was this morning, do I embrace change? I had a blog before Seth did, some new economy guru he is.

On a less strident note. I've never been to NYU, but browsing around, reading the inanities that appear on the business week forum and looking at the whole rubber stamp mentality that surfaces from time to time I'm glad I'm here. While things may not always go according to plan the idea is at least to rip the lid off the ideas and get at the guts of things. I don't actually know what the Black Scholes formula is, (I mean, the formula, its a thing for pricing options) although I know what you do with it, and if I plough through my notes I can tell you the good and the bad about it. I hope that the Saids' focus on not just teaching us the jargon, the buzzwords and the latest techniques manages to outlast its startup period.

Operations management concluded today with a brief summary of what we've actually been taught.

How to describe systems so you can tell what you're really looking at
How to treat people well, in particular how to create systems that treat people well
The overwhelming importance of quality
Approaches to managing complexity

Somewhere in there was JIT, MRP, TQM and all the rest. Mixed in though was a clear exhortation to skip the slogans and get to the meat. Seth is of course just flame bating, the guy owes pretty much the whole 'guru' phase of his career to magazines like fast company, the reading material of choice for MBA's and capitalist wannabes the world over.

Examination Apathy

This time last term everyone was panicking about exams. In fact for the two or three weeks prior to the exams lecturers were pressured - what's on the paper, is this examinable, what should an answer be? It was largely fear of the unknown.

Fear of the unknown was fear of failure, of exams in a different style, different language, all that coalesced into one big panic. This time people are laid back, we've been there, done that and while some subjects are tough we know its survivable. So people are knuckling down, getting on with business and while some will pass and some will fail the attitude is less 'oh my god this is the be all and end all' and much more 'lets get this over with and go on holiday'

Journey beginning

Tad has just got admitted to UMBS after a truly marathon exercise in applications. Fifteen drafts for a single set of essays? With that kind of dedication he's going to sail through business school.

Just don't forget to take time out to smell the flowers Tad. No sense spending the whole year working. Whens the next time you'll be your own boss?

Media Watch

Ever since Vietnam when an uncensored press corps wrecked domestic morale governments have been very careful about who says what about their troops. According to this piece from the BBC the present UK philospohy is to pretend they're not really there. By contrast the US army is happy to show off their bombs and bullets - presumably a response to very different domestic public opinion in the two countries.

Eminem versus The Streets

With revision suddenly underway in earnest I took time out yesterday to buy a few new CD's, so I'm now the proud owner of The Eminem Show by Eminem and Original Pirate Material by The Streets. Its all 'white rap music', but while Eminem is straight outta Detroit with raging paranoia and a whole bunch of issues too scary to mention The Streets barely make it out of the door of their London council housing before deciding it looks too much like trouble and they'd best smoke something before going back to bed.

Thats possibly a little harsh on The Streets, who seem to like going to the pub and a bit of cockney duckin' and divin' as well but the contrast is huge. Eminem rants and rages at the world, which is great when you agree with him, and in places its hard not to. Taken with his last album he's turning out one of the most coherent critiques of the problems of fame around. He wants to shout, scream and mouth off, he didn't ask to be a role model, and anyone who believes he's driving kids to violence is missing a whole chunk of other explanations for the problems of ghetto youth. On the other hand when he goes off on one about gays, bitches and ho's again you just wish he'd shut up, see a good psychiatrist, patch things up with his wife and go play with his daughter. (If Eminem has a redeeming feature its his solid commitment to looking after his daughter - I still reckon she'll loath him for his music when she's 16 though.)

In contrast The Streets have no bigger fish to fry than moaning about the governments stance on drugs, and avoiding some of the scary geezers who populate their world. Along the way we have a blokish mixture of women as objects 'don't mug yourself' and romantic heartbreak 'its too late'. Some of the social commentary is a bit grating 'Geezers need excitement' (sometime in the next year some Oxford mockney is going to say something very stupid to me and justify it with "common sense, simple common sense" and I'll go off this record completely)

All in all two very different takes on being a bloke. It makes you think, Detroit isn't that much scarier than the wrong ends of London. Is it just the constant presence of guns that fuels the paranoia of Eminem, Dre and all the rest? Or is it that there's something else in UK culture which has done a better job of standing up to macho posturing in music?

Hey ho, and to think I went out to buy the Miss Dynamite album. Who should in no sense be thought as having anything to do with the cartoon at Miss Dynamite.com which I found by accident and is guaranteed to offend pretty much everyone in equal measure. (the cartoon that proves terrorists have humour too, you have been warned)

Telling stories?

Todays FT carries a piece about Google going public, splashed all across the back page. Its remarkably similar to a piece I read a few weeks ago on the same topic. The basic gist being that Silicon Valley is looking to a Google IPO to restart the money machine. This is wierd becase to my knowledge Google has made no plans to go public and certainly hasn't put out any press to that effect. So what's going on?

Well possibly Google is building support for an IPO by stealth, or more likely perhaps an investment bank is trying to talk Google into letting them handle the IPO.

According to the FT they've got revenue of $500m and a 30% margin. If we assume constant margins and a growth of 25% p/a for five years and then steady performance into the distance (and this is a very conservative estimate) Google is worth $3.8bn, (discounting at an arbitary 10%). That is one enormous pile of money, especially for a firm with only 600 employees.

But Google could have cashed in a while back, any time in the last five years in fact. And if they can hang around long enough to ride the next tech boom instead of trying to start it they'd be worth a lot more. Going public would also expose Google to the rigours of a stock market that simply wouldn't understand them. There would be takeover risks, and a pressure to do something with all that money. I'm not sure Google could spend all that money, I'm not sure its founders would care about it that much. Seqouia Capital would probably love the money, and could probably do great things with it, but they probably appreciate that right now holding makes far more sense than selling.

So, am I wrong and where are all these stories about a flotation coming from? Someone knows, but its not me.

A world of ends

The latest contribution from the cluetrain authors - well two of them - is world of ends, an interpretation of what the internet means, what makes it good and perhaps more importantly what you should do to exploit this. The assortment of recommended reading here is impressive as well.

About time too

Tom Watson is the MP for West Bromich East and he's about to be much better known than he is now. Why? because he's the first MP to run his own blog. Its got to be worth a mention in the Guardian at least.

Just read it, the guys real, he's human. He writes about stuff. Christ, he even posts to newsgroups. Its probably Alistair Campbells worst nightmare, imagine if they all did it. This ladies and gentlemen is good for democracy.

I'm doomed

I've barely got the last one out of my system when they go and bring out not one, but two new versions. I swear if I hadn't spent so much of my youth playing wargames and reading history this might be an easier habit to kick, but its not. In some ways this is the game I've wanted to play ever since I was old enough to run around on Hadrians wall and imagine I was defending it...

Oh well, at least the marketing plan I'm writing for Heritage Theatre is now coming together. They're not DVD's, they're books. Trust me on this, I know they're round, flat and the pictures move but they're books. Once you think of it like that you're onto a winner.

Do blogs have celebrities

Well how you define celebrity is interesting. Yesterday I read Doc Searls on the Raging Cow story. Then I read Tim at Bloggerheads on the same thing, so I speculatively mailed Doc and pointed him to Tim's website. Doc blogged Tim and me, this is Tim's rather restrained response

"Cannot. Cope. Level.. of... coolness.. (*choke*) Rising!"

Odd thing is how approachable bloggers are. Don't think I've ever written to one and not got a reply. I put this down to what I'm going to vaingloriously call Lloyd's first law of networking, which is "If you say something interesting you will get peoples attention". Its recently been suggested that whenever we have a networking event I'm the one who ends up talking to X, Y or Z. This is not entirely luck, the trick is to think of something person X is interested in, tell them what you think of it and invite a response. Compared to the people saying 'I really like your book', 'I'm a huge fan of yours' or 'what did you have for breakfast' this is going to get results.

But getting assigned the seat next to Hermann Hauser last night was just a fluke. One I was subsequently asked to trade to someone who had a real reason to talk to him, so I made do with chatting over drinks and just enjoyed the food instead.

More schmoozing

Dinner with Hermann Hauser last night. Hermann is one of the figures behind the silicon fen phenomenon in Cambridge. In particular he's involved with ARM and most of Cambridges other billion dollar companies. Back in the day he was cofounder of Acorn computer which unleashed the BBC Micro on a generation of school kids.

His goal is to turn Cambridge into a 'first division' hi tech cluster and he seems to be making progress. The business school has much the same idea here, and both sides are making progress. Both have 1500 - 2000 local hi-tech firms, world class research universities and so on. What's missing is the entrepreneurial culture and the money - both of which are slowly starting to appear. Certainly SBS and Judge should go a long way to addressing the entrepreneurial thing.

At the other end of the education spectrum

There's often a tendency to think that people are harking back to some ill remembered good old days when this kind of stuff comes out, but I don't think they are. This is really depressing stuff, in twenty years time will our economy be stuffed not because we messed up some part of basic competitiveness, but because we forgot to teach our children to speak?

Imagine a future nation of bloated illiterates, the fast food uneducated nation, a land blissfully unaware of the contempt in which the rest of the world holds it, and indeed the pace at which the rest of the world is catching it up. If I was Prime Minister I'd worry about this kind of thing far more than pretty much anything else. Will the west lose its dominance through apathy? In fifty years time I reckon that may be exactly what happens.

Bush Administration orders spying on UN delegates

Last one today folks. Honestly, if this had happened in a hotel it would have been a scandal, might have even rated one of those 'gate' extensions, UNGate or diplomatgate or something. Instead it seems noone really cares that UN delegates in New York are subject to aggressive surveillance by the NSA.

I mean, I know its hardly shocking, but now we've caught them shouldn't they at least apologise?

Yet more on Google / Blogger

Shamelessly cadging this link from Tim at Bloggerheads here is the FAQ on the Google / Blogger merger. Now, normally when two companies merge you get a bog standard press release, some waffle about synergies and some statements to the effect that 'our future plans will make us the rulers of the world' or at least 'the darlings of the stock market'. This doesn't read like that, is is also ten times more believable.

One day all companies will be honest, speak like real people and enjoy the trust of their customers. For now though Google and Blogger can make hay while the sun shines.

Letter from my MP

I have to say, this fax your MP service works wonders. Type a quick message and get a reply from your MP within days. This time I've got a standard looking letter about the war with Iraq in return (signed with his own rubber stamp) - which is fair enough as I imagine he's had hundreds of the things to write. On the other hand when I wrote about the extension of the RIP act I got what seemed to be a fairly well researched response which at least suggested I made my point to his researchers.

So, what does the Right Honourable Andrew Smith have to say about the war? Well his letter makes persistent references to both government policy and acting through the UN which may or may not be the same thing. Reading between the lines (he's a diplomatic chap this Andrew) I reckon he's one of those who will be ok with things as long as there's a second resolution, but probably at least considered joining the rebels last week. He's also attatched an FAQ from the Foreign Secretary, which contains this rather interesting entry.

Q. Is not this issue really about control of one of the world's largest oil reserves?
A. In the event of military action, Iraq's oil fields would be protected from environmental terrorism, and the revenue generated would be used to benefit the iraqi people. If oil were the issue, it would be infinitely simpler to cut a deal with Saddam.

Now leaving aside the difficulties of stopping Saddam blowing the oil fields up - how are we going to stop him? Airstrikes? This looks like a pretty sound argument. On the other hand pre Gulf War I Saddam was a signed up member of OPEC, which he got himself chucked out of by invading Kuwait. Since then he's been something of a pariah and even our noble leaders couldn't really have done a deal. Perhaps the real issue is that ever since he fell out with the west its not been possible to do a deal with Saddam, and before that he'd realised that Iraq would make a lot more money from its oil by staying in OPEC. Of course this wasn't necessarily money the Iraqi oil moguls were going to share with their people but still...

Anyway, thats my latest update for the increasingly political MBA Experience website. If you want to know how the course is going well its been work, work, more work and now, revision!

Bloogle, first new service

blogspot is a service offered by blogger for people who don't have hosting set up for their blogs. In exchange for showing banner ads on your material you get free server space. The first side effect of the Google / Blogger takeover to be seen is the appearance of targetted advertising instead of the random stuff Blogspot carried previously.

Take a look at the MBA focused adverts on Tads website or this one to see what I mean.

Its the tip of the iceberg, but its a simple thing that has probably just pushed what used to be Pyra Software into cash positive mode for the first time in its history.

How can I refuse?

"I was expecting to hear about the google-blogger acquisition on your site already. I was hoping for a business slant from you as you know a fair bit about this stuff. For some bizarre reason, I'm actually starting to rely on your blog for commentary :) well not that bizarre; what you say is normally pretty insightful, and you do have the inside track in many respects.

C'mon dude, your public awaits!!"

Oh my god I have a public! Cool. I will now stop looking like some nervous starlet, dazed by the snapping of papparazzi flashbulbs and resume my normal posture of controlled ranting and carefully timed dribbling.

The Blogger thing. For those who don't know Google now own Pyra labs, which is the technology that I use to run this website. This was announced at the Live from the Blogosphere event in a typically blogcentric manner. (Pictures), (Words). There is nothing particularly remarkable about the Blogger technology, the core is probably a dozen lines of ASP that takes what I type into a form and turns it into HTML, its not difficult. Of course what Blogger really has is a big idea and if not a business model then at least its a communication model. Big Ideas are ideas that change the way we behave and for a significant number of people Blogger does that. For some blogging is social discourse, it keeps us in touch with friends down the street or over the water. It puts us in touch with likeminded souls or just people in similar situations.

In a way some blogging is like reality TV, but its a reality shot from inside the protagonists head with themselves as a director. Blogs are used for academic debate, as bully pulpits as seeding grounds for ideas. Journalists use them as sources and leads, clued in readers use them to bypass journalism and pretty much everyone uses them to express opinions. They are the number one illustration of the cluetrains contention that markets are conversations. As you can probably tell I like Blogs, they're cool.

Google is also cool, and Google has a mission. "To catalogue and make usable all the worlds information". That ladies and gentlemen is the biggest mission in the history of the modern corporation. Google is staffed by people who want to use technology to improve the condition of mankind. At any rate thats what Raymond Nasr told me, and he works there, and he has an honest face. So is there a tie in between Google and Blogger? I think so.

A while ago Google changed their search algorhythms in a way that seemed to downplay the importance of links from blogs. Bloggers, who'd had all kinds of fun with Googlebombing and other search engine manipulation up till then were disappointed. Google base their rankings on links, which webpages effectively use to vote for each other. Blogs are absolutely stuffed with links, so they're a great source of fresh information. When Google changed their methods they didn't stop looking at Blogs, I suspect they just worked out how to put a more appropriate weight on them.

So I think there is a huge advantage to Google in having direct access to a few hundred thousand individuals who scour the web for fresh interesting content, link to it and then describe it in a way that by and large tells people what it is. No other search engine has a workforce like this.

That however is probably small potatoes compared to whatever Google have come up with. I know they're hugely interested in looking at all the data they have in aggregate, spotting patterns and trying to understand them. Blogger is in some ways probably a huge reservoir of research material and an experimental lab all in one nice shiny package. Google would have been nuts not to buy it, the genius is in the fact that we only think so after they've done it.

Finally, as Ev, the guy behind Blogger put it. Google, Blogger, just look at the names. There's clearly some shared DNA there.

Why isn't Michael Franti more famous?

If this was the 1960's Michael Franti would be a mega star. On a good day he sings like Marvin Gaye and Raps like Chuck D. He writes articulate lyrics that range from tenderness to fury. His last album had a guest appearance from Woody Harrellson and the cover notes featured quotes from Bono. If this was the 60's he'd be up there on a stage with Hendrix at Woodstock. I've played some of his recent stuff to many of my friends and the general response is 'that's damn fine music'.

Back when ICE T and Dr Dre were urging us to try a little cop killing, or maybe just fuck the police Franti brought out HipHoprisy is the Greatest Luxury, with a band called 'The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy'. It was a blistering condemnation of the first iraq war, environmental standards, the american justice system, racism and the entertainment industry. It went nowhere.

Michael Franti's most recent album is a protest against the death penalty. It's called Stay Human, and its a pretty impressive call for tolerance, brotherly love, the legalisation of marujauna (sp?), an end to genetic manipulation and greater spirituality in life. Its also got some of the best soul and disco tunes laid down in the last ten years. It didn't do that well either.

Of course by now you already know why Michael Franti isn't more famous.

"Being kicked in a closed mouth, or smiling with no teeth,
they're both choices yes, but its impossible to eat"

Digression

My last post about homeland security generated a fairly vitriolic response from one classmate. Here is a chunk of my response, which I hope puts what I have to say in context. It is worth pointing out to my American readers that coming to study in Europe will expose you to opinions far more extreme than mine. (I'm mainstream centre-left here, a good 30% of the nation is to my left). Another American colleague tells me he was approached by demonstrators over the weekend asking him to sign a petition in support of the Intfada (he's Jewish). If dealing with this sort of thing (whatever your political views) is likely to send you off the deep end then European life may not be for you. Anyway, on to the explanation of why I feel justified in having a go at http://www.ready.gov , the US governments paranoia production engine.

>>

Like everyone else in this country of my age I have lived with terrorism all my life, including IRA bombing campaigns and threats from ETA when we go on holiday in Spain. The sad truth is that ninety nine days out of a hundred you forget about it, and on the hundredth day you evacuate your school for a bomb scare, or your tube is abandoned or you hear about another shooting on the news.

Like almost every other UK citizen I was horrified to see terrorism reach the America's in the most terrible way possible. Differing responses does not mean indifference.

Sadly I was also then left to witness one of the world's great nations throwing away so many of its virtues - tolerance, understanding and respect for individual freedoms. These are of course not gone, but as the constitution is swept aside, prisoners detained without trial and military tribunals convened one cannot see anything other than the American soul being tarnished. The administrations call for every American family to duct tape themselves into a coccoon is not about protecting them, it is about sustaining public interest in a coming war.

Its at times like this that I'm glad someone at the Washington Post agrees with me. Hell, if I'm as Anti-American as Aaron McGruder I'm down with that.

Even better. Here's a guy whose American Loving credentials are pretty damn impeccable. Apparently he's seen the Elephant - whatever that means. Anyway, read and think.

Under Control?

At times this term has felt like it had completely got away from me, I'm behind on the reading, the Oxford Business Forum demolished any chance of getting serious work done for my New Business Project in the first month of term and ... well it just mounted up a bit.

Now I'm not so sure. I'm just about OK with the reading (should point out I try to read all the compulsary material, a significant minority of the class reads nothing and makes do with the lecture material), the New Business Project is still suffering, but with the Oxford Business Forum out of the way it's the only thing that's likely to eat time. Of course exams are now only three weeks away, so revision has to start soon.

Oh, and my jobhunt really should start. This was meant to be the term I really made an effort sent out the CV's and lined up the interviews. Maybe next month...

Beyond belief

I really, really, really do not understand the American government. So far the only attacks on American soil were pretty hard to avoid for anyone involved. Now however we have this. Don't be afraid, be ready? Judging from this the American nation looks bloody terrified. How about websites describing how not to get shot in school, how to avoid wearing the wrong colors and getting shot in the street, websites giving health and safety advice for nightclubs and....

It just looks like scaremongering to me

Better idea. How about a website for Iraqi civilians telling them how to avoid becoming collateral damage in the event of a US onslaught. Advice about the kind of buildings they should stay away from and how to say 'don't shoot I'm a civilian' in English for when half a dozen scared, nervous and heavily armed US Marines kick in the door to your home unsure as to whether or not yours was the building they were being fired on from.

Guerilla Politics in Action

Over at Bloggerheads Tim's campaign to get Tony Blair to adopt a publically accessible email address may finally be heading for a breakthrough. He started out with a set of reasonable demands, he got his MP to help him then there was a campaign of hostage taking followed by a massacre of the innocents and finally blackmail.

Now it seems that maybe, just maybe we'll be able to email our dear leader sometime soon, thanks to a direct approach to his wife.... (scroll down for the content)

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.

Catch Up

Stuff I've forgotten to blog about in the past few weeks includes...

Cambridge Day - we thrashed them at Rugby, they thrashed us at cricket. More worrying was that despite this being an event organised here in Oxford they then thrashed us at 'turning up for a beer' with ninety of the light blues making the trip and winding up in the Kings Arms. How many could we muster - football team, Rugby team and a handful of others - that was it.

Football vs Linacre / Corpus. With SBS fielding a team reducded to nine men this turned into the usual rout, but as the goals rained in I swear you could see us getting better. We played a disciplined offside trap - and had the linesman existed we'd have done a damn sight better. We got in among them and put ourselves about and while we never stood a chance with reduced numbers and an injured goalie we are definantely makling progress....

Oh, talked to the ref. Apparently when he started doing sunday football there were forty referees on the circuit. Now its down to eleven with people dropping out after abuse, assaults and a general lack of support. All that grass roots football the FA says its supporting may not really be there.

Intermission

The Oxford Business Forum is now occupying most of my waking thoughts. In the mean time here is some politics.

* To the tune of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands"...

If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are frisky, Pakistan is looking shifty, North Korea is
too risky, Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think someone has dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections, Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions, Bomb Iraq.

It's "pre-emptive non-aggression", bomb Iraq.
Let's prevent this mass destruction, bomb Iraq.
They've got weapons we can't see, And that's good enough for me 'Cos
it's all the proof I need to Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think Saddam's gone mad, With the weapons that he had, (And he
tried to kill your dad), Bomb Iraq.

If your corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy, And hiding that ain't easy, And your
manhood's getting queasy, Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We'll call it treason, Let's make war not love this season,
Even if we have no reason, Bomb Iraq.

Now, take yourself over here for the gulf war game.

How hard can it be?

Round the corner is a G&D's icecream parlour. As well as ice cream they do coffee, hot chocolate and pizza bagels - bagels cut in half and used as pizza dough. Over the last few months one of my standard run out of food again fixes has been to go to G&D's for a hot chocolate and pizza bagel.

Now this should be easy, first you make a hot chocolate, then you charge me, then I go and read the paper somewhere while you make the pizza. Then you call me and tell me the pizza is ready and I collect it and take it back to my table. Easy right?

So far this has *never* happened. I've seen all other possible variations though, make pizza, then hot chocoalte, then charge (takes ages), make hot chocoalte, then pizza then charge (at least I get the hot chocolate quickly). Today I got make hot chocolate, charge, make pizza. It was looking good. Till they forgot to turn the microwave on....

Lots of other stuff to write about but I've got to get some work done this evening.

Four degrees and dropping?

I've just been interviewed by the Sunday Times about networking and jobsearch (Hi Kathy if you're reading this) so I guess in a couple of weeks I'll have used up a few more of my fifteen minutes of fame. Although Warhol never explained how long print lasted, maybe thats my whole shebang... Anyway it was an interesting subject because today as I was heading out of lectures I bumped into some friends from OxMediaNet on whose steering committee I sit. Turns out they were running an event in association with Beyond bricks about wireless technology - so I mooched along and got to talk to all the local entrepreneurs doing stuff with wireless technology in Oxfordshire.

I'm going to miss my network when I leave Oxford. After years in media here it's nice to know that I can pick up the phone and get stuff - printing, designing, photographers, camera crews, rumours, gossip and leads. Not to mention a fair few people to go to the pub with and shoot the breeze. The thought of starting again somewhere else... but then again, after this course I'm never going to walk into a city completely cold. I'll always be able to call one of my current contemporaries and say didn't you used to work in New York, Paris, Shanghai or Hong Kong - where's the right place to go when you're taking a client to lunch?, what's the best accounting firm in town? - whatever. In the same way if I ever need a lawyer, accountant or banker they'll be on the end of the phone.

There was a TV documentary recently about the six degrees of separation theory. One theory they tested was trying to connect some random englishman with a mongolian sheep herder. Well, after this course that's easy - there's a Mongolian guy on the course with me. I reckon I can do it in four, easy...

Who am I ?

I've long suspected that technology has been becoming political. Already we've had dissidents arrested, attempts to exploit technology in the face of the law and technologies outlawed in the face of popular support. All this though will look like small fry when identity becomes a digital service.

This is an interesting model around which it could do so. Once again Doc Searls has read the interesting stuff for me.

Hope I have time to read it

Following up a link from Doc Searls who's been collecting bloggers thoughts on the Challenger tradgedy (how do these guys manage to blog so consistently, excellently and still get stuff done?) I found William Gibson's Blog. Much of which is not so much blog as dialogue with his fans and critics. Presumably its part of the promotion for his new book, but I think once he starts blogging Gibson will find it hard to stop, and for my part, while his books may vary in quality his actual writing, the descriptions, the imagery and the clarity of thought is always exceptional.

As a note to this. I've just read two chapters of our finance text book in a little under an hour, and made notes on it. It seems my old speed reading skills are finally picking up after many many years of rustiness. This time last term I'd have taken a couple of hours to read the same amount of material, and probably made worse notes. Learning is a skill, let no one tell you otherwise.

Keeping myself busy

I do not have time to write this blog, but it will all be alright in the end because it always is. Other things I haven't had time to do this term inlcude

Being marketing director for the Oxford Business Forum
Writing for the SBS magazine (2.3 mb PDF, I'm on page 5)

I've been writing up the Dean's seminars this term as well. This week was Hector Sants, CEO Europe for Credit Suisse First Boston. He had a bunch of stuff to say about the future of investment banking, including the really interesting notion that in the future investment bankers will be team players, highly ethical and generally nice guys. He admitted that this is going to be one hell of a culture shift, but in a new environment where reputation, fair dealing and regulation are the norm the industry is going to have to change.

Read my full report on Hector Sants (.doc)
Read the full version of my Silicon valley report

Cynicism Watch

This made me smile, especially the first two poems. After that the satire seems to dry up. Damn funny though.

Invest in education

According to the Macro-economic figures we've just been shown there's a 16% return on investment in education. Better than pretty much anything else over the long term. Makes me feel better about my big pile of debt.

Woodgate

It looks like Newcastle have signed Jonathan Woodgate, a young, english, talented central defender and one of Leeds United's crown jewels. Regardless of what happens this season it should ensure we're challengers next year. I should be delighted.

However Woodgate was convicted last year of taking part in a brutal attack on an asian guy that put the poor kid in a coma and left him with bite marks scarring his face. Regardless of whether this was a racist attack it was brutal and violent and while Woodgates conviction was for affray not assault - apparently he wasn't the one who did all the damage - he was there. He and his mates pretty much lynched some guy.

So what am I supposed to do? The guys done his time (well, his fine and community service - surely not nearly enough) and so maybe deserves a second chance? But its bloody hard to imagine supporting someone with that kind of record. Apparently some particularly senseless Rangers fans refuse to include goals scored by Catholic players when looking at match results - even to the extent of claiming that they didn't really win certain titles. This is clearly ludicrous, I can't edit Woodgate out of the team, I can't support ten out of the eleven men on the field.

Bloody hell this is difficult, god only knows what our black and asian fans make of it.

Don't try this at home

Macroeconomics should not be attempted with a hang over. In particular it should not be attempted if you are at the one MBA school that teaches economics differently. No money supply diagrams here, no sir. No, what we have is the Solow model of growth as a starting point, which requires you to get your head round some damn complicated graphs and some really interesting ideas about technology.

The perfect case study

Marketing rolled on today with another 3 case studies, all of which were written by the professor, a guy who clearly doesn't understand what makes a good case study. Having now observed hundreds of the things a good case study should be

1. Based on real companies but with the names cleverly changed. Thus a case about Microsoft should not start "Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft sat back in his executive chair" but should instead read "Joe Fence, CEO of MegaSoftware sat back in his executive chair"

2. Add a little local color. One case study included the line "you can't make an omlette sans oeufs, without eggs!" to show that the person saying it was French. This had nothing to do with anything, but it shows how global and open minded the business school community is.

3. Include at least one instance of an unco-operative member of staff or a personnel issue. This is to prove that the case is in the real world. Thus we get 'Marco Baggio the production manager who passionately believed that increaing sales was the way forward'. In line with point 2 Marco should be Italian and the product should be pasta.

4. Leave room for the student - usually at the top. A good ending would be 'Following Joe Fences' resignation the board appointed Pete Jones, a recent graduate of Harvard Business School'

5. Open with something that makes the point of the case obvious. If it's about selling companies Joe Fence will lean back and 'ponder whether or not he should sell his company to Peach Computers for fifty pence and a packet of crisps' you now know what the case is about

The point is that case studies have evolved from being descriptions of the real world to being a type of creative writing practiced solely by business school professors. It's about as stylised as Haiku and its relationship to the real world is tangential to say the least.

Those exam results in full

The transcripts of our exams came through today, which means we now know exactly what we got on each exam and for the assessed coursework. So, how did I do?

Decision Science : 74.5
Financial Reporting : 60.0
Finance 1 : 80.1
Industrial Organisations : 63.6
People and Organisations : 65.7
Strategic Management : 69.8

Grade A is 70, B is 60 and C is 50. Anything below that and you have to retake.

Have to say these marks are almost exactly the opposite of what I was expecting, I am decidedly not what business school slang terms a 'quant jock' or someone who's good with numbers. However the results seem to suggest exactly that. The true story is of course that I spent most of my revision time fretting about the quant subjects because I knew I wasn't good at them and paid for it with weak performances in subjects where I thought I'd be good - Strategic Management and People and Organisations. Or perhaps my rather freewheeling essay style just isn't that suited to business school. Who knows?

Oh, and I can only assume I had some kind of complete failure of the brain in the Financial Reporting exam, I really did think I'd turned in three solid essay questions and a decent job of work on the company assessment. The technical 'how would you account for this questions' I thought were a mixed bag, but they're worth next to no marks. Really thought I'd done better than that. Still, I can now read the annual reports of premiership football clubs and use them to work out the likely state of the transfer market - short form, Leeds will really wish they'd sold a few players come June / July.

One of the single most annoying things about Oxford is that this is the first time we've been given feedback on assessed work. According to university regulations that can't happen until the complete course has been finished - so we were all forced to go into the exams with no indication of what was expected. It's a level playing field - but it's also extremely frustrating to say the least.

Time to worry about a job

Barely got here and its time to think about jobs. I had a chat with Wally Olins today who is co-founder of Wolff Olins and will be teaching branding in the final term. Since one of my goals is to work in advertising I asked what the situation was like. I knew things were bad, that it's one of the few sectors hurting more than the new media business, but I wasn't expecting to be told that "Stay here till September, nobodies hiring now, maybe things will be better then"

Brutal stuff.

So if advertising really is a dead dog - and I'm by no means convinced it is yet. (Talent will get you everywhere I believe, of course its for other people to decide if I've got any but...) Anyway. If advertising is a no go then I''ll have to look at technology businesses and / or marketing jobs. Ogilvy recommended a few years in brand management with an FMCG firm as a route into advertising, but I think I'm in too much of a hurry for that.

Rumour busting

In the run up to last terms exams all kinds of rumours circulated about failure rates. 20% fail P&O, 40% fail at least one subject, the stress of resits ruins hilary term. Well that's bollocks. Those students who asked to have their results published took between them some 600 papers and represented around 70% of the class. There were only 18 failing papers in that group.

Note that people request to have exams results publicly or privately before taking the exams...

Results coming in

The first set of results information has been sighted on the exam noticeboards. So far they're only telling us whether we passed or failed. It could be a while before we know exactly what marks we got and how well we did. The good news is I passed everything.

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Paul Bradstock is director of the Oxford Trust, a charity that aims to spin technology out of the university. One of the things they do is support innovation centres around Oxfordshire through their subsidiary Oxford Innovation where small companies can get support and form part of local business networks.

He started by talking about the difference between innovation and entrepreneurship. Innovators have ideas - entrepreneurs take risk. Oddly enough if you find someone who can do both of these things you're onto a winner. Innovation centres provide...

Space : pay the rent, get a room
Visibility : people are interested in what goes on in these things
Community : 30 firms like you all in one place
Credibility : Some assurance that someone reckons you can make a go of it

I've often thought incubators would be a good thing, its nice to find out more about them. Right, you get help and support for 18 - 36 months, if your company hasn't made it by then you're out on your ear. In the mean time you'll have recieved help getting capital - in particular from government agencies, networking contacts.

Ah ha, just realised that OxmediaNet, whose steering committee I sit on is somehow connected to this (aside from using their premises from time to time) Its very easy to get the feeling that Oxford has most of the networks, organisations and opportunities it needs. What it really needs is some human dynamos to push the whole thing into overdrive and really start making things happen. If I wasn't dead set on moving away I think I'd cheerfully try and be one of them. Certainly its interesting for anyone considering an MBA in Oxford to know that this place has no shortage of start ups and opportunities for them.

Marketing gets brutal

I'm being taught marketing by a man who is qualified as an accountant in four countries, co founded Arthur D Little, edited various advertising journals, was/is? a director of EMAP and well... he's bloody good. We're skipping all the basic stuff and plunging straight into CEO level marketing discussion. It's hardcore stuff and todays' kick off session was great. My case study submissions for the week didn't cover most of what we talked about (neither did anyone elses) but I reckon I had some strong thinking in there none the less.

Interesting was the split in the class, I think about 80% of us were blown away by this. The remaining 20% are holding their heads and wondering how they're supposed to cope without someone teaching them the basic stuff. I'm with the lecturer on this - you're in an elite institution, you claim to be exceptional and you should be able to handle this stuff. Otherwise we'll have spent eight weeks learning what? Bog standard stuff we could have got from a textbook, the kind of stuff junior marketing staff come up with in meetings, that's never going to justify the cost of the course never mind the kind of salary MBA's claim they're entitled to.

I wish I knew more

Something bad is happening in Venezuela. I don't know the background and I don't know the details. All of which makes it hard for me to work out whether or not I should participate in this.

Research required.

Deans Q&A

The Dean is giving the termly Q&A session, he's opened with a big chunk on the FT rankings. Apparently all our objective indicators have held level or improved, but student satisfaction has dropped. His theory is that this is due to the appearance in the survey of those students who were here when John Kaye resigned and the school was still sharing rooms in the Radcliffe Infirmary (yes, it was a hospital)

As I said earlier, I really couldn't care less about this, but some folk seem to think that these numbers in the FT have some bearing on their future careers. It's the same rubber stamp mindset that I've moaned about before. If you came here because you wanted an MBA rather than to learn useful skills please leave. That's all I've got to say about it.

OK, now we're being told about the Dean's seminars. These are chances to hear from and then schmooze with heavyweights invited by the Dean. Sadly the pitch as to why we should attend is coming over as more stick than carrot. Internal marketing is not the deans speciality I fear. Still, a chance to have lunch with the bloke behind the Silicon Fen phenomenon is a good thing...

Incidently following a chat with the marketing department here I'll be writing these seminars up for broader consumption, both through the schools website / magazine and this website.

The money rolls inThe Dean is however really rather good at fundraising. We've just had announcements of some massive donations (in the order of the founding donation) which will be used by the school to develop leading programs in a number of areas - all of which I view as good things. I'll let the school make its own announcements about these though.

How to get a better burger

How do you get a better burger from McDonalds? Ask them to take the gherkins out, or make any kind of change. You see most burgers are made for stock, McDonalds staff manufacture burgers and keep them until someone buys them, or throw them away after seven minutes. So the burger you get has probably been hanging around for 5 minutes or so.

Ask them to take out the gherkin and you get a burger made just for you, hot and fresh. Of course you've still got a McDonalds burger, so it's hard to see just what you've gained but there you go. Anyway, that was the interesting fact of the day from Operations Management, which on first viewing looks like it could be quite a nice subject.

Elective decision time

Well, not quite decision time yet but we're currently sitting through an afternoon of pitches from the tutors, all explaining why we should take their courses. Some interesting stuff to date, including a truly heavyweight workload for one of the finance classes - masses of preparation, classwork and so on adding up to 10-12 hours a week. Doesn't sound too bad till you realise we're trying to do six of these at once.

Other things include the interesting looking technology related stuff, we've poached a new lecturer from Stanford to teach managing technology ventures, and a colleague of his who's teaching on strategy in technology firms. We've also had a mention of supply chain management including ethical issues - a positive sign that those outside the business world are starting to make themselves heard. I bet that wouldn't have been on the curriculum five years ago.

I wasn't planning on taking the history of business course, but the pitch for it was sufficiently entertaining that I'm having second thoughts. On the other hand, due to time constraints there's not going to be much primary material to play with, and I reckon it would take four out of eight weeks to teach people to evaluate secondary material properly. I think I'm going to need to talk to the lecturer further about this before I decide whether I want to do it or not.

I'm getting slightly annoyed about the number of 'how much', 'what percent', 'is there a textbook' kind of questions. Do subjects because you love them (or could have a passing affair with them.) not cause you think it might be cheap or easy or something else...

Leadership elective pitch now - apparantly the word management has its roots in the control of horses and other wild beasts. 'Why do we allow leaders to do stupid things?' is an interesting question for a course to address. I'm sure there are others - oh and we get to read Machiavelli and Plato which might be nice. Get the feeling that there might be more use for some of my historical background than in the history course. Hmm, we've just sent a Mexican wave round the class to make a point - seems reminiscent of power and authority stuff from way back. Oh, and there's a class on leadership, terrorism and leadership groups - which may have little to do with business - until there's a real upsurge in Guerilla Marketing (hmm, could you organise a marketing agency around a cell structure?). Assessment is a 5000 word dissertation, had a 5% fail rate last year. Hmmmmm

Now we're talking about IP law and innovation. I know this is important, you just have to look at the stuff about the Eldred case to see that but it just doesn't get me out of bed. Maybe one day I'll be a rich CEO and I'll lose it all after I forget to sign some important piece of paper - but I doubt it. (the CEO bit, not that I'd forget to sign an important bit of paper). More interesting is the question of why have IP at all and what should it look like, which is also on the course. Oh, and more ethics, IP rights and AIDS drugs, good stuff.

Aside A majority of SBS faculty need to sit through the training we just did on how to produce decent ppt slides. Some of this stuff is horrible.... (most of them are good to great lecturers though)

Brand Strategy now, start point, branding is a route out of price competition leading to wheelbarrows full of cash, and representing a form of market power. Oh, he's mentioned NoLogo"you have to take it seriously in business these days" did you hear that Tony?. Now we're covering Heinz's refusal to participate in the baked beans war - which I vaguely remember. (It ended just before I joined the working world)

The class have just been introduce to the effects of branding on the human psyche. For those who haven't heard this before its nice to watch the slow dawning of the realisation that marketing delivers value. Sudden explosion of marketing management diagrams I always thought the tricky bit was turning these diagrams and words into the perfect picture of the smiling baby or the cartoon tiger or the whatever.

Examination will be by doing some brand research. I like that.

Open Spectrum

I like this. While I have much to talk about at the moment and some interesting stories to tell, it's late and I have things to do before I can sleep. So for now read this about why there is no real need for spectrum licensing and how a little vision among the politicians could help change the way we communicate (again)

The Open Specturm FAQ