Another hectic week
This term is becoming more hectic than expected... The courses have that seemed easy in the beginning, just faff (non quantitative) are looming large... While both huggy and Rajiv Banker (IT) have been excellent in the classes, there is so much tacit knowledge passed on in class... Investment Analysis and its complexities is beginning to give all those considered Finance in the past a serious scare... Many are reconsidering their elective choices... The registration for term 5's electives is also out and its a very crucial decision... Many basic fundamental electives like market research and futures and options are in term 5... And on top of all this is ELP, which for me atleast is getting more and more interesting but time consuming at the same time...
Today, my ELP team spent time with Ajit for an hour and that changed a lot of what we were planning to do as part of the ELP... He provided us with some much needed focus... I had the feeling that something was amiss, ever since the first day and it turned out to be a pull approach to the project from the perspective of what the client wanted at the end of the project... Talking with Ajit cleared a lot of uncertainity in the planning...
I also have taken it up on myself to write an essay for the IIMB manifestations event... I worked on the table of contents today and did a brain storming session with Mehul, who is also authoring the essay with me... We started pretty late but hope to cover good ground as I have been reading about the topic and observing the IT industry for quite some time to come...
Also, we had a new finance elective, "indian financial systems" added to term 5 today... It is being offered by Gangadhar, who is a post doctoral research fellow here... The post doctoral fellows (we call them PDFs) are part of a research faculty development program... and it was heartening to see a course from one of the PDFs... Gangadhar is a mine of knowledge when it comes to the Indian economy and its financial systems... The number of papers he has written and the books he has edited are his testimony... I sincerely wish he joins ISB as faculty after completing his research...
We have Sanjiv Mathur from Microsoft visiting us tomorrow, courtesy Huggy... I am among the few selected for a dinner session with him... Have to do my homework before I get to talk to him... Just a few minutes ago I read in the ET about the Indian government releasing GNU linux in regional languages... Enough cud to chew on for tomorrow I guess ;)
Sunday, September 14, 2003
ISB LS hots up...
The leadership summit organizing team got its office and things are alive and kicking now... We have nearly 50 volunteers working on sending out mails, contacting sponsors, sending out mails to various b-schools in Asia, Europe and the US... Event organizers are working overtime to get the rules and regulations, topics, judges and related software finalized... There is this massive effort to raise all the money we need through sponsorship... Karthik Jayaraman, who is heading the whole project, is an amazingly organized guy... he somehow seems to have the time to do this, his ELP and still top the class... He has simply dedicated himself to making LS a grand success...
My spanish improved that much more today... We learned verbo ser and ester... when to use the two... i am beginning to construct sentences... there was a ballroom dancing class in the evening but I cudnt get a female partner to dance with :(... But Divya, alum from the founding batch, who is here with her husband doing the PGP, told me to drop in next time around and promised me a partner! lets see ;)
Tomorrow we discuss CISCO in the IT class... I just went through the case and being from the industry, having followed Cisco for a long time, it seemed a cake walk... Really want to value add in tomorrow's class and gain some CP points in the process... ;)
We have to do the ELP weekly report today.. its due tomorrow and so we have a late night meeting to discuss it out... have to do some work for that... thats pretty much whats pending... otherwise, a nice day... managed to finish many things I aimed for!
The leadership summit organizing team got its office and things are alive and kicking now... We have nearly 50 volunteers working on sending out mails, contacting sponsors, sending out mails to various b-schools in Asia, Europe and the US... Event organizers are working overtime to get the rules and regulations, topics, judges and related software finalized... There is this massive effort to raise all the money we need through sponsorship... Karthik Jayaraman, who is heading the whole project, is an amazingly organized guy... he somehow seems to have the time to do this, his ELP and still top the class... He has simply dedicated himself to making LS a grand success...
My spanish improved that much more today... We learned verbo ser and ester... when to use the two... i am beginning to construct sentences... there was a ballroom dancing class in the evening but I cudnt get a female partner to dance with :(... But Divya, alum from the founding batch, who is here with her husband doing the PGP, told me to drop in next time around and promised me a partner! lets see ;)
Tomorrow we discuss CISCO in the IT class... I just went through the case and being from the industry, having followed Cisco for a long time, it seemed a cake walk... Really want to value add in tomorrow's class and gain some CP points in the process... ;)
We have to do the ELP weekly report today.. its due tomorrow and so we have a late night meeting to discuss it out... have to do some work for that... thats pretty much whats pending... otherwise, a nice day... managed to finish many things I aimed for!
Saturday, September 13, 2003
a new season for applications and placements
Somehow, I wasn't able to access blogger.com for the past two days and hence the 2 day blackout... So here I am with a bigger write up...
Friday had Alex kuruvilla from MTV talking to us about how they initially positioned the brand in the wrong segment and how they have now changed the positioning to a desi youthish brand and even drawing benefits with fringe products like clothing... a talk that I truly enjoyed! We also had Prof. Taneja from the new Shinawatra University in Thailand talking to us about China... The whole evening went in talks and a placom meeting where we were deciding about the student policy issues... CAS is debating the number of max offers we can hold and wants to peg it at 2. Many students want 3. Given that the companies will land up in the order of preference and the one week cap on deciding on a offer, I dont see this being a big issue, but still I preferred 2 to give everyone a fair chance at a decent job... lets see how this turns out...
Gurcharan Das's friday class was a gem... Bhagvad Gita was the point of discussion and I never thought so much deep about Arjuna and Krishna... I tested my beliefs about them and it was indeed pretty insightful... Nishkama Karma and Nishphala Karma were debated at length as this is one story everyone knows! While I enjoyed his "india unbound", I am not a particular fan of philosophy... Rawls, Nozic and Marx arent my cup of tea but this one class was thoroughly enjoyable... it made me think that much more...
the class afterwards was the most interesting of the term... Huggy Rao is on a roll... From being sceptical, he is one prof that has made Management of Organizations a very popular subject among people here... What a prof! his energy and enthusiasm are infective... I would travel miles to listen to him... He played out a small game in class to demonstrate how a small group can develop strong boundaries when given numbers and competition to deal with... we all fell for it when the game was played out and when he actually let the idea out, we all felt the group dynamics... this was any day better than a monologue lecture... Kellogg and ISB are very fortunate to have him...
Today has been the laziest day of the term... I simply could not put mind to studies... did data collection and some surfing for the ELP and my paper for the mercer competition... went to the city in the evening to the Raymonds showroom... have been thinking about a new set of business formals for the placement season... but raymonds turned out to be very disappointing... Atul suggested readymades... He is the textile guy from Bangkok and so postponed this to another day... So, having to turn the outing to be a meaningful one, we landed at Fusion 9... I liked the food and had my favourite vanilla desert to top the night... watched Hulk on my laptop and now, my brain is fresh for sunday... I have a spanish class, a meeting for the leadership summit, a meeting for ELP, a meeting for the research paper, a one page memo assignment about moral dilemma of Arjuna due on monday and quite a few calls to make... all this besides studies and readings for monday's classes!
Its time to give myself rest for a busy tomorrow! :)
Somehow, I wasn't able to access blogger.com for the past two days and hence the 2 day blackout... So here I am with a bigger write up...
Friday had Alex kuruvilla from MTV talking to us about how they initially positioned the brand in the wrong segment and how they have now changed the positioning to a desi youthish brand and even drawing benefits with fringe products like clothing... a talk that I truly enjoyed! We also had Prof. Taneja from the new Shinawatra University in Thailand talking to us about China... The whole evening went in talks and a placom meeting where we were deciding about the student policy issues... CAS is debating the number of max offers we can hold and wants to peg it at 2. Many students want 3. Given that the companies will land up in the order of preference and the one week cap on deciding on a offer, I dont see this being a big issue, but still I preferred 2 to give everyone a fair chance at a decent job... lets see how this turns out...
Gurcharan Das's friday class was a gem... Bhagvad Gita was the point of discussion and I never thought so much deep about Arjuna and Krishna... I tested my beliefs about them and it was indeed pretty insightful... Nishkama Karma and Nishphala Karma were debated at length as this is one story everyone knows! While I enjoyed his "india unbound", I am not a particular fan of philosophy... Rawls, Nozic and Marx arent my cup of tea but this one class was thoroughly enjoyable... it made me think that much more...
the class afterwards was the most interesting of the term... Huggy Rao is on a roll... From being sceptical, he is one prof that has made Management of Organizations a very popular subject among people here... What a prof! his energy and enthusiasm are infective... I would travel miles to listen to him... He played out a small game in class to demonstrate how a small group can develop strong boundaries when given numbers and competition to deal with... we all fell for it when the game was played out and when he actually let the idea out, we all felt the group dynamics... this was any day better than a monologue lecture... Kellogg and ISB are very fortunate to have him...
Today has been the laziest day of the term... I simply could not put mind to studies... did data collection and some surfing for the ELP and my paper for the mercer competition... went to the city in the evening to the Raymonds showroom... have been thinking about a new set of business formals for the placement season... but raymonds turned out to be very disappointing... Atul suggested readymades... He is the textile guy from Bangkok and so postponed this to another day... So, having to turn the outing to be a meaningful one, we landed at Fusion 9... I liked the food and had my favourite vanilla desert to top the night... watched Hulk on my laptop and now, my brain is fresh for sunday... I have a spanish class, a meeting for the leadership summit, a meeting for ELP, a meeting for the research paper, a one page memo assignment about moral dilemma of Arjuna due on monday and quite a few calls to make... all this besides studies and readings for monday's classes!
Its time to give myself rest for a busy tomorrow! :)
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
The best class discussion of the year so far...
Today was good in many ways... Gurcharan Das was sick and his class was postponed and so, just one class today... :) What a class it turned out to be... We had had many good class discussion until now but these had been sporadic... The general quality had been fluctuating in my view... Today, in the infotech course, we were discussing Xuma, a ebusiness company that almost went bust in the days of the dotcom meltdown
The first 15 minutes was a presentation and recommendation by one of the groups about the case... Venkat, who had worked with e-funds in similar roles in the US did a stupendous job of explaining the technology and what Xuma tried and failed... That was followed by a one hour class discussion that I thought was the best I had experienced here... The class shredded the case until every possible opportunity for Xuma was analyzed and discussed... Prof. Banker, let the discussion which was scheduled for 20 minutes, extend to almost an hour... In the end he described it as a dream class for him! cudnt agree more...
Today was good in many ways... Gurcharan Das was sick and his class was postponed and so, just one class today... :) What a class it turned out to be... We had had many good class discussion until now but these had been sporadic... The general quality had been fluctuating in my view... Today, in the infotech course, we were discussing Xuma, a ebusiness company that almost went bust in the days of the dotcom meltdown
The first 15 minutes was a presentation and recommendation by one of the groups about the case... Venkat, who had worked with e-funds in similar roles in the US did a stupendous job of explaining the technology and what Xuma tried and failed... That was followed by a one hour class discussion that I thought was the best I had experienced here... The class shredded the case until every possible opportunity for Xuma was analyzed and discussed... Prof. Banker, let the discussion which was scheduled for 20 minutes, extend to almost an hour... In the end he described it as a dream class for him! cudnt agree more...
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
Toughest of the lot
As the core terms near the end, I have already entered the electives and placements mindset... but I as well as many others have been brought back to reality by the investment analysis course... a gentle reminder that its not over until it is actually over... the amount of intuition and quant in this course have made it the most challenging of all courses until now... at the same time, the feeling of triumph when you manage to get the intuition going is something that cant be replaced as well :)
We had this term's dean's forum yesterday... the elective bidding has been scraped! the interests have been so diverse that except for 4-5 courses, there hasnt been a problem with the number of people opting for the electives... some interesting stats: most favoured majors... marketing - 147! fin - 109, LCM - 79, tech - 46 and ent - 10. the ent numbers are pretty low as many have opted to do specific courses in ent but not the whole specialization... that includes me too... some courses like prof. Kavil Ramachandran's "managing startups and growth" has been extremely popular...
Ok, that too much of acads and courses... we had the united airlines apac head in the campus yesterday... i could not attend the talk as I spent my evening talking to deputy dean Ajit Rangnekar... He had spoken a lot about placements in the dean's forum and his ideas on career selection were a revelation to me... He has had me thinking about the way I am going to apply for jobs on campus... more during the placements season as I aim to implement his suggestions... this year the placements may be narrowed down to a one month period to accomodate requests from the recruiters... ISB will also for the first time, invite companies on specific days, in the order of student preferences so that the most popular companies come first... the placom has been doing some good work and i will write more about it more as things unfold... as of now, its ELP all the way.... have a conf call tonight and have to prepare for that... so much to do before I sleep...
As the core terms near the end, I have already entered the electives and placements mindset... but I as well as many others have been brought back to reality by the investment analysis course... a gentle reminder that its not over until it is actually over... the amount of intuition and quant in this course have made it the most challenging of all courses until now... at the same time, the feeling of triumph when you manage to get the intuition going is something that cant be replaced as well :)
We had this term's dean's forum yesterday... the elective bidding has been scraped! the interests have been so diverse that except for 4-5 courses, there hasnt been a problem with the number of people opting for the electives... some interesting stats: most favoured majors... marketing - 147! fin - 109, LCM - 79, tech - 46 and ent - 10. the ent numbers are pretty low as many have opted to do specific courses in ent but not the whole specialization... that includes me too... some courses like prof. Kavil Ramachandran's "managing startups and growth" has been extremely popular...
Ok, that too much of acads and courses... we had the united airlines apac head in the campus yesterday... i could not attend the talk as I spent my evening talking to deputy dean Ajit Rangnekar... He had spoken a lot about placements in the dean's forum and his ideas on career selection were a revelation to me... He has had me thinking about the way I am going to apply for jobs on campus... more during the placements season as I aim to implement his suggestions... this year the placements may be narrowed down to a one month period to accomodate requests from the recruiters... ISB will also for the first time, invite companies on specific days, in the order of student preferences so that the most popular companies come first... the placom has been doing some good work and i will write more about it more as things unfold... as of now, its ELP all the way.... have a conf call tonight and have to prepare for that... so much to do before I sleep...
Sunday, September 07, 2003
ISB Leadership Summit...
In the past weeks, I have been alluding to an event thats going to happen at ISB... After all the background developments, some hard work from a core team of students, the dream of a global summit hosted by ISB is finally coming through... ISB will conduct the ISB leadership summit in december... 10 to 14th... 4 days of key note speakers, debates, colloqiums, inter b-school events culminating in an alumni reunion...
For the past 2 years, ISB's student clubs have been holding their own events, inviting speakers, conducting competitions etc. This year, an idea was mooted... why not put together all the funds different clubs get to conduct one single 4 day summit, inviting the best brains from both the academia and industry... lot of credit should go to a core team of students who have been working very hard, drawing up budgets, catching up with sponsors and convincing the management about the idea. The dean and deputy dean have been more than just responsive, encouraging us in every step... and all has culminated in the "ISB leadership summit". Still a long way to go, if we pull it off, it will be a grand event and a great advertisement for ISB... A separate web site for the summit is coming up and will be online soon... The logo that I designed for this event is here... The list of speakers is impressive, though I am not sure how many will manage to attend given we started a bit late... This idea and contacts with the outside world started only last month... Maybe we could have planned it out to start in May, as soon as we entered, but it took time for the idea to crystallize... One thing that I am sure is that, whatever we do, we will leave an event, which if planned early enough, will be a highlight in the indian business calender every year...
thats it for now... for more info, just wait until the website comes up :) Back to my assignments!
In the past weeks, I have been alluding to an event thats going to happen at ISB... After all the background developments, some hard work from a core team of students, the dream of a global summit hosted by ISB is finally coming through... ISB will conduct the ISB leadership summit in december... 10 to 14th... 4 days of key note speakers, debates, colloqiums, inter b-school events culminating in an alumni reunion...
For the past 2 years, ISB's student clubs have been holding their own events, inviting speakers, conducting competitions etc. This year, an idea was mooted... why not put together all the funds different clubs get to conduct one single 4 day summit, inviting the best brains from both the academia and industry... lot of credit should go to a core team of students who have been working very hard, drawing up budgets, catching up with sponsors and convincing the management about the idea. The dean and deputy dean have been more than just responsive, encouraging us in every step... and all has culminated in the "ISB leadership summit". Still a long way to go, if we pull it off, it will be a grand event and a great advertisement for ISB... A separate web site for the summit is coming up and will be online soon... The logo that I designed for this event is here... The list of speakers is impressive, though I am not sure how many will manage to attend given we started a bit late... This idea and contacts with the outside world started only last month... Maybe we could have planned it out to start in May, as soon as we entered, but it took time for the idea to crystallize... One thing that I am sure is that, whatever we do, we will leave an event, which if planned early enough, will be a highlight in the indian business calender every year...
thats it for now... for more info, just wait until the website comes up :) Back to my assignments!
Friday, September 05, 2003
term 4, elp, full swing...
Term 4 is in full swing... its a very different term... except for investment analysis which has more that the expected quant, the rest are all faff in ISB jargon...
ELP is the buzzword... the results were announced... I got my no. 1 bid... its for a US based startup called nSpace... my team is trying to design an entry strategy for nSpace into India... Looks exciting... we are interacting with the co-founder and the R&D director directly... lotsa conf calls and some hard work will be required... otherwise, everyone's going around asking which project each other is doing in ELP... there were some popular projects and everyone is curious to know who got these ones... new teams, new dynamics and many sessions of bonding and team building...
The whole week has been eventful... a new grade re eval procedure, ELP announcements, Gurcharan Das's classes... ISB never ceases to surprise you...
Gurcharan Das's classes have been totally different... he not being a professor shows... the campus never ceases arguments now about capitalism, socialism, ethics and communism... we had rawls, marx and nozic as readings for the first two classes! philosophy in b-school! these are topics that many of us would have discussed in leisure with friends without realizing that we are reflecting thoughts that are distinctly socialistic or capitalistic or communist... now its happening formally in a class and everyone jumps into the discussion as everyone has a strong opinion on issues of what is fair and what is not... Gurcharan Das has indeed managed to kindle this interest in us... one interesting statement I heard over lunch from a nearby table was this: "The whole debate about which is better, capitalism or communism is nonsense in any b-school... because anyone who is here is a capitalist and thats the reason he or she is here!" Now that set me really thinking... thats probably true... for even Gurcharan Das says that the only school in the world that does not subscribe to communism is the bschool! I have been reading "India Unbound" for the past one week, whenever I have found time and its a book I will surely recommend...
that was the week... as stressfull as it has ever been... so when i saw today was friday, i cudnt resist a trip to the city for a break... so off went atul, shilpi and I... today I had the costliest haircut I have ever had... shelled out 300 bucks for a new looking hairstyle that I am not sure is going impress the chics... somehow, i felt ripped off as all the guy did was make my hair look unkempt or so it seemed... anyways, verdict will come in tomorrow's first ELP project management session... lets see how many heads turn ;)
Term 4 is in full swing... its a very different term... except for investment analysis which has more that the expected quant, the rest are all faff in ISB jargon...
ELP is the buzzword... the results were announced... I got my no. 1 bid... its for a US based startup called nSpace... my team is trying to design an entry strategy for nSpace into India... Looks exciting... we are interacting with the co-founder and the R&D director directly... lotsa conf calls and some hard work will be required... otherwise, everyone's going around asking which project each other is doing in ELP... there were some popular projects and everyone is curious to know who got these ones... new teams, new dynamics and many sessions of bonding and team building...
The whole week has been eventful... a new grade re eval procedure, ELP announcements, Gurcharan Das's classes... ISB never ceases to surprise you...
Gurcharan Das's classes have been totally different... he not being a professor shows... the campus never ceases arguments now about capitalism, socialism, ethics and communism... we had rawls, marx and nozic as readings for the first two classes! philosophy in b-school! these are topics that many of us would have discussed in leisure with friends without realizing that we are reflecting thoughts that are distinctly socialistic or capitalistic or communist... now its happening formally in a class and everyone jumps into the discussion as everyone has a strong opinion on issues of what is fair and what is not... Gurcharan Das has indeed managed to kindle this interest in us... one interesting statement I heard over lunch from a nearby table was this: "The whole debate about which is better, capitalism or communism is nonsense in any b-school... because anyone who is here is a capitalist and thats the reason he or she is here!" Now that set me really thinking... thats probably true... for even Gurcharan Das says that the only school in the world that does not subscribe to communism is the bschool! I have been reading "India Unbound" for the past one week, whenever I have found time and its a book I will surely recommend...
that was the week... as stressfull as it has ever been... so when i saw today was friday, i cudnt resist a trip to the city for a break... so off went atul, shilpi and I... today I had the costliest haircut I have ever had... shelled out 300 bucks for a new looking hairstyle that I am not sure is going impress the chics... somehow, i felt ripped off as all the guy did was make my hair look unkempt or so it seemed... anyways, verdict will come in tomorrow's first ELP project management session... lets see how many heads turn ;)
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