The MRR Day

The theme these days is the glaring difference in the MBA life I'm leading today compared to last year.

The best example is today, Friday.

But what's with Fridays, anyway?

One year ago, Friday was notorious for being the day our class had to accomplish our individual Written Analysis of Cases (WACs). It was a test in a lot respects, all right. WACs tested your stamina, energy, your decision-making and your drive to accomplish something. The approach was like a mission Jim Phelps would get in Mission: Impossible-- You had 15 hours to write a paper or else you get a zilch, as simple as that. It also meant that your social life was virtually suspended in limbo.

For our electives term that started more than two months ago, Fridays are now designated as our "MRR Day," or a free day for us to do things related to our Management Research Report-- and that usually meant doing research on various data sources, going to our proponents' offices to do interviews or just bunking on the library writing the paper itself. Good thing our MRR coordinator, Prof. Titos Ortigas, maintains a website that contains key announcements and information regarding MRR matters. Otherwise, I wouldn't be reminded to make sure there's progress in my project.

So you see, the challenge for our batch now is still to accomplish something, but with something more long term. The deadline may be months away, but we still need to be motivated to ensure progress without a ticking clock. Because if you keep thinking the deadline is still far away, you may end up spending your Fridays the same way you did a year ago-- beating the choking-tight deadline.

More Bloggers from AIM

It seems the blogging tradition in AIM continue with the new MBA guys. (Yey!)

There are a couple of blogs from the Freshies that focused on their respective experiences with the Pre-MBA so far and they are interesting reads. The first one is "Doodles in Words":

 

Here's a choice quip from the blog:

As we get closer to the real stuff, our anxieties are "geometrically" increasing. After barely surviving almost two weeks in the program, I am beginning to feel my body failing on me. And they say it's going to get harder. Sigh. I think I need to vomit.

Sounds familiar? :P

The next blog is "The Missing Piece": 

 

 

And here's an excerpt from Yuva's blog:

The number of credits and debits just drives me crazy . Accounting or “Language of Business” as it is called, is something that us driven some of us in the class to really think again on whether MBA is the right thing for us . I am not very good at it and will never will be but like all things new it is getting pretty interesting by the day . With all this accounting and economics I am slowly beginning to understand what MBA is going to be all about .

It looks like Financial Accounting is rearing its ugly head again. :P

Please do check them out, I'll post some more blogs in the future. :)

Is the Web Moving Towards a “Participation Economy”?

With the Web becoming one big glop of information, especially with bits and pieces coming from the users, business pundits have observed that personal attention has become one scarce resource. And whenever there is a scarce resource, economic theories apply. Thus the term “Attention Economy” was coined.

It may come to a surprise that as early as the 1970’s, experts have observed the deluge of information from various sources have outpaced the span of human attention. Herbert Simon wrote about this phenomenon in a 1971 journal from John Hopkins University, and was followed up by Michael Goldhaber in 1997 during the advent of the Internet in his article The Attention Economy and the Net. The blogosphere has also taken notice of the Attention Economy.

Web 2.0 has undoubtedly accelerated the pace of information creation and codification in the last half decade and if was hard to get people’s attention then, it surely is harder now, even with new ways of interrupting and distracting people from their digital lives.

But from what I observe, there is something that has become crucial today for the web these days– it’s Participation. This could very well be the new “P” of Marketing for this generation (with Product, Price, Place and Promotion being the other “P’s” of marketing.)  Participation for the Web 2.0 world creates the most value for web platforms. If attention is akin to money, as said by Goldhaber, then participation is the gold and silver being traded in the London Bullion Market.

Participation is the activity that creates the customer experience and would ultimately determine his or her satisfaction with a web application. Think about it– it’s easy to notice a website, but think how much a site or social application must do in order to get you to participate? Taking this further, once you have participated and felt satisfied, wouln’t you be feel more engaged? I came up with this simple model to illustrate my point:

I’ve called this model the “Attention-Participation-Engagement Model for the Web” where attention leads to participation which then would lead to user engagement.

There are probably around 80 million blogs today and that number will grow. Each will vie for your attention, but how many will you engage in conversation with?

Talent Management Conference 2008

I'm helping out one my classmates, Julie Chua, who is doing her MRR with John Clements Consultants, Inc.

She's helping promote the upcoming Talent Management Conference 2008 at the Quezon Ballroom of the Makati Shangri-La on September 4-5, 2008. The event is organized by John Clements in partnership with Harvard Business Publishing.

The event is described as "A two-day groundbreaking conference aims to serve as a venue for local and multinational HR practitioners to share insights into the significance of talent management in building sustainable advantage in competitive marketplaces."

Easy Street

 

I was reading through my old posts and I realized how much different my situation is now, compared to eight months ago.

For the last two weeks, I've only been having one to two classes a day, plus the customary Friday break for the Management Research Report (MRR). How did that happen? Well, my classes in Self-Mastery, Arts& Spirituality (SMARTS), Creative Marketing & Selling (CMS) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) are all done.

Remember how screwed up I was? Sheesh, that seemeed like a long time ago. Seniors really have it easier. :)

I guess if anybody is looking for more "excitement," look at the blogs of the freshmen. :P

Poker Night in AIM!

August 21, 2008 will come down in AIM history as the day the very first AIM Community Poker Championship (ACPC) event was held. The tournament was held at the Bancom Room at the Asian Institute of Management.

The Texas Hold 'Em games started off with 37 players on five tables. The winners of each table then advanced in the finals game where the top three finishers would end up with the prizes. Games started at around 7pm and the players and spectators were treated to nice finger food and pizza, plus soda and beer, with the beer courtesy of Prof. Ricky Lim. Very few alumni came (only Carica president Ramon Tan and my former roommate El Lampa attended), but there were lots of non-SUPR students who came, including folks from the new batch. (That's how you start 'em right :P)

The energy at the Bancom room was very high and electric during the games as it had everything about competition-- jubilation from calling bluffs, frustration from not getting the card you're waiting for and, of course, "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" business were there.

The final table game ended up with this set of rankings:

• 5th Place: Rosie Avila
• 4th Place: Michelle Yap
• 3rd Place: Shweta Srivastava
• 2nd: Anton Ng
• Winner: Howie Schmidt
  

Howi Schmidt took home the big pot after a protracted one on one with Anton Ng. 

The event was pretty much a success, thanks to the participation of the Sources and Uses of Power (SUPR) class under Prof. Nani Roxas. (Prof. Roxas even donated the trophy for the event!), the students, the alumni, faculty (Prof. Jun Borromeo was there!), the AIM Student Association, the MBA program and the Student Services, Administration and Registrar.

Even more thanks to the following brave souls who were the driving force of the event:

• Co-Organizer: Frank Shrope
  
• Volunteer Helpers: Pia Sanedrin,  Diamond Uy, Connie Banaag, and Rex See
• Dealers: Johnson Gotamco, Bingo Tongco, Lester Guevarra, Luther Bersales & Emil Sy
  

The success of the first AIM Community Poker Championships will defintely spin-off more events to come.

Big Brother?

Ah, the Pre-MBA...

The newest batch of 16-month MBA students started their Pre-MBA Program yesterday and they are having manageable dosages of Languange of Business (LOB), Economics and Quantitative Analysis (QA). If you recall last year, we were bombarded with Prof. Larry Tan's LOB classes all the way. :)

I volunteered to play big brother to the new batch (yeah, we're the Seniors now!) and give them a couple of drills in QA. I chose this subject because, obviously, I was utterly so-so in LOB and Economics. I was quite excited to do the tutorial because there are lots of new people to meet and I know a few of them, either personally or via emails or comments because of my blog. The new group is bigger than our class, I hear they are around 130 strong. (Our batch is only 95) A few classmates of mine gave me moral support at the beginning of the session (Thank you Frank, Diamond, Michelle, Mark Chan, and Johnson!)

I started the session with a simple grouped frequency problem. I didn't realize it was hard to teach the class because I had to give them time to solve the problem and some of them do not know how to go about it. Good thing one brave soul asked how to solve the problem, otherwise it would have been a snoozefest. We solved the problem and I even got corrected twice, because of faulty Excel skills. But thankfully, I was able to adequately answer a few questions.

The second problem discussion was a bit more spirited. I came up with a cricket statistics problem and the discussion revolved around a player's performance based on runs and wickets. I even got a couple of freshies to explain to the class what are runs and wickets in cricket. (Thanks to you two!)

The session lasted an hour and I really enjoyed playing "professor" for that brief period. To be honest, I drew a lot from my own profs in handling the discussion. :P And more importantly, the class of over a hundred freshmen did not bite my head off.

And as promised, here are photos of the tutorial session:

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I would also like to invite people from any program (MM or MBA) or batch to send me your blog's URL if you have one. (Be sure to include your full name as well) I'll include it in my official blog roll.

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Trivia: our professor in QA during our Pre-MBA was Prof. Anthony Zosa of the University of San Carlos.

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One last thing: I said us Seniors would give some "tips" to the new guys during the tutorial session but everybody in our group left, so hopefully, the tip-giving session will happen tomorrow. :)

The AIM Community Poker Championships

 

I'm organizing the very first AIM Community Poker Championships (ACPC) with Frank Shrope of the Sources & Uses of Power (SUPR) class. Being the Sports Committee Head of the AIM Student Association (AIM SA), I felt that there should be an event where poker players in AIM can get together and play friendly competition. It was just my good fortune that Frank was in Prof. Nani Roxas' SUPR class and playing poker was one of their official class activities.(A class that requires students to play poker? Neat!)

Everything is coming together pretty well-- AIM SA Chairman Kshitij Shrivastava gave the project a go, the Student Services, Administration and Registrar (SSAR) also approved of the event, Frank has been a great person to work with and even Prof. Ricky Lim and Prof. Roxas pledged to support the event. The only bump on the road so far is the non-endorsement of AIM's Human Resouces Services to the employees. (I invited the AIM HR folks to endorse the event and spread the word to AIM employees who want to play). But the confluence of events have been generally positive.

The event is also a good break for my classmates who have been immersed in their MRR's, Self-Master, Arts & Sprituality (SMARTS) final papers, Real Property Management & Development (RPMD) projects, and of course, Investment Banking (IB) and Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A).

So I invite students from all programs and batches, employees and faculty to the AIM Community Poker Championships on August 21, 2008 at the Bancom Room, 6pm to 11pm. The buy-in is PhP 300.00 and entrance fee for non-players is PhP 150.00. There will be prizes for the top three finishers.

Two Sides of The Same Coin

Dr. Paco Sandejas, managing partner of Narra Veture Capital, gave a little talk last August 12 (Tuesday) here at the Asian Institute of Management about the whole venture capital scene in the Philippines and techno-entrepreneurship.

Talks like these plus the New Products and Services Development (NPSD) class under Prof. Jay Bernardo really inspire me to take a plunge (or even a dip) into the ocean that is entrepreneurship. I say ocean because it's deep and vast, and not to mention rich, but also filled with sharks and venomous jellyfishes.

I can follow a thread that goes back to our Development of the Enterprise (DE) class under Prof. Titos Ortigas, where the entrepreneurial spirit of our class was being kindled, or rekindled. And for a certain degree, it worked for me.

I still have some trepidations about venturing now, given there is a full blown financial crisis in the world happening. But we have always been reminded how the Chinese view a crisis-- the Chinese word for "crisis" is "weiji," which is composed of "wei" (danger) and "ji" (opportunity)-- whenever there is a crisis, there must be an opportunity somewhere nearby.

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Two very well known banks plus a consulting firm have given company talks and pre-placement interviews and I must say the career placement activities on campus have been gaining steam. The good thing is, there are more companies that will be presenting in the next few weeks. The Career Management Services and our student reps have been busy getting companies to sign-up for company presentations and join the upcoming Recruiter's Night.

This is quite good news because it seems the demand for MBA's from the corporate world is still there, despite the global economic downturn. I've heard that the previous MBA batch has very good career placement numbers and more than 80% have already nice dandy jobs since graduating last May.

While nothing really is handed to you in a silver platter, there are some encouraging indicators that there are nice jobs waiting for our MBA class after graduation. It really depends on how you play your cards, and your success could go down to a flip of the coin.

I'll be Speaking at Y4IT 2008

For the second straight year, I'll be speaking at the Philippine Youth Congress in Information Technology or simply, Y4IT. This year's series of talks will be held at its original home-- the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City from September 2-5, 2008.

Like the previous years, Y4IT will be focusing on contemporary and new technology that today's youth will find useful and beneficial in their future careers. In my talk last year, the title of my talk was "Web 2.0 and You," where, to my surprise, I introduced Web 2.0 to over 1,500 college and high school students. This year, I'm shifting my attention to the entertainment aspect of the Web. I thought of a catchy title and what I came up with was "The Internet's Next Big Star-- You!" I'm quite excited about it because I'll be talking about a topic that combines two of my favorite subjects: The Web and entertainment.

Other topics for the multi-day event include eLearning 2.0, Blogging, CGI in Film Animation, Social Networking, Blu-Ray Technology, IT Certifications, Careers in Embedded Systems, Podcasting, PhilNITS as a National IT Standard, What Employers Look for in IT Graduates, Outsourcing & Offshoring, Ruby on Rails.

If you have the time, drop by UP Diliman in the first week of September. :)

MBA: Year One (Part 2)

I remember during the first week in the MBA program, one of my classmates told me one of the "truths" about the Asian Institute of Management-- it's a place where personal relationships suffer. Whether it's with your family, your significant other or friends, AIM had a reputation of putting people through an emotional wringer. I should know. :)

If you have any plans of going to AIM, set the expectations of your family, spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend because you need all the support you could get from them. This one of the best unsolicited advice you'll ever get before start.

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Speaking of advice, one advice people often give to shell-shocked MBA students is "Hit the ground running."

It makes sense when the first time you hear it, but you'll eventually realize it's a whole bunch of crap.There I was clawing my way through Language of Business (LOB), Economics, Management of Cost and Profit (MCP) and barely surviving. And then you hear people tell you "Hit the f*****g ground running" sounds almost like an insult to your humanity.

Here's my better advice: "Hit the ground ALIVE."

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Like the Yin and Yang, MBA life has its downs and ups. Yeah, you're relationships will be subjected to a vise-like experience, but AIM has also been known to be a conducive place for romance. Proof that misery indeed loves company.

To date, there are at least seven official and unofficial pairs that got together in our batch. This blog is peppered with clues as to who those pairs are. Hunt for them now! :)

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During February, there was a wave of Johari Window invites from everyone in our batch for our Human Behavior in Organization (HBO). I still am a bit amazed at my window's results. :)

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Who can forget The Young MBA Graduate?


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Based on an informal poll, the hardest exam was Prof. Federico Macaranas' Economics Midterms Exam. The close second is Prof. Richard Cruz' Financial Management 1 (FM1) Final Exam.

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Our Walkabout season was a mixed bag of projects that bombarded the campus with promotion for Romance in D, guys surviving in the Subic Bay jungle, a couple of girls taking on a Vietnam adventure, a group organizing a sassy speed dating event, a couple of Indian dudes saving the tiffin service in campus, a guy being a bouncer in one of the city's classiest clubs, a couple of guys who went on a cross-country drive (and got sick in the process), Punjabi dancers and of course, seminars about corporate blogging.

MBA 2008 (December) Anniversary Party

Our batch, the Asian Institute of Management's first 16-month MBA students, had our only anniversary party last August 7, 2008 at the poolside. Thanks to Pia Sanedrin for organizing the nice get together. :)

There was no formal program that evening, just some nice comfort food for both vegetarians and non-vegeterians, ample booze and... karaoke! Some of the evening's singing stars were Faye Abis, Shu Wang, Gino Romero, Gaurav Nagpal, Diamond Uy, Bok Lamayan, Paolo Tomas, Arpita Maity and the batch entertainer extraordinaire, Neil Risos. It's also nice that some members of the faculty accepted our invite: Prof. Ricky Lim, Prof. Jun Borromeo, Prof. Jess Gallegos, and Prof. Titos Ortigas were all there.

The simple party was an understated tribute to what the batch has been though in our first 12 months.

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Bonus! Here's Nikhil Karira's video for our batch that premiered early this year:

Maya Perez, This One's for You

One of my very good friends at the Asian Institute of Management and I have a running joke: That one day, I'll post her picture in my blog and ask people to comment on it.

I was able to convince Maya Perez, a member of our MBA class, to say "What the heck, let's do the photo shoot," and the picture you see in this post is the culmination of that running joke.

If you think her photo warrants your comment, post it! If you think there should be more posts like this, let me know as well. :)

MBA: Year One (Part 1)

Exactly one year ago, the classes for the MBA 2008 (December) batch started. I recall our first class was Language of Business (LOB) under Prof. Larry Tan. I did not know everybody then, especially with folks who did not attend the fast-paced Pre-MBA Program. I'm sure people felt that way too. Another thing I remember was thinking "I haven't been in a room with this many Indians." (Of course, this thought was trumped when I went to Infosys in Bangalore for my Action Consultancy three months ago.)

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No one would admit it, but each thought their section was better than the other.

Our class originally had 101 people and we were divided into two sections: Section A and Section B. I went to Section B, and the rumor was Section B folks was the "sub-par" section. At some point in the first year in school, I kinda believed that-- I heard how competitive the Section A folks were, being more assertive in case discussions and more open to critiquing others in the case rooms. But to my surprise, we got feedback from faculty that our class had better quality discussions over-all. So much for my inferiority complex. :P

Speaking of that little rivalry, we kept tabs on how much early morning classes each section would get scheduled. By my rough estimate, our section got more classes in the ungodly hours of the morning. (Just kidding, they were 8am classes.)

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The honesty of the batch was tested at one point during our first year. It became an issue of fairness versus solidarity and it was an experience where everyone did not come out unscathed. Some people actually think the issue of dishonesty was not resolved at all.

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Another issue that people got involved in was the "Beer Bottle Throwing Incident." After one of the beer-drinking sessions here, several people in our class were summoned after being tagged by security staff as people guilty of throwing beer bottles in the school pool. This case was kinda weird because it implicated people who are obviously not guilty-- like who were in the party but did not drink, plus there were no clear cut evidence or first-hand witnesses, so it was thought of case of Gestapo-like justice. The case was solved when everybody who alleged to be as guilty wrote an apology letter.

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While everybody is more concerned with their own Management Research Reports (MRR) now, a few months ago, people were sweating blood to get decent grades and were worn out from beating deadlines. One of the beatsticks on the batch were the Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) on almost every Fridays. I'm not a fan of working from 5pm to 8am of Saturday, but I defended the WAC when it was under fire.

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Here's a Section B exclusive: The Backseat Boys (Rajat Gorawara, Kanishka Bhargava, Abin Sarkar and Sandeep Sharma) provided some of the most insightful and the most knuckle-headed class participation during case discussions. Who can forget the "idea that cannot be stopped" quip in Development of the Enterprise (DE)?

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There's more to come. I'm sure you have your Year One story, please do share!

I'll be Speaking at WordCamp Philippines 2008

Thanks to Andrew Dela Serna, I got an invite to speak at the country’s biggest WordPress event next month: WordCamp Philippines 2008. The Manila leg will be held on September 6 (Saturday), at the College of Saint Benilde in Taft Avenue, Manila.

I’ll be talking about Web Standards and how the WordPress blogging platform fits into the puzzle. (My Web Standards blog is powered by WordPress, by the way.) I’ll also touch on stuff like Usability and some little Web Accessibility to complete the loop. Of course, since the audience will be a mixed bag of bloggers and non-bloggers, I may have to make the talk very easy to follow with the least possible jargon. Well, I’m guessing  by the time I give my talk, everyone in the audience would already have been bombarded by geekspeak. (See the WordCamp schedule)

September is going to be a busy month on the speaking front for me because there are other events on the pipeline. I’ll keep everyone posted. :)

You Got Tech's Corporate Blogging Episode

Aileen Apolo of You Got Tech, the tech blog for non-techies, interviewed me last April during the Google Day in AIM. The topic of my interview was Corporate Blogging, and at that time I just finished my second seminar, Corporate Blogging and Online Repution Management.

Here's the interview that took place:


I just realized I looked goofy and scatterbrained on camera. :P So please do check it out and see how distracting my hands get. :D

(Extra challenge: Can you guess which venue the interview took place?)

Improvisation

So much for a smooth-sailing Management Research Report (MRR).

I hit a snag when I got a very ironclad Non-Disclosure Agreement from my initial proponent-- there was a confidentiality period of five years. One of my advisers, Prof. Jun Borromeo, said that such terms is not feasible for a case series MRR because the case that I will write will no longer be that relevant in that time. Ideally, cases should be released as soon as possible, especially when the management issue in focus is very timely. (In my case, I'll be writing about online marketing).

So what did I do? I immediately ran my Plan B-- which ironically was my initial idea for my MRR. I got to the phone and called up a few contacts and voila! My new MRR topic was in motion. I had to improvise here and there so that things would fall snugly into place. However, there are still some issues to be resolved like the consent of the companies I'm writing about, but I do hope I don't need to pull out my Plan C.

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I don't think have mentioned in this blog that starting the electives term, our MBA class does not have any classes during Fridays. This was made so in order to give the students time to write and finish the MRR's. Well, thank goodness for this day because I'm doing a lot of MRR firefighting this day.

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Quick note: I heard people are getting discombobulated with Investment Banking under Prof. Errol Perez.

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One final thing to reflect on: I've always liked this post by Pia on dishonesty. You should read it.