Final week, Babson Buffoonery

This is our final week of classes in our first year. In a way I am going to miss the class because we will no longer be attending the same class as a group of 55!. Quite a few will choose evening classes.

In this final module, we really had to read a lot. We spent most of our time reading macro economics. Our textbook is written by our professor Prof. Marthinsen. Lot of material to cover but this book has good flow and makes it easy to understand difficult concepts. On the flip side, volume of content to be covered in class gives little room for discussion/questions in classes.

By the way, Asian Business forum elections are getting hotter than our Grad council. One person has created a blog and even registered a domain for campaign. Very interesting!

Babson has a tradition of organizing "Buffoonery" twice a year. 2nd years organize the fall event and we, first years, have ours tomorrow. I am looking forward to the poker tournament prior to the event. There are quite a few clips from previous events in youtube. Here is one for you.

Election Update and preparation for second year

No surprises. I did not win. Well, I did not think I could win in the beginning. Still I joined the fray to communicate my points across. However after my successful pitches, position statement and promotion of this blog to convey my views gave me some hope. There were quite a few friends who supported my bid to contest as well.

Good learning for me from this campaign was that two minute pitches can be quite valuable to communicate one's passion. Many people came to me later and extended their support. I wanted to raise the issue of increased role of GSC. I think I succeeded in my goal.

We have several intensive tracks such as management, high tech, entrepreneurship, etc. There are information sessions run by different departments to promote their tracks. I have not attended any yet. Most likely I would take Technology Intensive Track. One does not need to participate in any such program and can always take courses from different areas.

GSC and second year students have been helpful in collecting student feedback across all courses and about professors and send us a nice spreadsheet by the end of their term. It is very useful information. Otherwise I may have to rely on quantitative/survey analysis run by the graduate school and also it is a very tedious process as I have to search one by one.

Election time - Running for GSC President

The Graduate Student Council (GSC) elections are coming up this week. It has created a buzz and a lot of people have stepped forward to be elected as council members. I am contesting for a key post, president, as well.

Here is my plan

• Transparency in the functioning of the GSC.
  The least a student organization can do, is to be open to all the students and communicate clearly what the council's priorities are.
• Play a bigger role by
  
• reviewing curriculum
  
• working with the office of program management on class scheduling
  
• working with the career development center to bring in services such as interview preparation, resume review, etc.
• having a representative on the campus student council boards to voice our concerns on issues such as the changing of BofA ATMs to Citizens bank ATMs in the middle of the academic year (this was pain to a lot of students living on campus and without a car to access other BofA ATMs) !!!
• proposing an increase in international business cases, so as to reflect the growing importance of global economy, and more importantly the Babson student body, 50% of which is comprised of international students
• introducing a bidding system for the Babson Consulting Alliance Program (BCAP) so that the selection of company/project is left to the students.
• Continue to organize fun activities but with an additional thematic "food & beverage" pub nights.

Apart from the above, I also intend initiating a dialog to offer electives in the first year itself.

We have been asked to submit a position statement and we also get to deliver two pitches.

Power of informal groups

I am part of an informal group formed to discuss technology topics. Slowly the group has got its critical mass and evolved into a casual entrepreneurial opportunities discussion forum. We meet once a week during weekdays at lunch and a lengthy session during Saturdays. These groups are great not just because of the topics discussed but for understanding the other side of the class mates. Many silent spectators in class pitch in a lot in these forums.

I can not give too much detail in to what has been discussed. In addition to our ideas discussion, we help each other in business plan, preparing for competitions and now applying together for internships. It is a very good group and I enjoy being part of it.

This raises a question for business schools consider - how to increase the effectiveness of clubs and bring in such casual conversations into the main forum. There are many schools that publish a list of clubs, their website which have not been updated for ages. For example a club I am very much interested in is yet to organize a noteworthy event this academic year. My recommendation would be to encourage a period get together in clubs to facilitate a few focussed groups. If a club i s not active for a few months, stop the funding and eventual dissolution.

What Yahoo has got up its sleeves

Not a long time back, people loved Yahoo for its a wide range of services. I still love Yahoo for its fantasy games, finance, games etc. I have been wondering why it has taken a long time to respond to Google threat. Yahoo Pipes could be one response.

While everyone loves to talk about "Web 2.0" as if it is a version of some software, here is a revolutionary technology letting users to create application out of thin air, almost. Attach any number of "pipe"s in series. Here is an example: Create pipe #1 to get results from Google Base, Filter the results in pipe #2, get a price of an item in Amazon, Ebay in pipe #3, and provide the Reviews from CNet in Pipe #4. Now you have all the data you need as a result of one Yahoo Pipe application.

Pipe has huge potential provided there are willing content providers. A new channel to sell data, a new way to create and host applications. One can create an interesting pipe to be sold to others too!

The catch is availability of content. I checked Yahoo Pipes recently and number of supported sources have not increased a lot.