My colleague Manish sent us an interesting link to this slideshow at BusinessWeek:
Queen's School of Business Tour
Showing posts with label queen's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queen's. Show all posts
OK, so I checked out BusinessWeek's slides on the top non-US business schools, knowing very well that Queen's School of Business had grabbed the first place for the third time in a row (2004, 2006 and 2008). My surprise was to see the banner on the top of the page:
Mannheim is investing quite a lot in marketing. We have seen them on Facebook, I have seen them on the schedule leaflets on the ICE trains to Mannheim and now, BW.
I guess that all is good, after all, the better the Mannheim name is known in the business world, more valuable my Mannheim MBA degree gets.
I have been twittering that I am listening to some of the TED talks on www.ted.com. I had been doing this for a while, but after having classes on Innovation Management with Lib Gibson, a TED participant, at Queen's School of Business, I started watching more often.
The way it works for me is to let the video roll while I am cleaning the apartment or folding clothes. Multitasking.
I just watched a video I wanted to share, because it condenses a lot of what I have been observing in the past 2 zears on and off line. The topic is collaboration, in a comercial and in an altruistic sense. There are great developments going on and great chances to take advantage of, in the most positive sense.
If you got interested in the talks and the topic, check out a short list of videos the people from Nokia Labs, about whom I wrote in an assignment for Lib's class, have put together:
http://betalabs.nokia.com/blog/2008/06/09/ted-talks-the-rise-of-collaboration/
Now let me go back to search for a job in a company who believes in this kind of philosophy.
This picture was taken in the park by the River Rhein, today in the evening. We had a barbecue there and, coincidentally, we three had our gray Queens' T-shirts on, I couldn't miss the opportunity.
The day started with a trip to Heidelberg and a boat trip to Neckarsteinach and back.
And, to finish it off, party at night at the Schneckenhof.
It is really good to have weekly subject which end with the exam on the Friday. We have the weekend off. But tomorrow is job search day, nonetheless.
I am almost done downloading some stuff here at the business school and decided to upload the last pictures I took here in Kingston.
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We had a small team room at our disposal here at Queen's. Each of us exchange students had a cubicle for himself, and those are 3 of my room mates I spent hours with studying for different subjects. Not bad, not bad at all, I had very dear company all the time.
Saying goodbye was harder here in Canada. But this simply from a logistics point of view. It was tough enough to say goodbye in Coventry, but, at least, we had a great farewell dinner party there, with most of the cohort present.
Here it wasn't so, as the different electives ended in different dates (there are still people studying for an exam tomorrow) and people are leaving the program in different blocks.
Added to that, here I had to say goodbye from two different groups: the MBA colleagues and my friends at the housing co-op I lived in. It makes things a bit more complicated, for sure, but it is really good to have had so many friends to say goodbye to.
In the picture above we see the German clan in the far left and two cute co-oppers on the right. The other two didn't want to appear in the picture, so will remain unmentioned.
And tonight they had a cool party at the Warwick Business School. All exams are over and the second term of MBA, with the last core subjects is also over.
From the Facebook updates I have been following, people have looked to this party with mixed feelings. They are happy for how far they have come and the feeling that exams are done is certainly very liberating. On the other hand, with the end of the core subjects, which everybody has to take, an important stage of the MBA reached its end. After these subjects, the whole cohort will maybe only get together again at the graduation party.
The A0.01 class room will no more be full with 80 plus FTMBA07 people again. It is kind of sad. This is a great group of people and it was a great group of people for me to start my MBA. I found good friends, open minds and, more important, open hearts. A very diverse mix: different ages, different countries, different professional experiences. But it was the group I started with and it is the group I would be with now if I could.
Anyway, I am now at the Business School in Kingston, Ontario, several thousand kilometers away, with another great group of people, watching a video after a good week of classes, relaxing deservedly. My first half of the MBA is also soon over. 10 more days and one exam. Then I will pack everything up and fly over to Germany. And the big job search will start seriously.
In Mannheim there will be yet a third group of great people assembled. I am really looking forward to meet the guys and girls I met for one brief week in Semptember 2007, an eternity or two ago. This will surely be great! And, to top it up, we will have weekly reinforcements from all over the place: the students who have been our hosts will come to stay at our home this time. Man, will that be fun!!
I wanted to buy a hoodie from the beginning of my course here, but, at $50, it was too expensive for me. Well, now I have one and 4 T-shirts. Not buying T's for a long time. Only today.
They even have a facebook page.
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So this is our free week in the semester. All of the other Queen's University students had their reading week 2 or 3 weeks ago, and we MBAs kept going to a completely empty Business School in what seemed to be a ghost campus.
But now it is our turn. All assignments done, all classes over, we are indeed free to enjoy some relaxing time.
The first extravagance that I treated myself to was going snowboarding with Marc last Sunday on a hill about 150 km north of Kingston. It wasn't the greatest hill, but we had a perfect snowboarding day and I consider those 100 bucks very well spent. I had been dying to snowboard for about a year, and am happy that I was able to do so at least once this season. The problem with Kingston is that we have lots of snow, but no hills.
The first half of the week was slow. I had my full of things to sort out, got it sorted out, took the opportunity to sleep some, read some more and even apply to a job or two. Not too bad, but certainly not as productive as I had imagined.
And now, again with Marc and other colleagues form the MBA, we are in Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side. It is certainly an interesting sight, and it was fun to go to the American side to eat at a casino buffet. But tomorrow we will head back to Toronto, where we will spend two nights.
It is good to be out of Kingston, but I am, unfortunately, very conscious of every dollar that I am spending during this trip. When you have a loan building up in the Bank, that's simply the way it is, and you have to find the balance between saving money and not missing unique opportunities.
Last week I took part in a recruiting webcast done by UK's consulting arm of the company, IBM Global Business Services.
I thought, from the beginning, that it was a cool idea, as I would be able to take part in the same event as my colleagues from Warwick Business School, even being an Ocean apart.
But the webcast was set up in a surprising way: the slides were served through a password protected website, while you had to call a special number to be able to listen to the speakers. Why not have both online, I don't know, but, in the age of Youtube and Skype, it surely is strange. Since I don't have a good phone plan for daytime calls, I used Skype out, which worked just fine, bringing all back to the internet.
The presentation was fine, the slides being showed on the screen and the audio through the headphones. One glitch or two due to feedback, but that was really minor.
I would have one or two suggestions to make this type of event more effective.
First of all, it should be all online. I don't know the reasons to separate the audio from the video, but I am sure the folks at IBM know why they do that. But it certainly would make our lives easier. And taking part in the event would be more convenient for the participants. It certainly is technologically possible.
Then I would suggest doing it in two parts. The first part, the one way presentation, when the audience doesn't interact with the talkers, could be presented as a pre-recorded podcast. Not only would the overall production quality be better, it would give participants the chance to get the presentation at their own time.
The second part would naturally be the questions and answers part, which is two way. For this section, people would then all connect at the same time and use the teleconference possibilities.
Furthermore, there were only 3 questions allowed and I thought this was very little. After all, people had been listening for about 40 minutes, they could have reserved a little bit more of time for the more interactive part of the presentation.
All in all, it was an interesting event. But, more interesting, was the opportunity to talk to a more senior consultant from IBM Global Business Services Canada, who gave a guest lecture for the marketing course here at Queen's. The cohort went to the pub after the class, with the aim of having the possibility of talking to Todd. And this was certainly constructive, as I could discuss several higher level issues related to the consultancy profession in general.
I have been busy this week with the most thorough assignment I have worked on during the MBA for the "Problem Solving and Consulting" course I took last two blocks, using the "Problem Based Learning" methodology.
Based on the suggestively titled paper by Staw and Ross, "Knowing when to pull the plug", I developed the mnemonic model below, dubbing it the 6-finger-hand action plan. Sometimes it is necessary to introduce a bit o fun in academia.
The paper is coming along nicely, and I really enjoyed researching for it, as it was certainly aligned with my own private research for my professional development and career plans. I had the chance to interview 3 senior executives in the Canadian Venture Capital industry and a leading professor in the field of new ventures, Dr. Elspeth Murray. I will most probably put some of my findings here in the blog later on but, at the moment, I have to go back to writing, as the clock is ticking quicker and quicker.
As promised on twitter, here the fairy tale from another point of view.
The three little pigs told their parents that they wanted to move out. The parents, being caring as they should, wanted to be sure that their piglets knew what adventures they were facing.
The pig parents were glad to see that their piglets identified the main risk out in the woods correctly: the big bad wolf. He certainly was a big risk, as the probability of an encounter was high, and the consequences of such encounter serious, probably leading to death.
The piglets presented their risk management plans.
The first one decided to build a wolf-proof house made of bricks and mortar. This should be enough to neutralize the risk. But, additionally, he bought a rifle. Being a good handyman, he certainly knew how to handle a gun and an encounter with the wolf would be a short-lived occasion.
The second pig decided to build a less expensive house with timber and wood. He knew his house was not too strong and, in an attempt to divert the risk, he signaled the surroundings of his home with signs and directions to Little Red Hood's granny's house. Maybe not very ethical, but, after all, he IS a pig.
The third little pig was nature loving and a pacifist. He built a lightweight, environmentally optimized living space out of straw and some natural fibers from organic extraction out of Venezuela. He believed in dialog, and set up a solar powered information kiosk which provided well researched information based on the latest researches on the benefits of vegetarian diets. Using the latest neurolinguistics approach, he convincingly presented the hazards of the ingestion of pig meat.
Well, you know the rest of the story. This version of this fairy tale was presented to us by our Services Management teacher, Barry Cross. I added my touch here and there, it was quite amusing.
The weekend in Montreal was a well deserved pause. And, considering the fact that I am only taking one course this block, I was expecting to have a bit of slack now.
But it ain't so. It is not bad, but I have to pay attention. I am taking Services Management as a full course and Advanced Topics in Marketing as a listener. Should (and will) work out quite well. But Services Management is a very case intensive course, I have to read a lot. Additionally, I have to prepare 2 written case discussions, a case presentation with a group, another group assignment on customer loyalty and a compliment/complaint letter exercise. At least the last one is done and I had to do it anyway, as my complaint is a real one with a store in Toronto. And it seems that the issue will be solved.
The workload is high, but not unbearable. And the cases are interesting. But two of the courses I have taken last block still have left me bigger assignments I have to complete until the end of next week. This means quite a bit of juggling with appointments and a need of good planing and discipline.
I believe that I have found a good way to work. I simply stay in my team room in the Business School from as early as 7:45 in the morning to as late as midnight, or even 1 a.m.. I have the impression that I can concentrate better here that at home. At least during this week, when the co-op dining hall is closed and I am living of instant noodles cooked in the resource room's microwave oven. At least I don't have the co-op kitchen duty of 3 weekly hours to do. And now let me get back to the IKEA Child Labour case.
I should be posting more pictures here on the blog, as I believe that the show a bit more of the day-to-day life than my texts by themselves.
So we start with another view of the main classroom, during the first day of the Investments course. Most of the MBA class was present, and I decided to capture the moment. Differently from Warwick, we haven't had classes with the whole class together, as people choose different electives.
But the big subject today was, again, the weather. Really miserable weather mostly due to the strong winds. Coming back home I found out that the extreme temperatures during the day had been -11 and +5, quite remarkable.
Anyway, two pictures, a bit of what's going on around here, now it is bed time. I will wake up at 5:30 for the second day in a row, this time for a telephone interview with a head hunter from Germany. Seems interesting.
Well, no classes this week since Wednesday. So I should have had a quiet week and weekend, right? But that was not the case. Laundry, assignments, pre-reading for next block's classes and socializing (I'm avoiding to use the term party too much around here) and kitchen duty have kept me fairly busy. And, on top of that, my phone continues to give me problems from time to time, and I don't really know what the cause is. But, with the help of the all knowing internet, I'll figure it out.
Nikon added several new features found in its newer D70s SLR camera to the older D70, including a new menu design and better auto focus.
In a statement, Nikon said, "The rapid pace at which development of digital technologies is proceeding inevitably leads to a continual release of new products. In the face of this dynamic, Nikon is determined to demonstrate our respect for the many customers who purchased a D70 digital SLR camera by delivering, where possible, the latest technology that the digital world has to offer through firmware updates."
http://picasaweb.google.de/ferbress/08011718Second04
But now I am getting unproductive. I might go to that Irish music session later on.
And this was how my day started, Kingston with quite some snow. Pretty, huh? Let's see if I will still find snow great after 2 months.
I can't complain that my weekend in Kingston wasn't eventful. I started it by going, by bus, out of the Kingston Bubble to buy second hand ice skates. I went as far as the Gardiners Centre and discovered a new side of Kingston, which is a city with around 140 thousand residents.
And of course I had to enjoy the nice weather and test the skates right away, which I did on the City Hall ice rink, as you can see on the album on Picasa.
After missing Sujay due to strange scheduling, we met him by chance at the Grizzly and people even played some pool.
Sunday was less interesting, but also quite nice. And Monday awoke to Kingston covered in snow, and it snowed the whole day. I guess the winter arrived again.
