Berkeley Digital Media Conference

This is a short promotional plug for the Berkeley Digital Media Conference organized by the DMEC club at Berkeley (note that this club includes Haas and other schools at UC Berkeley, but majority are Haas).

Here is a short promotional podcast on >play, (Right click and save to listn). Hear Myah a second year who is leading the >play conference talk about >play.

Recorded by yours truly.

Play website is http://www.playconference.org

You can also follow many of the first and second years blogging at DMEC's blog. http://www.berkeleydmec.org

Here from New York

Hello! My name is Helen Ip (Class of '09), and I will dedicate my first post on this blog to all East Coast people considering applying to Haas.

I will admit--I am not a native East Coaster. I was born in Hong Kong, moved to El Paso, Texas, when I was eleven, went to Northwestern University for undergrad, married, graduated, lived in Washington, DC, for two years, then New York City for three years. Two months ago, my husband and I drove a Penske truck from Manhattan to here, Berkeley, California. I am what you would call a 21st-century-nomad. Home is where my cereal bowls are.

There are a bunch of New Yorkers in our class. Many of us met for happy hours before moving out here. It was nice to get to know some classmates before coming to Haas. Although everyone at Haas is friendly and interesting, only fellow New Yorkers can empathize with comments like "Man, I am craving a good bagel" or "People looked at me funny when I jaywalked this morning."

I do miss New York, but the Bay Area is great. The slower pace, the wine country, Silicon Valley, environmental consciousness, Lake Tahoe, skiing, snowboarding, friendliness, tree people, fresh fruits...don't get me started on the apricots.

Okay, enough about that. Since this is my first post, I should probably tell you a little bit about my background. I studied Industrial Engineering in school. For the last five years, I worked as a management consultant, most recently at Deloitte. I am looking to go into marketing / brand management after business school. In my free time, I take voice lessons, go to dance and tennis classes, blog, go grocery shopping with my husband Marcus, and watch TV. I secretly think that watching Food Network regularly will improve my non-existent cooking skills.

I look forward to sharing my Haas experience with you over the next two years.

Improv class

Don't get excited. Haas doesn't have a REAL improv class. But last week, my Power and Politics class took a hiatus from case analyses and organizational behavior theories when our professor invited Roy Jenkins to Berkeley.

The name may mean nothing to you, but this guy is the real deal. He was a writer for Conan O'Brien, and his film credits include "Anchorman" and "Thank You for Smoking." Even more impressive was his patience as he lead a bunch of MBA students through a series of improv exercises...which was probably more than a little bit excruciating for him (but hilarious for us).

One of the exercises went like this: five students had to pretend to be experts in a certain field (which Jenkins called out on the spot). The rest of the class had to ask questions of the five students, which they had to answer convincingly and authoritatively, even if they had no idea what they were talking about.

The first group of five had to be experts on the Protestant Reformation. Hilarious, right? We can tell you what our favorite Excel keyboard shortcuts are, but chances are, not many of us know much about the Reformation. Or maybe I'm just projecting. So my friend Jeff, who was in my study group last year and was also a teammate of mine during our IBD project in Ghana, asked, "What role did Korea play in the Reformation?"

I nearly fell off my chair. He didn't miss a beat.

I laughed pretty consistently throughout the 90-minute class - so much so that a few of us may start an informal improv group at Haas in the coming months. We're telling ourselves we're doing it for stress relief, but we'll probably be legends in our own minds in no time.

One of the best things Berkeley has to offer is the Greek Theater, a venerable outdoor venue for concerts and performances, and I'd be remiss if I did not mention it will host the Haas graduation ceremony in May. The Greek is nestled in the hills above the Berkeley campus amid stately trees and grassy lawns. In fact, it's a stone's throw from Haas, although sitting in the seats feels as if you've been transported back to the days of gladiators and lions in the ancient land.

I've had the pleasure of taking in two outstanding shows at the Greek in the last month. A few weeks ago the Beasties came through, and this weekend Phil Lesh and Friends played a slew of jam rock on a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon. Luckily I finished my homework for Monday so I had no qualms about spending the afternoon listening to Grateful Dead tunes and taking in the Berkeley scene. It's just another thing I love about being at Haas.

Recorded my first podcast at Haas

Despite the workload, all solid colored Outlook calendars, there are a few things that I always find time to do. One big thing at Haas is, there are tools and connections available to do anything you set your mind to. Just add your mind and will and magic will happen. The Haas experience can be whatever you want it to be.

I am from all telecom background (shameless plug: My Telecom Strategy Blog). I am looking for a career in Mobile marketing and strategies. On a side note, almost all second years and alumni whom I have met told me, "In the words of Haas Marketing professor Rashi Glazer, Marketing is Strategy".

I want to learn more about marketing and most importantly want to fill this hole in my background by working on a marketing task before my career search. So at Haas, I am working on marketing the student organized, ">play Digital Media Conference". This experience is unbelievable as I try out new media marketing methods for >play.

As part of this effort, I wanted to create two promotional podcasts, a 30 second and 5 minute versions. The audience is the "media snackers", people who snack on news in many different forms and not just the text version. Today I interviewed and Myah, who is leading the >play 2007 for these podcasts. All I needed was the interview planning and Myah's time, Haas provided me all the tools, from the state of the art podcast microphone to the software to create the podcast.

After my initial planning, total time spent was less than an hour. Everything just worked.

Now I will be editing the podcast, add some transition music and rub out uhs and hmms.

Look for another post with links to the podcasts.

Yo should also check out the Squidoo Lens I created for >play, most probably the podcasts will end up there first.

Do you like corporate responsibility?

Hello everybody...

Now that I am a French (that is to warn you about my poor English writing skills) second year student, I had the chance to choose all (yes, ALL!!) my classes for the semester. And lucky me, I got all the classes I wanted through the bidding process (if that is interesting you, post a comment and I will describe this war-like process, full of hope and desperation). And tonight (according to my clock), I will tell you a bit about the Social Enterprise class.

It is a new class taught by Jim Schorr. If that name does not ring a bell to you, this guy is one of the original founder of NetImpact, a very fairly well known :) organisation about social responsibilites in business... And he has not stopped there. After his MBA (he is a graduate from Kellog, but we like him anyway), he has started another organization to help kids.

So what is so great with this class? We are lucky to meet really interesting people. Last week, we had the founder of Benetech, Jim Fruchterman, visiting us. It was really an incredible class, with this guy talking about his crazy experiences with engineers, the IRS, venture capitalist and competitors. Having such a person coming at school really demonstrates that it could be incredibly funny and exciting to help people and to improve their life, while still applying what you are learning at school. I was amazed by his energy and by the fact that even after many year, he is still passionate about what he is doing. I'm still not sure that I will be involved in the social business later, but meeting people like him is really inspiring, at least, and it is what I would like to do, to try to bring some social responsibilities concepts to so-called non social enterprise. I still don't know how to do it, but I am sure that this class will help me to figure out this.

And we will even have the visit of the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. Isn't that exciting? 

In the Only in Berkeley Series

One more in the series on "Only in Berkeley" (thanks Oliver for starting it).
I am just amazed at the amount of intellectual capital that is concentrated in this small city, both in campus and outside of it. For me it has become impossible to not run into one great mind or another who is working on a book, running Microsoft Research in India, doing medial research or working on a campaign. Here are just a few examples:
1. I take my 3 year old to school, I run into a professor from the UC's Department of Philosophy and his wife who is also a professor of literature and is writing a book.
2. We tried to hook up with people from my part in India and who speak Tamil, and I run into another author who is a professor on sabbatical from another university.
3. I was biking up school and was stopped at the intersection of Fulton and Ashby and I ran into a medical researcher.

There is no scarcity of ideas or actions in Berkeley.

A week in the life

If you are not already following Helen's blog I recommend you check out her latest post on a week in the life of an MBA-Student to see what life is like here at Haas.

Civil protest

Berkeley has a long history of political and social activism, and despite the fact that there are still people in town who are living out the glory years of the 60s (whatever mental image you're picturing is probably correct), the protests tend to be fairly small in scale around here now.

Yesterday, I was heading home from the gym in the middle of the day, and I saw three news trucks at the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph. 'Not terribly unusual, but I was still interested in why they were there. About 30 seconds later, I started hearing a faint chant: "What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now." I could hear their voices, but I couldn't see the people coming.

I walked a bit further up Bancroft (toward the media trucks) and then the protesters came into plain view. They were walking in the middle of the street, right into traffic. Bancroft is a busy street, and cars were pulling onto the side of the road to allow the people to pass. There were even a few police officers there to make sure nothing got out of hand.

The long and the short of it is: they were supporting the Jena 6 in Louisiana, and my guess is that they tipped the media (and maybe the police) about their march. I'm bad at estimating crowd sizes, but I'd say there were about 250-ish of them.

Never a dull day in Berkeley.

International Study Trips

This is going to be exciting: We just received word on the first two international study trips for this year. Two groups of students will get the opportunity to travel to India (Bangalore and Mumbai) and Brazil (Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) in January. Other destinations (Chile, China and possibly others) will most likely be added to the travel schedule soon.

In addition the school's International Business Development program is starting to send out information to us first years: The program (which is open for a limited number of students through an additional application process) pairs up teams of students with companies and organizations in emerging markets and developing countries. Teams then work on specific projects for these companies in the spring semester and visit their client company for an on-site consulting project in May or June.

I haven't really made up my mind about whether I should join one of the study trips, but I am definitely going to take a close look at this year's opportunities with the IBD program.

Frugal Foodies: Only in Berkeley

A group of Haas MBA visited Frugal Foodies in Berkeley last night. We all expected to prepare Dinner together, as this is what Frugal Foodies is all about. Apart from that we did not really known what was going to happen and none of had bothered to check Frugal Foodies homepage thoroughly. Suffice to say that were all pleasantly surprised by what we saw, ate and experienced: We were all blown away by the personal atmosphere and the friendliness at there.
Frugal Foodies is the work of the photographer Moses Caesar: Every Tuesday Moses opens up his loft in West-Berkeley to 10-15 people - some friends, some strangers who registered online - to get together and cook a 3 to 5 course dinner.
Our menu on Tuesday featured

• Carrot Soup with Pecans
• Peach Salad with Chive Vinaigrette
• Iranian Mint Lemonade
• Syrian Tomato Salad
• Baked Rigatoni with Eggplant
• Strawberry Shortcakes

Most of us weren't very experienced cooks. With a total of 17 people in Moses' loft the kitchen was more than packed, further adding to the confusion. The fun factor was high though and our dinner - produced in less than an 90 minutes - truly delicious.
Should you ever spend a few days in Berkeley and have had enough of Gourmet Ghetto's line-up of world-class restaurants and the variety of Berkeley's ethnic restaurants, I can highly recommend Frugal Foodies for an interesting Tuesday night dinner experience.
In case you are interested in Moses' work, you can find some more information at Enlight Storyworks.

Visitors in Classes - MBA admission season

I guess this is that time of the year. We see a few visitors in classes. Our Organizational Behavior class has been very popular. Probably because it is in the afternoon. If you visit, please do plan on attending a class. Pick a first year course over an elective. For sure you are going to catch many of us first years who still remember the process and most importantly you could be in that class same time next year. Wow!

Make sure you introduce yourself to the professor before the class starts so she/he knows that you are visiting prospectives.

In the class listen not really to the content but how is it delivered, how the interactions go, how are the people challenged, how do study group members support each other etc

If I may ask one thing, you will see us raising our hands to speak throughout the class but resist your temptation to join in. You might have the perfect point to make but the context is not there. The professor may feel kindly towards you and let you speak, but you may not know what happened in the class the previous day or the week before. Yes it did happen in one of our class.

I hope I didn't sound too rude in asking this.

Keep track of Haas in the News

Did you miss the WSJ ranking of B-schools news today? (How could you?)

Here is a nice way to keep track of all news about Haas. This is a mash-up from Yahoo Pipes for news alerts. This is a useful way to keep track of something you are interested in.
The link is Yahoo Pipes Haas News Alert

I didn't create the pipe, and it is general purpose.

Evening with Dean Tom Campbell

I had the unique pleasure the other night of taking in a meal with the dean of the Haas school, Tom Campbell. The Dean has extended an invitation to all Haas second years to join him for dinner and conversation, and what conversation it was. After a healthy introduction from all in attendance, topics were tailored to the backgrounds and interests of the eight students at the dinner table, and Tom (as he introduced himself as we arrived) was prepared to go deep into each topic. We discussed the regimes of rebel leaders in Africa, the nuances of anti-trust cases in the grocery industry, the benefits and drawbacks of a fragmented Canada and one student's desire to be the Cal mascot, among other things. Each dialog was replete with a surprising amount of anecdotal experience and peppered with the Dean's sharp and sometimes unexpected sense of humor. The Dean was equally engaged in each student's interests, and the three hour affair was an indication that nothing was rushed or hurried at any time. When you're on campus, and you see Dean Campbell in the courtyard or the B of A forum, I encourage you to introduce yourself. You'll be sure to enjoy interacting with such a dynamic and genuine individual.

The Experimenter - Prof. Raj Chetty

Raj Chetty is Associate professor of Economics in the Department of Economics, UC Berkeley. The magazine, The American profiles him in its September issue. Here is the link to their article titled, The Experimenter.

“He combines a clean understanding of economic theory with a great interest in data and the real world,” says James Poterba, chairman of MIT’s economics department. Poterba, who recently served as a member of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, cites Chetty’s work on how corporations responded to a cut in dividend taxes. For 25 years, economists have debated how U.S. corporations would react, and when the rate was cut from a high of 35 percent to 15 percent in 2003, Chetty and his collaborator, Emmanuel Saez, were the first to analyze the data and look for changes, Poterba says.

Back on Campus

Hey everyone, I wanted to introduce myself as a new Haas student blogger. My name is Tony Cesarano, and I'm in my second year at Haas. Hopefully I can provide a slightly different perspective than some of the other bloggers so far. As a second year student, it has been fantastic to be back on campus reuniting with classmates. The second year class schedule is a bit lighter than the first-year core, so I've had more time to spend with my family (my wife and I live in UC-Village with our two daughters, one of them just four months old). I look forward to sharing my experience as the year goes on... please comment here if you have questions about life as a second year!

Writing a case study

This is starting to get exciting.

In January of last year, my classmate Joe Lazar and I were having a conversation about the independent project he was doing. He was writing a case study with faculty sponsor Professor Hillary Elfenbein, who is teaching the Organizational Behavior core class to the first years this fall.

As we got talking, I got more interested in the project. Basically, he was taking a magnifying glass to his former employer, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and examining some of its organizational challenges. I remember saying to Joe, "That's such a cool idea. One of the things I really wanted to accomplish in business school was writing a case." And with that, I was on board.

Last spring, we flew to NYC to interview people at Orpheus, and spent a good deal of time writing the case and following up with Joe's old co-workers. It was a blast, and we even managed to avoid the patented HBS context-creating nonsense..."as Marsha put her feet up on her desk and poured 6 creamers into her 42 oz coffee, she wondered whether things would ever be normal again at Christmas Sweaters, Inc."

Earlier today, we had a conference call with the general director of Orpheus to do some final editing, fact-checking and other re-arranging, and I am totally fired up about the fact that this case is going to be taught in all four sections of the first year's OB core classes...a mere three weeks from now. Joe and I even get to sit in on the classes, and I'm excited to hear what my first year counterparts have to say about Orpheus.

I'll post a debrief after the case is taught in the classroom - for now, I don't want to give anything else away to the students who haven't read it yet.

I’ve Got An Idea. Just Like Everyone Else.

At Haas, great ideas are like GMAT scores: everybody has one, and some people have several. One of the many things I’ve learned in my first few weeks here is that great ideas are not rewarded here. Rather, they are expected. The reward comes for what comes next: making it happen.

In some contexts, a good idea is everything. In Chad, my last home, people can talk about an idea all day long, without any hope of it seeing the light of day. It’s free and helps to pass the time. Taking a more historical view, philosophers fueled their debates on ideas alone for thousands of years, until Karl Marx shook things up in 1845 by pointing out that “philosophers have only interpreted the world...the point, however, is to change it."

A lot has changed in the 150+ years that followed, including the birth of modern-day activism, which is still alive (though hardly kicking) on the UC Berkeley campus. During my freshman year at Berkeley in 1995 I remember the protests to free Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row. Twelve years later, flyers still adorn Sproul Plaza, informing me that “the time is now” to free Mumia. Their action plan is, as it was in ’95, flyering…and, well that’s about it.

Walk up the hill to Haas, on the other hand, and you see something very much alive: business activism. This sentiment exists in many forms, for example my microfinance class – taught by venture capitalist Sean Foote – where students from Haas and the schools of public policy and public health join together to discuss innovative ways to deliver financial services to the poor.
In class today I thought I had a good idea, so I raised my hand. Rather than saying “good point” and moving on, Mr. Foote asked the question that I am getting more accustomed to hearing in business school: “So what would you do?”

I see it as a form of mental conditioning that is great practice for the real world, wherever you plan to end up. If you offer an idea, expect to be held accountable for a reasonable way to make it happen.

Roger Ebert would hate Haas. Instead of just reviewing a film, he’d have to make a better one.

$113 million

In case you haven't heard about it already, UC Berkeley has received a gift over $113 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation this week. Through a challenge grant, the foundation will fund up to 100 endowed chairs. Matching other private donations dollar-for-dollar the grant will result in up to $220 million in new endowments and an additional $3 million will go into improved management of the endowed funds.

While the direct impact of this gift on Haas is unclear at the moment, this largest gift in the history of UC Berkeley will undoubtedly benefit the fantastic intellectual environment on campus. Haas students in the past have tremendously benefited from being on a campus that hosts top-ranked departments in almost all academic disciplines. By further strengthening UC Berkeley as a top research institution, this gift will help even more Entrepreneurs at Haas to connect to top researchers in all academic fields.

You can find more information on this record-breaking gift on the Hewlett Challenge Website at http://hewlettchallenge.berkeley.edu/

On a totally unrelated note, my study group has just finished the first midterm exam, analyzing corporate culture and culture fit at Cypress Semiconductors.

Also, social activities are continuing on a high level with Tuesday Nights at the Graduate and the MBA bar of the week on Thursdays as permanent cornerstones, and club activities are picking up with kick-off meetings for most of the professional clubs this week.

Social Entrepreneurship and Jazz

Nearly one month has passed since my first post. Perhaps that’s the best description of how busy the Haas MBA program makes you.

My last post focused on my goals at Haas at a high level. Since then I’ve attended meetings, working groups, happy hours, speeches, and conferences on social entrepreneurship and related topics. I’m even taking an elective guest speaker series on micro-finance. You can’t go two feet at Haas without bumping into someone who has passion and experience about “business as unusual.” They are probably also training for the Ironman. It’s hard to keep up!

I am also happy to re-connect with the Berkeley/SF area, as it’s been eight years since I earned my bachelor’s degree from Cal. Last night, I went to the famous Yoshi’s jazz club in Oakland and saw “Kenny Burrell and the Jazz Heritage All Stars.” My jazz tastes tend to be a little more fusion and avant-garde oriented, but this was a very entertaining show. Burrell has led his own group since 1951 (that’s not a typo!) and often introduces a song by saying something like “this song was written by an old friend of mine, Dizzy Gillespie.” The crowd reacted kind of how you’d expect a church congregation to react if the pastor said something about the time he was having lunch with Moses.

Jazz-heads and social entrepreneurs. Two of the nine million fascinating interest-groups you can explore at Haas and in the surrounding community.

On the group learning concept

You've heard this more than once, from more than one source, in fact last you read about this from Helen's blog,

"You learn more from your classmates than from your professors"

What does this really mean?

It is true that you spend a tad less than four hours in a classroom with the professors and spend a lot more time in the study group and with your peers. But if put on my statistician hat, I would ask if anyone has done a study with one group of students limited to classroom education and completely isolated from others and the other in the current setting?

Suppose someone has indeed done such a study and let us say they even found this to be true, does this mean we all stop going to classes and instead just talk to each other and work together? Obviously not. Why not? If one option gives more return would you not maximize your return?

Suppose say you are in a Organizational Behavior class and listen to me say an anecdote from my experience in managing a team through layoffs, should you treat that as you learned more from my narration than the professors? Would you believe if I told you that matrix management does not ever work because it did not work in my previous job?

After all I have selective memory and I will always generalize from my personal perspective.
I am just one data point, could easily be an outlier who does not represent the most common scenario.

So is the group learning not true? No, you do learn from your classmates and learn a whole lot but no one can quantify this and make simple comparisons because you learn different things, all equally important. In my opinion this most repeated statement should be rephrased as:

" You learning is not limited to what you learn from your professors, every conversation you have with your peers is a learning opportunity"

But it doesn't have the same punch as the original claim.

Have My Cup Cake and Eat it too!

How many cupcakes can a MBA student eat in 3 minutes?
I lost very badly to Mariah who ate 16 in helping her team win the O-Week Cupcake Derby. I ate about 10, not even close.
Here is the video.

Create distinction, yet fit in!

You got that one?
I heard something similar to this at the Career services session on Writing Successful Resume and Cover letters. Your resume should tell how remarkable you are and yet, the employers are always thinking, "will you be good fit to the mix we already have". They don't want somebody who is "different but not remarkable". They do not want someone who will create so much churn that will adversely affect the people who are already there.

Do not try to create the distinction in the resume format, font, or other superficial things. If the resume screener have to work to read your resume, they won't. I have done hundreds of resume screening for software and test positions in my previous job. I spent 10-30 seconds on any resume. If someone sent me a resume that "flashes", "has blue background" I didn't read them. I can see how anyone reading my resume will feel.

This also reminds me of what I once read in Seth Godin's blog, "being different is not same as remarkable".

Don't miss out on other Haas bloggers

You see only a few posters on this blog. But there is at least one I know who is maintaining her own blog, and very good one indeed. Helen, a good friend of mine in the class of 2009, is blogging her thoughts in TwoWayStreets. She has a great post on what should one hope to get from a MBA program, I will quote the points here, but you will have to read the rest in her blog.

• Do not stress out about school work, instead focus on creating a network
• Make at least three best friends
• Create a brand for yourself
• Figure out which companies you would like to work for and keep up with the latest on those companies
• You learn more from your classmates than from your professors

Connect now, ask questions later

I started connecting with my classmates and class of 08 through LinkedIn. I also receive many requests from Professional and Social Networking sites I haven't heard of. One of my friend apologized to me on a mail from her asking me to connect through one such site, DooStang. She said that a friendly "applet" from that site read her Gmail address book and email addresses of anyone she had ever communicated with and automatically sent them a "connect with me" request. Unknowingly she had spammed all her friends and contacts.

Do we need all these multiple social and professional networking tools? During a BayCHI event, I was talking to a Google engineer who works on Search quality. He said he is on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook etc and added, "these days you have to, there are layers of complex connections evolving and it is too early to take sides".

At Haas one has many opportunities to network with many different people. Haas Alumni services has a group on LinkedIn that puts you in touch with Haas alumni on LinkedIn. But do we go overboard and start joining every new site that comes along?

Just because we talked to an alumni or someone we met at a Haas event, should we send them a LinkedIn invite?

Is the power of our network lies in its size?

Do all the professional networking sites play on our need to connect and in the name of making it easier for us make us send "Connect with me" emails?

Oh, yes, finally, would you accept my LinkedIn Invite ?