I took this picture when the ICE back from Stuttgart was passing exactly in front of my former apartment in Mannheim. Nothing special about the picture, but I just found it interesting to be suddenly in one of the trains that would bother me for months with their screetching noises...
BTW, the building to the left is a DHL building.

I met these three wonderful girls for 20 minutes while changing train connections in Mannheim, tha was great! And this is maybe my favourite Mannheim photo ever! Don't you agree?

 

All groups have handed in their dissertations (as you can see in the picture) and most of the groups have done all their presentations too. So, this week is dedicated to finishing things in Mannheim. My group still has to prepare the results for the company (we'll meet one last time next week in Hanau), but most people are going after their own things: job search, apartment search, vacating the apartments in Mannheim, buying dresses and shirts for the graduation ceremony, receiving relatives who have already arrived for the party on Friday, etc.
We are also slowly saying our goodbyes. Yesterday we had a nice get-together at Markus' place, on Sunday I even went rowing one last time, tomorrow some people are meeting in Frankfurt, Thursday is Hafenstrand and Schneckenhof double party night and Friday is Friday.
Personally, I am moving to Darmstadt first and have 3 or 4 interviews scheduled in the next 10 days. There is so much I want to do, but I seem to have too little time. Nonetheless, I am still able to "waste" time reading a book or surfing the internet, when I should be concentrating on work. So let's try to do the latter.

It is done. It's just not printed yet and B is going over it one more time, but the version I have on my USB stick is already very, very good (IMHO).
This was the last step of the MBA and it is done. Now tons of paper will be expelled to recycling and I and our team room 3.3 will be cleaned. For the first time this week, my computer will be taken home.
BTW, great infrastructure here at the new learning center at N2: good internet connection, air condition (sometimes too cold), great chairs, tables, white boards, flip charts, printer & copier, water coolers and even a kitchen. I lived here for the last 3 or 4 days, just going out to buy food (scattered all over the room at the moment), eat at the mensa (cafeteria)or go home to sleep.
B and T are creating the final PDF of the thesis now, the printer will start working in a few minutes.
And I will unplug now. I am not a bit sleepy, but tired as hell. It was a great week, and it hasn't ended yet.

 

Just one spot I discovered today Mannheim. I must have probaly seen it almost everyday while walking to class, but hadn't paid attention to it.

This is the great team I have been working since June. During this project, we have interviewed all 5 Business Units of Heraeus to establish the technology fields we would look at, I developed an online algorithm for skimming the internet, we identified over a hundred information providers, had interviews with high profile professionals in 3 international high-tech corporations and got in touch with at least 2 VC firms.
There is still a lot of work to be done (like preparing the final presentation and actually writing the thesis), but I am very happy with the results so far, considering all the other paralel activities that have taken place (like job search and rowing competition) during this period.

 

View of the train station.

One of the nice things of studying in Mannheim is certainly the castle where the university is located. I especially like to take pictures of it at night.

Yesterday we had a group of WHU MBAs visiting for a rowing event and get together. As I had observed in Berlin, the Spanish speaking croud (5 to 6 people) quickly came together. I do understand Spanish fairly well, but have a bit more trouble speaking, which makes me quieter than I would usually be in a conversation in German, Portuguese or English. Besides that me being quieter might be a good thing, It made me ponder that Brazil and Brazilians would be better off if the oficial language was also Spanish. Communication, especially with our neighbours, would be so more simple, with positive effects in all fields.
Brazil stands as the biggest and only Portuguese speaking in Latin America. I wonder if the unique language has some value as a differentiating factor. I am not sure, curious to see what others think.

 

Thats us working on the master thesis at the new Mannheim Business School facilities at the Dalberg Platz, N2.

At Queen's University I wrote a lot about start-ups. I decided that I would write start-up like this, with the dash. Not startup nor start up. Start-up.
And now I am involved with start-ups again. First for my master thesis at the Heraeus Corporate Development department. We are developing a technology scouting strategy and are naturally looking at start-ups. I am using Yahoo! Pipes and Twitter for a part of the project, let's see if it works.
Then I was contacted by a start-up looking for managerial talent to invite as founding members. It is in the area of social networks, which I find very interesting.
And today I read the following article at VentureHacks which deals with the situation above, so a link is appropriate.

I have a job offer at a startup, am I getting a good deal? Part 1

And all Mannheim MBAs are invited for lunch at EO at 12:30 today.


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Sandeep, who is planning to start an MBA here in Mannheim soon, sent me this question which I thought I wuld answer on the blog.

From: sandeep jain
Date: Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 21:24

Hi Fernando

How are you doing?

I am sure you must be at a half way to complete your year end company project.

Fernando had a few questions regarding the Internat and mobile technology in Germany.
How about internet at home (provided by Mannheim) is it free of cost or payable. Is it wireless or we have to arrange for the internet on our own?
Mobile technology. Which is the technology used in germany GSM or CDMA. Are mobile services expensive there? Is it a viable option to use for connecting with family in emergencies?

Thank you .......Sandeep Jain

If you are staying at one of the apartments organized by the Mannheim Business School, like I am, then broadband internet is included. In my case, I have a LAN socket and a very long cable in my apartment, which works very well. In other buildings I hear they have wireless LAN connection. So no worries there.
Furthermore, you have wireless LAN connection all over Campus, either through the university's WLAN or through the b-school's own. Some places in Mannheim also offer free WLAN, like the Star coffee shop on N7.

Germany is GSM country, which is very practical, as you can change operators by simply changing SIM cards, as long as your cell phone is not locked. You can either buy a contract (usually 2 years, gets you a free handset for a fixed monthly price plus extra expenses. You might be able to cancel the contract uppon departing Germany, but you have to make sure of that before signing) or, as I prefer, pay as you go or pre-paid plans.
I am a happy customer of Symio, a pre-paid provider based on the internet. Their plans are simple and the prices are good, so far I am happy, even though there was a great deal of confusion when I decided to change from GPRS SIM card to a UMTS one.
This means, of course, that I use my cell phone for internet on the go: maps, e-mail, twitter, reading, news, train schedules, IM, etc. Works pretty well on my Nokia E61 and the Symio internet price is unbeatable: 0,24€ per MB. That means that my weekly internet bills are usually below 2€, even with daily internet use.
Call prices are 0,09€ per minute any number in Germany. To Symio number it is even cheaper, but I have no idea who of my friends also use Symio. And SMS is also 9 cents.
For international calls, I use Skype Out. Other alternatives are the several call shops available downtown and near the train station. rAtes are just cents per minute, if I am not mistaken.
Now let me put a link in this post and continue our project work.

Well, actually a bit more than a week, as the picture below was taken two Saturdays ago. I went with 2 other colleagues, one Canadian, one French, to a very small town somewhere in the wine lands around here to a wine and castle festival with some live music. The first band was bad, the second was ok. The festival was much smaller than I expected, but the Weinschorle (whine mixed with - little - sparkling water) was plentyful and cheap. The place was called Wachenheim.

Monday saw us rowing again, as well as Wednesday. I believe that I will be able to post better pictures later during the week, as I cannot take my camera in the boat. On Wednesday I tried to row a single boat for the first time and landed 3 times in the water. Of course. But it was warm, so that wasn't a problem.
Monday was also the day when I discovered that my locked bicycle was stolen from the locked bike garage in the locked apartment building. Really upsetting.

On Tuesday I went to an interesting networking event in Stuttgart organized by the BWcon institution, on the role of business angels in start-up financing.

Thursday was a busy day. Career strategy coaching session at the business school and soccer game watching with barbecue in the same location, in company of the students of the EMAT course. It was also the day I got my push scooter as a replacement for the stolen bike.

Germany won, everybody went to the Wasserturm to commemorate.

Saturday saw me taking the train to Idstein, for a Jazz Festival in a very picturesque town. Was really fun with good company. We even did a small rock climbing stunt which reminded me of Dee's blog: Venture to the top.

Barrelhouse Jazz Band in Idstein.

Sunday saw me for some hours in Mainz, and this is the only view I had from the impressive cathedral.

Today the last MBA course for our class and my sixt in Mannheim started: Global Information Management. It started slow with an analysis of Friedman's "The world is flat" text.
The afternoon was a bit more exciting, with a quick (and I mean quick: 1000 years in 1 hour) review of the world's history based on economic cores and a tentative look on how the world might look like in the next 50 years. I am curious to see how the course progresses and how today's class integrates with the rest of the course's material.

We went to rowing practice again and I spent half an hour in the single boat once more, this time returning safe and dry to land.

And tomorrow I will be the CIO of Volkswagen of America, at least during the case study discussion.

There is a kind of an institute in Stuttgart aimed towards start-up companies which has a series of interesting events for those who want to learn a bit more about the venture capital industry in Germany.

I am going tomorrow to the following event, if everything works out:

bwcon: Business Roundtable „Was macht ein Business Angel? – Unterstützungsansätze für Technologieunternehmen am Beispiel der FUZZY! Informatik AG“

I have this week free, as I am not taking the EC Law course at Mannheim Business School and the activity tomorrow is part of my job search. I hope to learn some and meet interesting professionals, let's see how it goes. But all this has costs:

• I will not be able to attend to the company presentation of Deutsche Börse AG at MBS and
• I will invest almost €100,00 in the event, which, at the moment, is a considerable sum for a student with a bank loan like me

But it should be worth it. No pain, no gain.

We had yet again another nice get together at the Villa, this time to watch the soccer games.

From Mannheim Business School News:

The Handelsblatt magazine “Junge Karriere” attested the Business School of the University of Mannheim a “remarkable distance” to the university in second place. In the estimation of 57.8% of the German HR managers, the best business students are educated in Mannheim. The authors describe the school and the whole university as a “trendsetter in internationality”. They mention the international semester times and the increasing number of exchange programs. “Of course, such distinguished conditions do not remain hidden from HR managers in business.” As a further plus point, the magazine points to the practical orientation of the business courses at Mannheim.

The Handelsblatt ranking is already the second piece of proof in 2008 of the exceptional status enjoyed by the University of Mannheim in the field of Business Administration. A few weeks ago, it had already received the best rating in the ranking of the prestigious German CHE (Centre for Higher Education Development) and was the only institution in the German speaking countries to receive top places in all five categories.

Some of you know that I use to twitter (that is, when its servers are up). And I do comment on the MBA course. And it was exactly one twit on the global supply chain course that got the attention of BearingPoint's Interactive Marketing team in the US. They twittered me back and asked if I was interested in writing an article on GSC. And so I did and you can see the result at the New Thinking BearingPoint blog:

http://newthinking.bearingpoint.com/2008/06/04/global-supply-chain-the-next-frontier/

I guess you will recognize the picture there.

BearingPoint is a company I want to apply for, so I am happy for the contact that I have had with them so far. During the GSC course we had a one day workshop with Sven Martin, a manager working in Switzerland, I have had the chance to talk to other consultants during career fairs and now this online collaboration. Way to go.

Check it out here:
http://picasaweb.google.de/ferbress/080530BBQVilla

Below some preview pics for you.

From 080530 BBQ Villa

080530 BBQ Villa

This is the first time I have ever seen a real fox (we don't have them in Brazil, you know? Just lobos guarás...) from this close, so I had to document it, even if the pictures got blurry.
I guess that it must like the park, with the dozens of bunnies living there...

Here are some pictures of the inside of the premises at Mannheim Business School. These pictures were taken in the third floor, but the fourth floor is set up similarly. Some things still have to be finished, like the wifi, the printing room. But it is good to have air conditioning.

From 080526 New pr...