BlogSat

The University of Virginia newspaper seems to have pre-announced (if it was supposed to announce at all?) the faculty "unconference" that Google is having at Mountain View tomorrow. So I guess that means I'm allowed to talk about it. I'm excited to have wangled an invite for the all-day do tomorrow. I just got back from dinner with some of the faculty that's visiting and I'm feeling on such a high from the topics, quality and passion of the discussions...and this was just over dinner!:) The topic list is great (lots of stuff I can get excited about!), and I'm not feeling in the mood to be timid tomorrow....now I just need to avoid the temptation to look at work email.

I used to crack these jokes all the time before B-School. Thanks for the pointer, Chris Looks like the dilbert site has been completely re-designed since I've visited. Umm...some good, some not so good. They've tried to look very "Web 2.0", but site interaction and usability isn't quite there yet.

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...

I have a problem with idealism. The problem is that I have it. Yesterday, I helped the recruiting effort at work narrow down resumes. Imagine this: you're given a stack of 100+ ish resumes and you need to whittle them down to a maximum of 8 (I couldn't get it to below 10.) Why is this task even vaguely related to idealism? When in school, I was often annoyed by the some of the drama thats involved in recruiting: the dinners, the meet-n-greets, the pressure/suggestions to show up to presentations/lunch-n-learns, the information sessions that devolve into "selling my resume" sessions, the phone calls from recruiters to gauge interest in a particular firm(not making this up.) My thought process was: you have our resumes, make your picks, call us for the interviews, and leave me alone to read my damn books (or just daydream while pretending to read my damn books...as the case may be.:)) This sucking up seemed unnecessary and a little too fake to me. Then I tried separatin...

Picked this up from Chris' blog last week: Apparently, the Chicago GSB has introduced a compulsory 4-slide Powerpoint presentation as part of the application. Chris thinks its a good idea. So apparently does this person. Seth Godin is not unimpressed either . So naturally, in the finest Chicago tradition of challenging everything , I'll say I think they're missing an important point. I'm not thrilled about this at all. In fact, I'll go as far as to say I think this might prove to be a terrible idea. I could be completely wrong....yet again:)...though time will tell. The main argument for this move seems to be that it will allow applicants to showcase their "creativity." Because clearly, Powerpoint as a form of creative expression is unparalleled in our times! This post and the comments go on to make the " creativity needs constraints " argument. I'm not disputing either of these points. Creativity is possible using Powerpoint, but (sin...

My GSB classmates and friends have already said it , and said it much better than I can, but Faisal's point was the one I found myself agreeing with the most. The MBA is a unique educational experience in that altering your behavior and view of the world is part of the brief, and I've certainly experienced that, and its been for the better, and has made a world of a difference. The hope is that I can translate this into a meaningful difference both professionally and personally. The obligatory snap avec family et degree below.

... 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

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...

Alright, I'm probably close to the last person on the planet who should be commenting on corporate mergers, but... OK, I'm going to take that back; I'll have a MBA degree in a couple of months, so I'm probably better qualified than 99% of the planet...but still.. you could do much better. Anyway, the Murdoch-threated WSJ reports today that Redmond is considering bidding on Yahoo . I don't understand it and from what I know it seems extremely unlikely to me that it'll happen, but that's what I thought about Google buying DoubleClick , and we know how that turned out. As far as I can tel l, there isn't a logical reason from Microsoft and Yahoo to merge, except some vague generalizations about how this will better place them to compete with the Big G in the area of Internet advertising. These are not good reasons to merge, and even if you managed to convince yourself they were, I'm not sure how a merger better helps you to compete. The spin-off joi...

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...