The eye of the storm

End of week one. I have been a terrible blogger, but I honestly have had very few times to sit down and write in the past two weeks. The other bloggers have recapped most of the activities around O-week and the first week of class, but I will just give my thoughts.

O week was a blast in so many ways. The Haas class of 2009 is full of friendly, intelligent, and outgoing people, so it was easy to make friends fast. True, you end up having the same conversation over and over (Where are you from? Where did you do your undergrad? What did you do before school? What do you want to do after?), but it is a good way to start developing bonds and learning about the interesting backgrounds of your classmates. Social activities included a bowling night, a neighborhood bar night, a golf day, a party night out in San Francisco, an Alumni reception, and a trip to a SF Giants baseball game. We also had a number of events to help get us acclimated to Berkeley, Haas, and academic life. These ranged from an introduction to case studies to a Financial Aid overview. Most impressively, we had amazing guest speakers, including the Chairman of Levi Strauss, the COO of Adobe, the CEO of Dolby, and the founder of Fair Trade Coffee.

One day in particular really stands out to me as knowing 100% that I made the right decision to come to Haas. We met in the morning and after a brief information session, boarded buses to Alameda, a small island right off of Oakland, about 20 minutes away from Berkeley. The entire class of 2009 spent just over two hours volunteering at a cooperative for formerly homeless people getting back on their feet. This mainly consisted of manual labor, such as cutting down trees, cleaning up garbage, and building a new shade structure for the plant nursery, one of the two businesses the co-op operates. Several things impressed me about this: first, that it was even organized in the first place. I don't know how many other schools may do community service with their time during O-week, but I imagine not many. It was just understood that anyone coming to Haas would simply want to participate. And participate we did. The director of the co-op commented that never before had she seen so much work get done in such a short time. It was two hours for each of us, but 480 man hours. Nobody complained, nobody tried to avoid working hard. Instead, people worked together, did whatever job they saw needed to be done, and had a smile on while doing so. Knowing that collectively we could go out and do something positive and that it came naturally to each one of us was a great moment for me. I knew I was in the right place.

Later, we went to a park for the cohort olympics. This gave everyone a chance to let out their fun and goofy side. Smart people with kind hearts who know how to have fun? What else do you need in a business school?

Classes started this week and I have to say that it is hectic. Lots of reading and trying to get used to a new schedule. I always have the feeling that there is something that I am forgetting to do. But, that is because there are so many great things going on. It is Friday and I am finally coming up for a breath of air, but having some time to reflect makes me see only better that I love it.

Can you judge a book by its cover?

My classmate Oliver wrote this great post hitting the highlights of the qualifications of the class of 2009. Just like Oliver I am excited about being in the company of such remarkable people. Despite all these achievements and recognitions there is such a camaraderie, humility and collegiality among this group. Until Pete Johnson described the class, I didn't know how remarkable my classmates are.

Don't underestimate the person next to you, weed whacking in a community outing.

Pete did describe the class of 2009 is different from the previous years in many ways, most notably he described our class as "funny". I guess that is the first time in the history of Haas? Wait till you get to read more posts by Luke, and photos of Adrian, you will see what Pete meant.

My first week at Haas

I was warned about how hectic the first semester was going to be but I think nothing could have prepared me for the actual experience. 4 days into the course and I'm already learning hard lessons in time management and decision making. Juggling classes, interesting career workshops, club activity and dealing with the overall deluge of information makes it hard to make choices of what to attend and what not to. There is just no way I can do all of it and that only means I would have to clearly prioritize the most important and sadly forego the rest.

One activity which I’m keen to be involved in and I’m trying desperately to make time for is ‘>Play, The Berkeley Digital Media Conference’ organized by the Digital Media and Entertainment Club (DMEC: http://berkeleydmec.org/ ). DMEC organizes the hugely popular >Play conference annually and this year is turning out to be an exciting line-up of speakers and events. Save the conference date 27th October and be sure to check the conference website (http://playconference.org/ ) for information on the panel line-up, activities and latest updates.

So now that I have managed to shamelessly plug the conference details into that post I better get back to my cases! More soon.

Get email on the go

Just in the first day of the class I received a more than dozen emails that required action. You sure can get the MacBook Pro out of your backpack and constantly check email but nothing beats the instant gratification of answering your Blackberry's buzz. Whatever mobile device you get, make sure you get email on it.

Be it replying to quick emails from your study group or getting notifications on millions of events, you want to get a smart phone like BlackBerry or iPhone. With Google Talk and Yahoo IM in most mobile devices, it is unmatched connectivity.

When the 10ers join I expect at least $100 price drop on iPhone, so I hope your cell phone contracts all expire just in time for Haas.

May be by your time, Haas Computing may seamlessly support Macs as well.

Waiver 1-1

I know you all have been anxiously waiting to know my waiver status. Well the wait is over.
I got to waive one, Data and Decisions but not Financial Accounting. With all engineering background and just 3 weeks of preparation I tried to pass myself as an expert accountant. Well now I have to keep worrying about taxes, leases, depreciation and all the fun stuff.

You should plan on waiving. Go for 4 waivers. Plan on what courses would interest yo early on. Your time here is short and there is just too much to do.

I will be doing Negotiations course as my first elective.

Our class

Peter Johnson, director of admissions at Haas, gave us the low-down on our class during O-Week. I will not repeat the stats of the Class of 2009, as I am sure you will find them on the Haas admissions site soon, but I wanted to share some of the interesting facts about our class:

• While all of us have successful academic and professional careers, 2% of our class came to Haas with a PhD and many of us were or are Fulbright, Point, Pinto, Maxwell or CJ White scholars
  
• We have built houses for Habitat for Humanity, tought with Teach for America, ran marathons and jumped out of airplanes.
• Another is a founding volunteer with an organization called Prison Entrepreneurship Program, in which volunteers help prison inmates write business plans. The organization also provides post-release job placement, housing assistance, and micro-loan financing.

• One of our classmates received the Founders’ Award—Google’s Highest Employee honor

• Another co-founded an online bookstore dedicated to preserving Persian culture and literature and turned it into the world's largest archive of Persian heritage

• One member of our class was executive producer of a tv quiz show.
• A number of us were Phi Beta Kappa, and we have a couple of salutatorians and a valdectorian of a college class

• One member of our class worked marketing PERT shampoo; another was brand manager for the Dukes of Hazzard!

• One of us worked as an intern in the US Embassy in Romania, another at the US Embassy in Athens; and yet another at the US Embassy in Togo

• Another member of our class interned at the US Supreme Court

• One member of our class was a US Navy Seal and Served in Iraq;

• Two of us served in the Peace Corps in Africa, one in Benin and another in Namibia;

• One member of our class trained with the US Olympic water polo team and played in the Hungarian National League

• Another person in our class started a charter school in his spare time.

• One woman in our class founded and led a group of 2500 service women to lobby for equal opportunities in the military.

• One person in our class has authored 5 articles on bacterial photosynthesis, another either authored or co-authored 10 patents;

• One of us, a 180 pound kid from Washington DC. , practiced sumo wrestling with a nationally-ranked Japanese high school sumo team.

I am well aware that most of top business schools have highly achieved students. Given the relatively small size of our class however, I was really impressed with the broad variety of backgrounds, professional experience and community-oriented activities in our class.

As you might be able to tell from my posts, this is a really exciting time for me and I am really glad to be here in Berkeley and to be a part of the amazing Class of 2009 at Haas.

On a completely unrelated note, I passed my Finance waiver exam!

O-Week Highlights

Monday was the first day of classes here at Haas... Believe me: It is exciting to back in school and there is so much to write about. However, I still have to catch up with last week's activities, to give you an idea what we have been up to during O-Week. (In the meantime, Adrian's post gives you a good impression of the first days of classes.)

Last Wednesday our entire class went to volunteer at the Alameda County Cooperative, a housing project for formerly homeless people. As you can see from the photo, we spent most of our time doing outside-work, cleaning streets, painting fences and houses and working in the community gardens around the houses. What you don't see in the picture: B-School students are indeed capable of performing physical work and with 240 of them you can get a lot done in a short period of time.

Wednesday afternoon was reserved for the Haas Cohort Olympics. As you might know, our class is divided into four cohorts of 60 students (Axe, Gold, Oski and Blue). And while Haas generally is a very cooperative school, when it comes to the cohorts, we can be rather competitive: Unfortunately my cohort did not perform too well in the sports part of the Olympics, but we gained ground with our now famous skit featuring L. as Colonel Buzz Chopper.

The first day... a typical day?

Hi everyone, well, as predicted exclusively by the second years (and everyone else) the first term certainly started with a whallop! I remember during the application process asking what a 'typical' day was. I can't answer that yet but I can share some reflections on my first day and my first few weeks...

1) Be prepared to be collaborative. Our study team has already met three times and it's only the second day. I'm told we'll meet less frequently as we get a) more efficient and b) busier, but for now, we're definitely erring on the side of over-meeting. As for the study groups themselves, there's 5 people in most of them, all with one or two women, and an international / U.S. mix. Apparently there's a secret sauce for making them up but functionally it seems to be something like poet (yours truly), financey, techy, engineer and , well, something else. All I can say is it seems to work.

2) Be prepared to be busy. My first day started in Haas at 7.30 as I walked to school and read the case I should have read on the weekend, and ended at 9.20pm as we concluded an amazing class on leadership communication. Although the learning schedule may look light, and at first I whooped as I realized in theory I could be more or less free Thursday from 11, there are about a billion other things going on.

3) Be prepared. I’m so pleased I came here for math camp and communication camp, not just because I enjoyed the camps (well, benefitted from math) and because I met many people in advance (and had a few drinks with them), but also because I got a heap done in that time. Above all, you really don’t want to be looking for a place to live now.

4) Your fellow students will teach you, literally. I’m not American, and the graduate student instructor program (GSI) has really surprised, amazed and delighted me. It allows second years to help design and facilitate courses. This involvement varies from sitting in, to actually running the class (as in leadership communication).

That’ll be all for now. It’s time for a study group meeting, and day two.
Adrian

Hello from Seattle

Wow! The first years are off to a fast start on the blog. It'll be interesting to see whether they keep the pace once the first-year whallop hits on Monday.

I finished my internship at Amazon yesterday, and am flying back to Berkeley later today. On the whole, it was a very positive experience. I got out of it what I hoped to (1. work for a company I hold in high regard, 2. work for a tech company and 3. get thrown into the fast pace of a young company). I hope they got what they wanted out of me.

The 10 weeks went by very quickly, and as is Amazon's style, they wasted no time throwing me to the wolves. It was really neat to be given a lot of responsibility right off the bat...they really seem to value the MBA perspective, and they do a good job of using our time as interns to get some projects done that full-time employees can't tackle on their own (without an extra 10 hours in the day).

My project had two facets: the first was a market segmentation of Amazon's B2B retail media customers, and the other was drafting a new process for the sales team to sell to B2B customers (which was based on my segmentation). Because my background does not have anything to do with retail or technology, it was a little scary, but I caught on after about three weeks.

I cannot say enough about the people at Amazon. They are low-key and humble, intelligent and curious. They work hard, but on the whole (from what I saw, anyway), they lead balanced lives. That kind of culture is hugely important to me.

Classes start on Monday, and I'm looking forward to being a student again. It's been a few months since I've seen some of my good pals in '08, and I'm excited to see them. From what I hear, one of our classmates is having some sort of "white party" tomorrow afternoon. Do people really do that this far north of Miami? And this far beyond, like, 2002?

O-Week Speakers

O-Week brough some interesting speakers to campus which well represented the breadth of the Haas Network.

Keynote speakers included:
Bob Haas, Chairman of the Board at Levi Strauss & Co.
Bill Jasper, Haas alum and CEO of Dolby
Shantanu Narayen, Haas alum and COO of Adobe Systems
Paul Rice, Haas alum and CEO of Transfair USA

Paul Rice gave a fascinating speech during a welcome reception on Tuesday night. I knew that Haas has strong ties to a lot of non-profits and that many Haas graduates work for socially responsible ventures after graduation. However, hearing first-hand from a man who lived and worked with coffee farmers in Nicaragua for years in the 1990s and has spent his entire professional career opening new business opportunities for offee export ventures in underdeveloped countries around the world really opened my eyes to so-called non-traditional careers. Paul's story demonstrated how personal commitment to a good cause can make a difference in the world and I am glad that the O-Week chairs invited him along with more traditional speakers from the corporate world.

Waivers Done ... Waiting begins ... Sort of

Amidst all the O-week activities (which are remarkably orchestrated and impeccably executed by the three amazing O-week chairs) I found some time to prepare for the second waiver. The exam took me all three hours and I still did not get to two parts to a question.

It wasn't tricky but was long. Or is it really tricky and if I were smart I would've aced it in less time? So I will not know the results till Monday.

Next week is promising to be an extremely packed week, with a makeup classes day on Friday (which is usually an off day) for the Labor day Monday.

PS: I probably should suspend blogging to let more voices to come through in this blog.

It is about selling

This is an introspection post.
Today I had another Duh! moment. It is all about selling. Selling your idea not telling it.
You know it, I know it, everybody knows it, it is just hard putting that into practice. It has to be done everyday, in everything you do. It does not matter how creative or strategic you think the idea is or even if indeed if it is.
So what?
If I can't successfully sell this to four other people, who are from completely different background and whom I have met for the first time, what is the point?

You don't wait for time and place to make a sale. It is not just the solution for a case that you got to ready for just fifteen minutes. Even a simple thing that you want accepted by others, like lunch place, needs selling.

Isn't this easier said than done? Wow!

Poll: Follow up on the YouTube post

In my previous post I talked about the YouTube world. It will be nice to see what everyone else feels about my comment on working, learning and living when anything you would assume as private may turn up on the web for all to see.

Here is a poll on SurveyMonkey, have your say.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=LCiSEONqH5K_2fXJBCApe_2bBQ_3d_3d

This also made me think a bit more on this topic. I am thinking of using the Haas framework and its powerful network to do a session with people from the new media world, academia and ethical/social behavioral studies to discuss some of these topics.

Doing MBA in a YouTube world

There are cameras everywhere and people are willing to shoot any event on their mobile cameras. More than ever it is easier to get the videos up on YouTube. In the social networking, user generated content, iPhone, twitter world one should assume, "anything you do or say can and will be blogged about or will show up in YouTube". Any conversation you have, in person or email can be blogged about. I do realize the irony in this, as some of my blog posts do fit that category.

It did happen in the class of 09, a video of one our classmate talking about an event during the math camp showed up in Google Videos. So it is conceivable that our class presentation (botched or otherwise) may show up on YouTube. With the user created categorization through Tagging, once we put the content out there we lose control over how it is tagged (classified). Worse, it is possible for anyone to build on a video to make it look something completely different. Few years ago Scott McNeally said, "there is so privacy in the Internet, get used to it". It is truer than ever.

A recent WSJ article (paid subscription required*) on a set of "AnnoyanceTech" gadgets said,

"It's becoming easier for people to imagine that technology is a conduit through which they will solve all their social problems,"

I wonder if there is scope for developing a set of "AnnoyanceTech" gadgets to stop your work and other public performances from being YouTubed.

I am definitely not a new media Luddite who would ask for banning all video phones, but in some strange way it is not a comforting thought that the person who appear to be checking email, holding up the iPhone may be YouTubing you. After all a class room is a place to make mistakes and learn from these. But banning devices is avoiding the problem. We all need to learn collectively, the rules of social engagement in the new media world.


*When Murdoch completed the DowJones buyout he might make the online access free.

Kudos to the Ops team for putting together the amazing Student Resource Guide

I sat in a review group to provide feedback to Kara Hayman and her team on the Student Resource Guide they put together for all the new admits. Right after the admission call, Haas sent to all of the new admits, the Student Resource Guide by FedEx. The guide is an extremely very well written, organized and packaged document. Everyone in the focus group commented on the great visual appeal, the uniformity of colors and fonts, and how they had used it to ease the transition to Berkeley and Haas. It was not something that was hurriedly photocopied and slapped together.

I think it shows the great attention to detail and the real hard work of the Ops team in helping the new admits make the decision and move to Berkeley. I bet the guide covered information that is important for almost everybody. There sure was some comments made about the need for more information for special cases, but I bet that a guide that is meant for such a diverse student body did its job extremely well.

The Ops team also made available an excellent new admit website that contained all of the information in the guide and more. There were some exchanges about doing the guide only in the web form vs. paper and web form. I for one voiced the web only form because I believe that anything you print goes out of date immediately. But many people liked the usability of the printed form, in fact I am thankful for the great Berkeley map that was included and the practice test for quantitative skills.

Kudos to Kara and her team. I appreciate all you did for the incoming class.

It is all blue

Despite what I might have said about sorting hat and cohort names, to the disappointment of all Potter-heads out there, the cohort assignment is not as magical. I heard that it is a carefully constructed social engineering project. I shudder at the thought that even one change in the last minute will have a cascading effect and possibly lead to complete revamp of the assignment (note: extreme dramatization added for effect). If you already don't know, the cohorts are named Blue ("Da Blues"), Gold, Axe and Oski.

The cohorts are of the same size, 240 evenly distributed. But the prevailing talk when you go to any of the socializing event is, "Da blues are everywhere! everybody is blue!". I wonder how it could happen. Is it possible that all the blues are all really twins or quadruples, showing up at every possible event?

O-Week - Ropes Course

For me ropes course marked the official start of orientation week: Despite a rough start - our bus left campus at 6.45 a.m. - I had a fantastic day and I keep being amazed by the wonderful people I meet here at Haas.

I spent Thursday night with a couple of other students at a friend's house, enjoying the fantastic view from his deck, so I was not too happy to hear my alarm go off at six in the morning. A quick breakfast at school was enough, however, to get everybody energized , so when we arrived at the 4Winds site close to Sebastopol, California, we were all ready to go. After a few warm-up and team-building exercises, we spent the rest of day high up in the trees, enjoying the great view from 30 feet above the ground. (Well, at least those of us who did not decide to climb blindfolded.)

Yes, the ropes course is a tool for exploring individual and team leadership styles. More than anything else, however, it is a great way to enjoy the beautiful surroundings around the Bay area and to meet and get to know new classmates. My team during the day on the course once again was a group of truly accomplished people, full of energy and with incredible stories to tell.

It can be exhausting at times to meet so many new people every day. At the same time it is probably one of the most intriguing aspects of B-School, so I am really looking forward to the rest of O-Week and the chance to really get to know more of my fellow students.


P.S. Just one more hour to the start of the first BBQ and house party at my new home in berkeley. Personally, I have never hosted 200 people at home before, so this promises to be become an exciting evening.

Waiver Exam Prep

As part of an effort to ensure that curriculum can be customized to fit the individual interests and experience of each student, Haas allows students with extensive training or background in certain subjects to waive out of them. These include accounting, finance, statistics, microeconomics, and operations. Waiving out of a course does not fulfill the units, but allows a student to take an elective in place of the requirement. There are several times available to take these tests during O-week and students often collaborate in preparation. The idea of the test is to give the student a chance to show a high degree of proficiency in the subject, not to test minute details and formulas. This flexibility allows some students to tailor the curriculum to their interests and experiences.

Also, while classes are generally all required during the first semester, the second semester has only two required classes and allows for plenty of exploration of electives.

Intro

Friends-

As this is my first post on the Haas student blog, I thought I would start by introducing myself. That way, you can decide how much of what I write you want to believe!

I come to Haas from Deloitte Consulting in San Francisco, working primarily on growth and innovation for technology companies. Prior to that I worked at an internet startup, lived for a time in Australia and Hungary, and got a masters degree in international affairs (political economy) at UC San Diego. I did my undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley, graduating in 1999.

My MBA decision came down to Columbia and Berkeley. While both are fantastic schools, Haas had a number of strengths which particularly appealed to me.

-First, being interested in innovation and entrepreneurship, there is no better place to be than the Bay Area (although many industries have a strong presence here). San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are a nexus for ideas, talent, and capital, in no small part due to the presence of UC Berkeley (and our Cardinal neighbors). The ongoing collaboration and exchange of ideas between the university and the business community makes Haas an ideal place to learn from and contribute to this.

-Second, a couple of things struck me about the type of students that tend to be drawn to Haas. My impression was that people were accomplished, interesting, and driven (as with most MBA students), but distinguished by the fact that rather than simply wanting to make a lot of money, people really want to use business as a vehicle to do something positive. This can take many forms, but a common theme you hear in talking to Haas students involves how new ideas and approaches can help people and the environment. There is very little ego in the team-focused and collaborative nature of Haas students. In short, the kind of people I met were the kind of people with whom I wanted to spend time, collaborate, learn, and develop friendships

-Third, UC Berkeley's renown in a number of other graduate departments makes it a great place to forge connections with experts in other fields, particularly in technology and sciences. Again, this provides a great learning opportunity

-The Haas faculty is extremely distinguished and involved, while the small class size allows for a lot of interaction between students and faculty. The school itself is also a great facility

-Last but not least, the Bay Area is also a fantastic place to live. San Francisco, Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe, and Yosemite are all within short drives of Berkeley. The weather is great, the food is amazing, and the lifestyle is relaxed. There is a reason that most people who come out here never leave!

Of course the decision on which school may be the right fit is a very personal one. I would encourage any prospective student to visit, talk to students and professors, and see for yourself the open, collaborative, and innovative community at Haas.

Oso de Oro

O-Week: Golf

The O-week Chairs are amazing. They are so energetic and cheerful in setting up all the O-week big events. The O-week fun part kicked off with bowling on Friday night. For the weekend the have planned two sessions of all day Ropes course. On Saturday, for those who didn't do the Ropes, we had a 18 hole golfing at the Metropolitan Golf Links at Oakland.

I did the Golf event. I have not played any real Golf before, so I dug up a lot of grass and managed to lose half a dozen balls, all these in front 9. Luckily we played scramble so we kept moving. Despite that it took three hours to do the front 9. I got one good shot with a 5 iron. I guess I am not in any hurry to buy my clubs or buy a membership.

Is learning to play Golf really important for networking? I don't think so, it is just another way to do it.

Here are some photos.

I heard it on Public Radio

UC President Dynes recently resigned. I was listening to Forum on KQED that discussed this event and what is in store for the UC system. The Forum podcast is here (MP3 download). Some interesting points I heard:

1. UC professors are still underpaid compared to other schools
2. UC health care is second only to VA in size
   
3. UC student body is around 200K
4. Academicians who take on administrative roles, like the President don't love it as much and want to go back.

One great thing about going to the public school like UC is the affordable fee. I appreciate that very much.

What I can tell about the waiver exam?

Not much, since I swore on my firstborn.

When Dan Sullivan, our Director of Academic affairs, walked into the test hall to give us the exams, he was visibly surprised to see anyone at all. He said he thought no one would show up. I wonder what will happen if 60 - 120 people take the exams and get to waive one or two core courses.

Each exam is three hours and it took most of us two and half hours or so. The best part of taking the waiver? Half way through the exam Dan walked in with handful of candies to treat the dozen of us writing the exam. The real treat of getting to know the results won't be known until the first week of classes.

For the Thursday exam, I hope Dan will bring some dark chocolate. I wonder what he would say if I took two.

The workshops

Quite a few people attended this years quantitative and communication workshops. I heard numbers like 170 (out of the 240) attended the quantitative session and this was way more than numbers from previous years. I can't really tell what transpired as I did not do either. But I can tell for sure that the biggest draw for these workshops was the opportunity t d early networking and talk to people before the school starts. I realized tis part as well and compensated for not attending this class by meeting people for lunches and hikes after their classes.

So should one sign up for these workshops by default. I think you should. Once the sorting hat speaks and assigns you to the one of the four cohorts, Gryffndor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin you won't get so close interactions with so many people. So if you can afford the time, even if you have the background, do it. So the power of these workshops comes from the number of people who attend these.

I like to waive it! waive it!

Why waive the core courses? There are many good reasons. Some may already have the background some may believe in self-study for some of the topics instead of toiling over the problem sets during the compressed Fall semester sections of 8 weeks each. To me it is the question of logistics and a balance I want to achieve between academic life and personal life. For people moving into Haas with families it is always the case of prioritizing between one event or other with family time, especially with kids.

I want to waive at least one (Data and Decisions)and as stretch goal one more (Financial Accouting). Knocking out the Monday and Wednesday 9AM classes will let me be helpful at home a bit more. So I get to pick electives that are more time friendly as well. Of course having ambition is one but having the wherewithal to realize it is different (not an original quote).

My suggestion to people applying to Haas or other programs that offer waivers through exams is to take a shot. If you have time, start studying accounting and economics ( I recommend the book by Samuelson and Nordhaus).

Summer workshop: Almost done

With just four more days until the beginning of O-Weak now is a good time to recapture my first two weeks in Berkeley.

Let me start by saying that I had a fantastic time since arriving from Germany. Coming to Berkeley for the optional summer workshop was definitely a good idea: The last two weeks were packed with activities, offered plenty of opportunities to meet my future classmates and allowed me to get settled before classes really start.

The summer workshop
I signed up for both Math Camp and Communications camp. Given my educational background in computer science the first week of Math Camp did not post a huge challenge. The material covered was mostly pretty basic. However, the class was a good opportunity to get adjusted to sitting in a class room again and provided ample opportunities to meet many of my new fellow classmates. The second week of Math Camp should in fact be labeled Finance and Accounting Camp and is a great introduction into Corporate Finance and Accounting. for people with relevant experience, the class serves as a great refresher and Thomas Gilbert, our finance instructor, is a great and enthusiastic teacher.

Communications camp was a fun experience: Contrary to popular belief communications camp is not specifically tailored to international students. The class gives a very broad introduction into leadership communications, covering listening, speaking and writing skills and offering interesting insights into how people communicate especially in an inter-cultural context.

Berkeley life

As you can see from the other postings in this blog, the rest of the week was filled with non-stop activity: Trips to San Francisco and Napa, happy hours at various Berkeley bars, career and networking events, house searching and house parties, multiple trips to Ikea, and various outdoor activities guaranteed that no-one would get too much sleep. My own personal highlight: Our wine tasting trip to Napa last Sunday.

Truemors, False pretext?

Now I am really going to regret starting with a blog post title like this. Probably it is not a false pretext, but more like an incorrect one, but that doesn't have a ring to it, does it? This is a follow-up to the post on our BayCHI visit. When I saw the title for the talk I saw what Guy was going for. When he opened is talk with "Democratization" I assumed that it was a continuation of the theme. In the end I was hoping for a final quip from Guy that the joke is on the blogosphere and social networking protagonists. That did not come.

I have used the term Democratization (or its variations) and have seen it used in the context of anything and everything. The first usage I saw was with the book by Eric Von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (free from his site). I think the word , or more specifically its meaning has evolved and I believe (opinion) it is overused. I have seen it from:
"Martha Stewart democratized fashion" to my own motto of "Democratizing communication channels". I assumed, incorrectly, that Guy was being tongue in cheek about this as well.

Now even if we take the word for its commonly accepted usage in the web2.0 era, I do not believe that Truemors achieves it. When I can't even tell whether the news is true or not and when there is no self policing system (Jayson Blair did resign) why would this be the medium that provides news or means for news democratization? It does not look like Guy is going for a web version of The Daily Show, Truemors is user generated content.

Guy also called on the blogosphere for writing scathing remarks about this site. If I remember correctly he said that there are always detractors who do not let anything good for humanity come through. Is Truemors like Craigs List? Does it solve a real problem? Does Truemors really, as Craig says in this podcast, "give ordinary people a break"?

Well may be after Guy sells this to Google for a few billion he would say then, "aha! the joke is on you!".

ps:
Would someone please take my laptop away until the waivers? If I don't get to waive I will have some serious answering to do on why I can't drop our kid off at school on Mondays and Wednesdays.

60 years of independence

I almost forgot. It is 60 years since India and Pakistan gained independence from British rule.
To all the folks from India and Pakistan reading this, Happy Independence day!

Ideas are easy, implementation is hard

For me, that's one of the most interesting things Guy Kawasaki talked about in his talk yesterday (see Rags post below).

And its so true, Communication Camp just showed us exactly that.
We were asked to come up with several ideas each, without thinking about implementation at all, just throw in an idea, and then we had to brainstorm in small groups of 8-10 people and decide on one idea. A perfect example of how easy ideas are - we had so many amazing ideas, both realistic and fictitious. Ranging from a self balancing backpack (something I crave for everyday I carry that huge backpack on my back) to projecting on the moon!
If only it was that easy to implement in terms of developing a great product and marketing and selling it successfully.

That's one of the things I came to Haas for - a software engineer looking to take on the other side of things, switching to making tech instead of doing tech. And there is a big difference between those two...

Blogging is Hard

So a few of us 09-ers from Haas drove to Palo Alto to listen to Guy Kawasaki talk about his new project, Truemors at BayCHI. The event was titled, "By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09". This is sort of tongue in cheek and the talk was delivered in typical Guy way. I should be blogging about the talk and my impressions more but that should wait for a later post.

There is one thing he said that is absolutely true. It is hard to blog. Guy said he regurgitated material from is books during the first year of blogging and now he has to think about what to blog. It is extremely hard to find interesting things to say in a blog so frequently. It is not an easy task to keep the readers engaged, post after post.

A blog like this is different. This is meant to give the readers (the potential Haas candidates) a glimpse of the life at Haas and its students. Blogging is hard only when there is no context and clear audience. There is no need for us bloggers here to break news. On the flip side, I believe the readers here should look for the whole picture that emerges from the collection of posts from all of us and not necessarily look for an aha! moment.


By the way did you notice that I did not link to Truemors site?

Is that really Guy Kawasaki's comment on this post?

Upwardly Mobile, but ...

Mobile technologies, the possibilities and the yet to be identified business models intrigue me. Haas will be the place for me to move from product development to business strategy and business development. I say this for specifically for the right combination of Technology management and CSR I can work on. Products like iPhone excite me but also the simple radio base stations installed in a remote village in India (See Village Connection from Nokia-Siemens).

Mobile telecom changed the world as we knew it, it helped so many people in India rise from economic doldrums. In my yearly trips to India I saw the ubiquity of mobile phones. While the boom in outsourcing has led to widespread economic growth, even at the lowest level, I see a certain weaknesses in the structure. There is still a major gap in providing primary education to all the children and I see an economic that is not an overall human capital growth.

I believe that any growth that does not come from increased productivity rooted in increasing human capital isn't sustainable. For instance, see here a story I wrote about a rental car driver in India. There was another car driver who I talked to, whose story is eyeopening. When I asked him about his phone, he was so happy to discuss in gory details the SIM cards, wireless coverage and calling plans.

But then he said he can't read or write. The phone salesman had walked him through the phone menus and the driver uses the phone features more from practice than from reading the screen. He had moved from a remote village in India with his widowed mother and his two younger brothers to take part in the economic boom. Life is good for now, he has two phones and bought one each for his family members. Yet he had no means or drive to learn to read and write.

There are many such stories. Mobile infrastructure provider, mobile phone makers and service providers all benefit from marketing to the bottom of the period. I believe there need to be services that help in overall development of these people. I hope to study these more and the role of businesses in emerging markets. I hope to develop frameworks that build on the technological innovations to deliver longterm sustainable growth.

My vision for my time at Haas

It’s T-Minus-One-Week until the start of the Haas class of 2009 full-time MBA program, and I couldn’t be more excited. After spending the last three years living in Chad, Rwanda and Mauritania, I am ready to plunge into all aspects of business management, especially as they relate to marketing poverty-reducing products in emerging markets.

How will that vision specifically connect to my MBA education, you might ask. I’ll try to explain with an anecdote.

I was chatting with one of my new classmates the other night at The Graduate in Rockridge (see photos below), tuning out the thumping jukebox when the subject of work experience came up. I worked mostly with anti-poverty programs, I explained. He was an investment banker and told me that he had recently vacationed in Africa – an awakening of sorts, he said. “Nothing compared to what you were doing, of course,” he quickly added.

My vision for my time at Haas – and throughout my career – is to help bring together two distant worlds. I want to see a new reality where investment banking and Africa are no longer two skew lines. I want American investment in Africa to evolve from a few low-key experiments (see www.thvf.com for one example) into an everyday occurrence. I want American vacations in Africa to spawn fewer awakenings and more timeshares in Dakar.

It’s a bold vision, I realize, but I like to think that that is why I got in to Haas.

I look forward to exchanging ideas with you throughout the year as one of many student voices, whether on the subject sketched out above, life at Haas, or where to find the best ___________ (karaoke, comedy, sushi, burrito, etc.) in Berkeley/SF. Thanks for reading, and thanks to the students who launched this blog last year!

Mac or not

It has been more than five years since I bought a new computer. Joining Haas gave me the right excuse to buy a new rig. To me there was question about whether to go the Mac route or not. For the 90% of the things we will do at B-school, a Mac works great. I even run Office on Mac for doing all the Power Points and Excel spreadsheets. For the 10% that require a Windows PC you can run Parallels.
I am not a die hard Mac fan, after all a computer is just a tool to get things done. But what Apple did is to increase our expectations about products and not settle for the ordinary. I know I may have to go back to PCs in two years, but until then I will enjoy the ride on my MacBook Pro.

There are a few gotchas though:

1. I can't get my Blackberry to sync with Entourage calendar on Mac. The problem is the buggy PocketMac software. While trying to sync, the PocketMac not only crashes my BB but also my Mac. (aren't Macs supposed to be crash free?)
2. I can't get Entourage to talk to Exchange address book to look up people.
3. Haas Computing officially does not support Mac.
4. I hope I won't have problems hooking up the Mac to projectors for presentations.
   

Hello, can you hear me back there?

Is this thing on? Can you hear me okay? I am Rags from the Class of 09 and this is my first post on this blog. Together with my friends I hope to give my take on life at Haas over the next two years. One more week to go before the O-week and then off to the races. The math camp started last week. I am not in the math camp but I got to meet so many of my classmates and do fun things. I got to ride my bike a few times and did a hike in the Tilden Park with Luke.

The two weeks of math camp almost have this unmistakable allure, there are events almost every evening and I wish I had the energy to keep up with late night partying. Here are some photos from last night outing at The Graduate (thanks to Apoorva for the pictures). More to come.