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.