Mines an Inspiron

Oddly enough I don't feel the need to check whether or not all Dell's machines suffer from this problem

Lucking out

I popped in to talk to the PR person here at the school earlier this week to talk about ways of publicising the Oxford Business Forum. Following a bit of a chat and the story of how successful my coverage of the Oxford Union debate was I've been asked to try the same thing for the Silicon Valley comes to Oxford event. And, as an added perk I get to go to the press lunch.

Doesn't sound like much, but here's how it works. There are eight of these high powered silicon valley folk coming to talk. The press lunch will be them, three professional journalists, and me. I imagine a few faces from the school will be there too, but basically its an incredible opportunity and I'm going to have to spend the weekend doing my homework so I can talk knowledgably about all kinds of stuff to these guys.

First on the reading list, this new paper outlining Microsofts shift in its policy on privacy. Summary here.

Real time skills training

Snowball training consultants have just pointed in my direction and said that the reason I took out my laptop was because I was bored by the deliberately boring clip they showed. Thats not quite true. Its more because I'm bored by 50% of what they're saying and have decided to devote the rest of my time to blogging whats happening here.

To date we've had a slide on the need to build logical presentations >> good stuff. We've also had several slides on the history of european logical thinking. It was, if nothing else a sound demonstration of why you should never let your undergraduate degree burst onto the stage during your professional life. Following on from the deliberately boring video we're being shown a John Cleese presentation on Proportional Representation which is a great deal better. I imagine they'll tell us why in a minute. I'd imagine its at least in part due to some of the half baked arguments he's just rolled out. Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument.

About now I should probably tell you what these people are like. If nothing else they're reminding me of Trinny and Susannah, two style gurus who tart about on UK TV telling people how they're terribly badly dressed while believing that someone somewhere might care. Kind of like this lot, Snowball is an all woman company, they deliver their fairly average skills training as if it was manna from heaven (they're just explaining why) and there are a bunch of really quite bored MBA students watching this now.

Ah, one or two people have started having a go. Always happens when someone loses the class, you can either sit around being bored or give the person on stage a hard time. They're now talking about how to end a presentation, sadly I'm trapped in here for another 75 minutes. This could be my longest blog entry ever...

Oh, KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid, not Keep It Sweet and Simple. Surely? Surely the first is the original and the best.

Only 8% of audiences do inference and deduction apparently. The rest are dumb and need signposts....

The strident bossy one has just been replaced with the slighty apologetic one. They've shown us Ballmers monkey man appearance like its something we'd want to do. Or indeed like it was something he wanted to do. Steve MonkeyMan Ballmer, added a lot to his prestige didn't it? Then again, I used to start presentations with a video of high school children being torn apart by ravenous wolves. No really, it was an advert for Cyberian Outpost, but it woke people up.

Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. Not one of them had powerpoint. Just a thought.

They're rambling a bit now. Introductions, visuals, we've got rhetoric to look forward to apparantly. In true Platonic tradition I hope. They're also just realising that no-one can remember their last presentation very well. Oh dear. Still, it was six weeks ago. I swear you could get this lot into half the time. Questions have started again, the natives are getting restless.

Oxford Business Forum Gathers Steam

Six weeks ago nobody on our course knew what the Oxford Business forum was. Since then we've organised ourselves into teams, booked hotel rooms, designed (but still not printed) brochures, and invited guests. Today we got our first reply, and it was a positive one. Sara Weller, assistant MD of UK retail giant Sainsburys is going to be coming. Good stuff.

I spent a good hour and a half today talking to the schools PR department about what they can do for us on this, and somewhere along the way mentioned the benefits of websites like this one, and all the traffic I managed to score by covering the Oxford Union debate and... Well anyway, next Monday is Silicon Valley comes to Oxford day, on which some serious luminaries from the valley will be descending to talk to us about just how you go about making money in todays networked world. I mentioned that I'd be writing this up for you guys and five seconds later I'm invited to the press lunch - t'daaa. That's me, a couple of journalists and the cream of silicon valley, you've gotta love this place. So I promise you all top notch coverage of Silicon Valley in Oxford - top stuff.

So, I've signed up to talk to Raymond Nasr of Google and Jeff Skoll, but now I get to meet the rest as well...

First 'exam' today

Took first mock exam today for financial accounting. Some things went well - like the essay questions where you can rant vaguely for ten minutes and pick up marks. Dislike the fact that I forgot how to calculate profit margins - about the one thing I knew how to do before I started the course...

Ah well, think I scraped a pass so there'a hope that I'll be here next term yet.

Best. Game. Ever.

Well, maybe not that good, but Wednesday's fantastic victory for Newcastle United over the forces of Feyenoord definately ranks up there. From Bellamy's first half opener, to the nerve wracking equalisers to the last ditch winner, all mixed up with the equally vital news from Kiev it had everything. I mean, after that lot who would want to support one of those boring teams who win things comfortably? Certainly not me, and as the goals rained in and my nerves jangled I did the patriotic thing and got stuck into a bottle of brown ale. Or two.

So there was no posting on Thursday on account of my hangover, and then there was a pub crawl on Thursday, and then after that there was last weeks cancelled lecture instead of the usual chance to get stuff done on Friday and well, its all been a bit busy. Still, I've finally managed a solid nights sleep and so far this weekend's been pretty productive. This is good, because tomorrow we play football against LBS and I'm not going to be good for anything after the match.

New bright idea required

A while ago I made a post about meta core competences and decided that if I could develop this idea I'd have a career as a management guru. My strategic management lectuerer who is a genuine strategic guru has just used the phrase "meta core competences" without even feeling the need to explain it.

Back to the drawing board.

Because I'm worth it

L'Oreal careers gig this evening. Come work for us, big brands, career structure, freedom to pursue your goals, varied roles, responsibility as soon as you want it. One day I'll go to one of these and a company will say something interesting, something that makes me bounce up in my chair and go 'Wow! give me a job, pay me peanuts, just let me into your offices!' but it wasn't L'Oreal. Very slick though, and you can't fault the commitment, the MD UK and half his head honchos were down here, and give them their due, they were an impressively young bunch, as one told me..

"L'Oreal believe in MBA's"

which is nice. So there I was, thinking of awkward questions to ask and I thought, no, I'll just ask them about online marketing - it's in their brochure, only nobody knew anything. Well, that's kind of harsh, their head of HR guy knew enough to talk about it for five minutes, long enough for me to realise that L'Oreal just aren't taking it seriously enough. They're starting to make the right noises though, relationships, closeness, intimacy, its just you and a screen online, just like putting on makeup I guess, you and a mirror. Sit down, look for yourself in the reflection - who knows. Anyway, L'Oreal don't get the web yet, I mean, the effort that must have gone into this, and yet no one's watching. Ah well. Still, double digit profit growth for seventeen years, you can't knock the rest of the business.

L'Oreal, worth a CV?

Oh, and they have this e-strat game. Which looks like a genuine attempt to do something cool, in fact, it looks like it could be a fine and exciting game. It also looks like a time killer, and the prize for not winning is four days in Paris and an MP3 player, assuming you come close. After that it's t-shirts. I'm guessing that winning this is a lot of effort, say 100+ productive hours between three people. Easily enough time for an MBA student to earn enough to buy their own damn MP3 player and a week in Paris. Today's big idea :-

Don't sell the prizes, sell the game, it's all most of us will get.

Besides, until I can compete one on one (or team on team) rather than trying to rack up a score against a machine I'm not interested. We all know algorythms aren't as clever as we are, but other people, well now you're talking.

Much to talk about

The end of the week brought a flurry of decision making and cool stuff. First up was having to choose who I wanted to go and see at the 'Silicon Valley comes to Oxford' event. In a similar way to the Oxford Business Forum a number of top names are being brought in for panel discussions and small group tutorials. Among the names on the list are founders from Paypal and Ebay, Directors from Google and big names from Cisco, as well as a bunch of venture capitalists and such.

I've asked to have my group tutorials with Raymand Nasr, who is director of Executive Communications at Google and Jeff Skoll, not so much for the Ebay stuff, but for the Skoll foundation. So, hopefully there'll be plenty to blog about there.

Next up was the announcement of the external opportunities for the New Business Development Projects. These projects require us to write a businessplan for a new business and to hand it in before the third term. In effect most of the work takes place in the second term, but right now we need to organise our groups and choose our projects. Choosing groups was a fairly organic process and most people seem to have found one by now. Some of these groups were formed by people who arrived with their own ideas for new businesses and fairly impressive aims. Its probably not a good idea to talk about this too much, but a couple of folk are looking to develop some interesting patents, and one group seems to have found a giant gap in a large market. Every year a couple of companies come out of the NBD projects and its easy to see why.

Anyway, my group doesn't have a cool idea and so we're going down the alternative route, by which the school invites people who have ideas and need business plans to make suggestions. To choose from we have a number of technology transfer ideas, half a dozen ideas for .com's (most of which I think will get fairly short shrift) and one or two oddball projects. Again I don't want to say too much right now, because if multiple groups want the same project there'll be a competitive pitch, and many of the projects are under confidentiality agreements. Suffice to say I'm confident we'll end up with something interesting to work on.

Right, time to go and play football.

Too much too young!

Manic is such a nice guy he gives money to young offenders, and now he wants your help. Michael Carroll needs more money!

And I thought I was the first

Seems this whole mba blog for Oxford thing has been done before...

Surfing for fun

Right, we've had a lecture cancelled today due to the tutor being ill, so its time to do something I have't done in a while and wander the web randomly.

First up, whatever happened to peace love and understanding? America's youth are the new war generation

I first heard of Corporate Storytelling just before I left work, if I was still there I'd be trying to sell it, and playing with enterprise blogs. It's nice when people aren't scared of being obviously acedemic at work.

Pixie dust keeps Moores law intact for a few more years

I'm more worried than usual about Rageboy's state of mind. Although since I've never met him I'm only really worried that I won't have such a convenient source of provocative song lyrics anymore.

If I read Phill Wolff regulary the people and organisations class will be even easier. Must build that MBA resource section, blogs are a fantastic source of ideas and more importantly quality critical discussion. All CEO's should be forced to blog...

Radio 5 had a long report on Zimbabwe this morning. Seems Muagabe's wholesale theft under the banner of land reform has created a famine as farms go untended. The result, he's trying to endure aid only goes to areas that support him, millions face death. One thing about business school, its easy to stop reading the news.

Oh, this weekend the girls on our course have organised a trip to have a 'post modern feminist conversation' in the pub, apparantly they can't do this with men around. Perhaps they should invite Terrifica to make sure they don't fall prey to any evil men while they're at it. No prizes for guessing which nations women came up with the idea...

Stepping into the light

This week has been the thoughest yet. All our lecturers on Monday and Tuesday commented on how tired the class looked. I think its fifth week blues, ok, its only fourth week, but we started a week sooner than most students so Oxford's traditional depression came early. Today though, after days of late nights and barely understood lectures I found myself in sight of the end. I have one lot of reading to do for tomorrow's finance class and I'm back on top of the work. Hardly bears thinking about.

So, what to do with the weekend? well if I can have a relaxed, productive weekend (just 10-12 hours work) I reckon I'll be set fair for next week... Now though I'm going to answser all those emails I've been ignoring since Saturday...

Update Adam is knackered too, and so is Adrian. I think we're all starting to feel the pace. (Although Adrian's had more practice at this than Adam and I)

Born under a bad sign with a blue moon in your eyes

The First Presbyterian Church of Elvis the Divine rolled into Cowley last night to bring the gospel message to the sinners of East Oxford through the only medium they truly understand, sweet country acid house music. Headed up by Larry Love, ably supported by the very Reverand D Wayne Love and dressed like something out of a Garth Ennis novel the Alabama 3 (all 8 of them) set about shaking the town to its very roots.

Sadly though the Alabama 3 aren't quite the revivalist experience you'd hope for, more a pub band with a good joke who got lucky; and the new stuff isn't a patch on the Exile on Cold Harbour Lane material. (although the Devil went down to Ibiza is a fine name for a song). Still, in Woke up this Morning, Mao Tse Tung said and U Dont Dance 2 Techno they had the material to keep the crowd happy and there was plenty to like. You just get this nagging feeling that on the right night and with a little more effort they could be so much better.

Economist offer MBA Advice

The Economist have produced an online special about MBA's which contains loads of useful background for anyone thinking of taking an MBA. It also contains a piece on Jeffrey Pfeffer who has come to the conclusion that MBA's aren't worth very much.

Now this is an opinion you can hear in any bar, but Pfeffer isn't some tanked up middle manager (well he might be but...) he's a professor at Stanford and something of an expert on working practices. So expert in fact that his book 'The Human Equation' is forming the bedrock of my people and organisations course. His big argument is that MBA's don't seem to progress faster in their careers than other non MBA executives. Evidence from this is drawn mostly from consultancies and banks who conduct internal surveys about career progress.

Now I've not read the full piece on account of it being available only in a shiny new journal who presumably wanted a nice controversial piece to get themselves some press when they launched, but if that's the best evidence he's got I don't buy it. You see, if you walk out of business school and into Accentus or KPMG, or Goldman Sachs you're walking away from most of what you were taught. Your new found knowledge of marketing and brands isn't going to help you broker mergers anymore than your financial insight is going to help you design a new ERP system for someone. The best place to learn to be a consultant is in a consultancy and the best place to learn to be a banker is in a bank...

So what am I doing here? Well there are a bunch of answers, I could be learning to be an entrpreneur which is something I'd rather not learn through trial and error. I could be learning to be a CEO which will require an understanding of all of a company and a load of disciplines, something It'll take decades to learn through hands on experience. You see the point I'm making (badly) is that this is a generalist subject and most graduates then waste their breadth of education by plunging into a narrow career path where breadth of vision and understanding comes a distant second to being very good at whatever it is you spend 80% of your time doing.

But like I said earlier. I didn't come here to walk into a mediocre job at a big five consultancy or a big desk in a large bank. Of course, I'm still not sure what it is I am trying to learn but there you go...

Finance gets ridiculous

Only at Oxford would they expect you to get your head round three nobel prize winning theories about finance in a single lecture. Did I succeed? Of course not, that's why I'm about to spend most of the weekend with a finance text book.

Strategy gets serious

After last weeks moaning about strategy Thursday was a much needed restoration of faith. The course is being taught by two professors and in place of last weeks reductionist Porter view of the world which gets everything onto one diagram so you can sell it to time pressed managers came some rather more sophisticated models. David Faulkner introduced us to consumer and producer matrices, which is nice because he came up with the things in the first place and they're damn complicated.

It was also the most 'oxford' lecture I've been to so far. He started by admitting he was likely to forget to cold call, and in any case couldn't read the names of people at the back of the class so what would be the point? Then we got a clearly constructed lecture that cruised along at pace and left us all with the impression that an awful lot of knowledge had just been dumped directly into our heads. Good stuff, especially as strategy is the subject I'm most interested in.

Changes at Amazon

Adam has pointed out the new Supertabs at Amazon. First reaction, "Oh my god, yet more really bad invasive advertising". Then I realised it wasn't, I've just developed a knee jerk reaction that assumes any large logo on a screen has been put there to annoy users in the name of advertising. This I quite like, it doesn't break the medium, it tells me where I am and it makes sense.

So does Amazon's creation of virtual 'concessions' selling other people's products to their own audience, smart man that Bezos guy.

Oh my god my head hurts

Hadn't previously realised just how much alcohol could be imbibed in the name of Halloween. Fortunately no lectures for me today. I feel a quiet Friday night coming on.

Hitching a ride on the cluetrain

Way back in the day it was suggested that markets were conversations. So radical was this idea that the authors nailed their 95 theses to the newborn world wide web and invited the world to talk to them. Fortunately they did this at a time when such ideas were fashionable - if not understood - and so avoided the brutal execution that may have been their fate in earlier times. Instead they were encouraged to inscribe their ideas on the carcasses of millions of dead trees. Rather surprisingly people read it. I wasn't one of them - after reading the theses I was far too busy talking.

All of which is a long way of introducing the following

$200 000 gets you 40 million banner impressions * 0.2% conversion rate = 80 000 page impressions

Leaving aside the difficulty of finding 40m page impressions to put your banners on, a place that will sell at $5 per thousand or a banner that will perform as well as a 0.2% click through rate $200 000 is still a lot of money. A great deal more money in fact than Nick from Magdalen could have raised to publicise his views on digital music. One conversation on Slashdot though and he's got 80 000 people wandering around his website, every last one of them interested in the same subjects he is. So the moral of this little story is that if you're a marketeer looking to take out some online advertising, THINK, would it be easier to just say something your audience is interested in hearing?

Anyone would think there was something in this conversation thing.

Of course the chaps with the theses weren't the only ones