BlogSat

A chat with a classmate from B-school reminded me about this and it kinda made my evening! I work on YouTube in my current job, and I'm pretty thrilled about it. But well over an year ago, in fact in April 2006, for my Advanced Marketing Strategy Class , as part of the required final project for the class I proposed to my project group that we do a project on this video-sharing site that been causing a significant drop in my productivity over the previous few months. I even wrote in a couple of emails to the email addresses and PR contacts on the site (they didn't get back to me!...and now I know who they are.:)) We ended up doing something else, but I guess I got to eventually work on a YouTube project anyway. In fact, here's Blogosphere proof (in the first paragraph) confirming the story from another now-Googler. :)

I'm kinda kicked about something that happened a couple of weeks ago. Someone wrote me an email asking if he could adapt an article I'd written for ChiBus for something he was planning. My reaction was, in order : "Hell, yeah!" ...and "Thanks". It inspired me to revise Carol and Klaus (A) one more time. I'd written the original article in a terrible rush, but it was one of my favorite articles for the school newspaper. I think its funny only if you've been to through the special weirdness that is business school and the case-based education format (i.e. its funny because its kinda true.) But still, if you feel like a laugh give it a try. The episode also got me thinking: "What if lightning strikes twice?" and someone else wants to do something with this again? It was nice of this guy to ask, but I should make it easier. I've known what Copyleft and Creative Commons is for a while, but have always thought about it in the context of...

... make some really good/funny Follies videos. I don't know what it is...the fact that they're in New York and have more creative-types (would be interesting too see what the USC and UCLA kids are up to.) Sometimes all it takes though are just one or two admits to affect the creative level at the school, so that could just be it; especially as typically one class tends to build on the work of the former class. SouthPark Video The Famous Bernanke video Baby got WACC Dean Dean Baby

The WSJ had an article today on yet another issue that some parents apparently consider while naming their kids. They check that Google thinks their uniquely precious one really is that unique. In the words of a proud mother of a young baby boy, their excuse for wanting to name their child Kohler is the currently low Google return for this "I wanted our son's name to be as special as he is" Sheesh! Yes, lady. Unfortunately your telling this to a WSJ reporter now means that the first 100 links for your precious one's name are going to be links to articles where people are questioning your decision.:) Now I'm as big an ego-surfer as anyone else out there , but this is carrying things too far. Parents overthink the names of their kids, and that's natural and to be expected. What annoys me is when they start unnecessarily worrying about optimizing these names to suit the environment. I have friends of Indian origin who're giving thei...

Well, just one of many anyway. I was at the India Business Conference organized by the kids at school a few weeks ago, and the afternoon keynote speaker was P.J. Nayak . The presentation was great, and the points he made were brilliant, as was the morning keynote by Prof. Rajan. I didn't really expect to be fascinated by the changes in Indian retail banking, but his presence, polish and use of data/facts ensured that I was. However, this post isn't about the speech. It was something that the speaker mentioned in the Q&A. In response to a question on the quality of managers in the Indian public sector, he said the problem was that the government never recognized the need to provide incentives to their managers and that this was a possible explanation for their relatively inferior performance. At any business school, but especially Chicago , that's the way we're trained to think: provide the right incentives for people and people will do the right things; without the...

As much as I love school , and as much as I think the Career Services office at the GSB is nothing short of absolutely incredible, I couldn't help wondering if the MBA recruiting process as a whole could be done much, much better. I got thinking about this only because this quarter, my final quarter at the GSB, I'm really, really enjoying finance. I'm in two really interesting finance classes with great professors and that's got me completely hooked. I couldn't help thinking, if I'd been this interested in finance beforehand, would the choices that I'd have made regarding a post-bschool career been very different? The way business school recruiting works, the system is really geared towards people who know what they want to do after business school even as they enter b-school; those who're hoping to take some time to figure it out are at a bit of a disadvantage. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time thinking about fixes for the system, but ever...

...and apparently on TV Asia as well. The India Business Conference made a promo video (below) and have some footage from last year's conference that ran on TV Asia. I'm the guy leaning, seated at the last table they show about 2:15 into the video. Not bad for a YouTube debut, I guess.:)

As someone who will get a Finance concentration from the Chicago GSB , I've done my fair share of assignments/projects involving valuing companies. ( Note: I'm not claiming expertise, merely experience :)) A number of factors make this complicated ( hence the need to actually learn it, and the excuse to still struggle with it ) but essentially the value of a company is the expected value of its future cash flows. Acquisitions by companies are a simple way to understand not just what a company is valued at, but also a sense of how much revenue it might generate in the future, in a sense how "big" a part of the economy it currently is. I tend to be interested in, and get excited by, tech and media stuff, and tend to focus on reading about these sectors. I've always known at the back of my head that I'm ignoring other sectors that may in fact be much larger, and today was a stark reminder of that. So I've been thinking for the last couple of days: "Goog...

I've been following Marketing guru, Seth Godin 's blog of late. A couple of days ago he opined on powerpoint presentations , or to be more accurate a really bad slide a particular CEO used. I couldn't help remembering that I actually used a similar one while pitching e-Immunization at a VC workshop once, and got very similar criticism there from Guy Kawasaki . Now, b-school and a summer spent in consulting has meant that I've had ample opportunity to think about presentation and power points in particular. I agree with Mr. Godin's basic premise: that the main goal at the end of the day is communicating your message effectively and so making an "emotional" connection in a presentation is a great, great idea, but not all products/ideas/situations allow that. For example, he proposes a style where you use pictures etc. to re-enforce your message, rather than detract from it. Jobs, I think does a great job of this, but then he always has great material to w...

Went, saw and came back happy. :) There was much to appreciate on the annual pilgrimage that is the Chicago GSB Warren Buffett trip. There was comedy : our first step on the tour was the Nebraska Furniture Mart , the largest furniture store in the USA. We got there at 8:55am, but the doors were closed, so we went around in our trams figuring out how we were going to get in.:) Once we got in though, the entire class eventually sat down in their rocking chair section. That's right; there were enough rocking chairs on the display floor for a 120 Chicago GSB students! There was mild amusement: That's right. I said trams. We rode around Omaha in old-fashioned trams with wooden seats. Omaha proved to be surprisingly more hilly than I thought it would be though. I also learnt that there was a mattress called "The Warren" There was realization: That office parks, whereever they are, look identical. The ones we visited in the heart of the MidWest were clones of the ones I w...

For some reason I ended up signing for the Buffett trip tomorrow. Given my general inertia towards this kinda stuff, I'm not sure what prompted this, but I'm looking forward to being in the same room as the Oracle of Omaha . Apparently that's the MBA thing to do . Ended up killing time earlier today with this Buffett video . Favorite comment: "If I was teaching a course in business school, I'd ask the students to value an Internet company for the final. Anyone who turns in any number for valuation, will fail the class."

Sigh...yet another post, yet another excuse. I was pretty sick all of last week and it started exactly on last Monday. I could feel something coming on, but that didn't prevent me from over-doing it and going and watching a movie. Yes, I'm stupid like that. Apparently a sure way to be really sick, when you suspect you're going to be sick is to sleep even less. I averaged 3-4 hours between Sat and Mon, which meant my approach to valuing a company during my study group meeting on Tuesday was adding another $100 million for every degree above normal body temperature that I felt and just getting done with it. Cough and a cold followed the fever, and despite the required, moderate pill-popping to get me through the day by Friday I think it was officially the second time since I got to Chicago that I had no option but to spend the day all at home. Spent the weekend mostly bundled inside except for a study group meeting or two or three. Anyway enough complaining. Highlights of the...

Nice going , Ken.:) Incidentally, saw both the recommender and recomendee at the Becker Brown Bag Series this week.

Umm...more than a week of blog-less days. There goes yet another resolution.:) As one of the reading for this class, I read this chapter (When Talk Substitutes For Action) from this book (The Knowing-Doing Gap) . BTW, isn't Google Print awesome!? The take-away from the chapter: that business school can be dangerous in that it can leave MBAs believing that victory is merely successfully articulating a good idea. The case method and discussions help foster that view. I've definitely observed that in myself and many (if not most) of my peers. Success is seen in successfully arguing for one's own point of view and intelligence or cleverness is being able to cut down someone else's point. The chapter also notes the tragedy that it is easier to appear smart by disagreeing with someone rather than agreeing with them. I've caught myself doing (and actually done) this literally hundreds of times. Some of this skepticism is necessary to test the idea on the table, but is so...

Yikes! My post titles have officially reached the heights of try-to-make-a-related-pun-but-fail-spectacularly with this one. Anyway, the Cricket World Cup is on, and the usual downs and less frequent ups associated with being an Indian cricket fan continue. But what's new for me this time was that I got involved in a fantasy cricket league . I've always known what fantasy leagues are, but had never joined one before. Somehow I never really though it'd be something I'd enjoy too much; almost joined a friend's NBA league once, but then got lazy... Anyway, I ended up joining this league that a friend set up for the World Cup, and now I suddenly get it! I'm caring about matches that I would've earlier never even known had taken place. I'm checking up how I did compared to everyone else in my friend's league, even though I know it's not going to look good. I'm kicking myself for not manipulating my transfers optimally, even though I know I...

Oh dear God!! This is so frikking cool, I'm not sure what to do. I'll probably rarely use this, but I can't even believe the technology is good enough to do this, and to see it rolled out and integrated in to Blogger!!! And so easy to use!! Whoa... The feature is Transliteration and I learnt about it at ContentSutra (that's a good name for an Indian tech site; almost as good as Alootechie :)) Anyway, I should explain. Look at the heading. I just typed in "Satyajeet", but with the push of one button it became सत्यजीत . It's not the perfect translation into Devnagri , but it's pretty damn close! Now, I've really lost the ability to write in Devnagri; well not really, but I probably write at the level of a 10-12 year old (and not a very bright 10-12 year old.) I wrote two Hindi plays once in college and though the dialogue was all in Hindi, I had to write it in the Roman script , because writing in Devnagri would have taken me too long. Someone...

A friend's post led me this article . The short story: MIT continues to extend OpenCourseWare : their site that puts all MIT course material online. By the end of the year every MIT course; that's every single MIT course (all 1800 of em) will have its course material online. (I need to snoop around there more now; it's been almost 2 years since I last poked around the site.) This is mostly just course material (syllabus, homeworks, readings, reference lists, lecture slides), and as far as I can tell not too many courses still have video streams of lecures online yet, but I hope that keeps increasing. For example, the SCPD at Stanford keeps the videos of classes that are available to professionals online for the general public for the first month of the quarter (then you need a password.) However, some classes and many public lectures are online for free. For some courses admittedly there is limited value in having just the material online, but I think it's impor...

I don't do very well with posting comments to blog posts. My tendency tends to be to take time and passively process what I've read. I also feel like any argument that I'd need to make on a blog would need me to sit back and think for a while to check if there are any loopholes in my logic. Sitting back and thinking (with occasional bouts of day-dreaming), and the immediate, quick responses needed to write a reasonable comment don't really go together, so I surprised myself by actually writing in the comments section on Prof. Levitt's post on tenure . He proposes doing away with the practice, and I think that goes too far. Here's my principle arguments against it .

At lunch today, I attended a talk by David Salyers, a VP of Marketing at Chick-Fil-A. I'd heard of the company for the very first time just last week, when someone brought it up in my Channel Marketing class as an example of a company that managed to stay true to it's corporate values. The talk was organized by the Christian Business Students Association at school and was, in terms of both content and presentation amongst the better talks I've attended at the GSB. David was extremely charismatic (they train em well at that HBS place) and had really good stuff to say. The talk, titled "What is the ultimate business question?" centered around both business strategy and personal strategy, two topics I love just sitting back and thinking about. I ended up leaving pretty happy with the way I'd spent my time. However, what intrigued me most was something that came up towards the end of the Q&A session: their corporate mission. Here's what it is: " ...

Mondays are beginning to get a little rough. Last monday was bad (defined as interesting and tiring), but I wasn't expecting anything too eventful this week. Well, think again. My ability to create interesting situations for myself continues to amaze (and distressa) me. Let's just say assignments for this class (Macroeconomics) and this class (Going to Market) , combined with certain time-tested procrastination tools , meant that I just had 3 hours of sleep before completing the assignment for this class (Technology Strategy.) As always, the class was a lot of fun and I really enjoy discussing these topics. Headed straight after that to a talk by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs. I'd read about the UN's millenium goals a while back and was really excited to see him in person, so it was a little strange that I started dozing off during his speech. Part of the problem was of course the sleep deprivation, but the other was..quite frankly...I don't think I was the audience for th...