AIM MBA Students Take on Pasig River for the Environment

Last week, MBA Cohort 3 students Vaidas Sukys, Ron Acedillo, and Sandeep Kaul successfully sailed (well, rowed to be more accurate) across the Pasig River using a makeshift boat. Yes, a makeshift boat using used plastic water bottles. This was part of Vaidas' walkabout project and it aimed to make a statement about the environment.

The launch was a huge success that the city government of Pasig supported the initiative. Media also covered the event and Vaidas & co. were featured in the evening news.

Congratulations to the students for this successful project!

More coverage:

• Ripples of Change
• Lithuanian Student Rows His Plastic Boat in Pasig River

Credibility

Credibility, whether on the physical or virtual world, is not easy to gain. It takes time, a good track record, and good relations with people. Like what I learned in Social Entrepreneurship (SE), one builds "Social Capital" as he moves around and interacts with society.

In the real world, it's easy to imagine how one gains credibility-- one can get it by good character, proper actions, or deep knowledge. A simple act of honesty can help one's reputation and credibility. But when it comes to the online world, how does one gain this valuable commodity?

My research brought me to a recent study entitled "Web Credibility in Online Journalism" where the researcher sought to find the link between web credibility and several factors, among them the author's identity. The study cited a work by MIT Media Lab expert Judith Donath:

The writer’s identity – in particular, claims of real-world expertise or history of accurate online contributions – plays an important role in judging the veracity of an article. Similarly, knowing the writer’s motivation – e.g. political beliefs, professional affiliations, personal relationships — can greatly affect how we interpret his or her statements. 

Based on what the study found, there is a link between the credibility of an online article and the identity of the author. If you read the study, it suggests that in normal circumstances, an online article where the author's identity is known has more credibility than an article whose author hides in anonymity.

I got this insight just as I started blogging years ago, that's why I decided to put my real name and even my picture on all my blogs. I want to gain credibility as an online author and I want to take responsibility to whatever I write on the web.

I'd like to believe that in the 20 months of this blog's existence, it has built a good reputation on the web and gained credibility in the Asian Institute of Management community (students, alumni, faculty, staff, and even incoming students). Based on the feedback from the various AIM stakeholders, I have good reason to believe that is so.

That is why I got upset when I was implicated in the debacle a certain forum site created. I don't see the justice in a situation where I'm getting some flak for the mess the forum created, and the site owners are roaming around scott-free (albeit anonymously).

Sheesh, the forums now is so unpopular among the students, faculty, alumni, and staff, that students filed multiple complaints against the forums site and they asked the school's IT department and administration to have it blocked. The forums site lost its legitimacy when it allowed unfounded accusations, exaggerations, and even racially-offensive content to fester on its threads.

The question now: Will the forum site get the sympathy of the AIM stakeholders? If you can assess the site's credibility, you'll have the answer.

Frankenstein

I've had my share of mistakes, but there has been one mistake that has come to bite me in the @$$.

When the a certain forums site was launched a few weeks ago, I welcomed it with open arms. I saw its potential of being an avenue of intelligent and meaningful discussions among AIM stakeholders, particularly the students. A few weeks has passed and that site has accomplished none of what I thought it would do. Instead, we saw people posting crass criticisms like crazy, discussions focusing on "who's doing who," and doing very, very little to create a positive change.

The moderators eventually saw the lack of responsibility in the postings of the message board, and disabled anonymous posting. The quality improved a bit, but the general atmosphere of that website still remained-- a raw environment filled with character assassinations.

What was my mistake in what I've mentioned? I grossly overestimated the benefits of that forums site and underestimated its negative effects. And now, that mistake is turning into a monster right before me.

In the past couple of weeks, strong disapproval of that forums site was expressed by faculty, students, alumni, and even staff. The worst part is that a significant portion of them think that I was the one who initiated that forums site. People think that this blog, The AIM Blogger, is the originator of that forums site.

I'd like to make it clear that I am not connected to the creators of that website, whose identities up to this point in time is unknown to me. (For proper disclosure, I served briefly as a consultant for them when they asked for my help, but I have left that post.)

I sent a message to the creators of that website about my plight, and I requested them to change the name of their site so that I would be spared from the backlash. But this is what I got from them:

Hi Regnard,

We have discussed your request among the board and are sorry to say that we cannot accommodate your request. The AIM Bloggers Forum was conceptualized under the pretense that everyone can become bloggers through our forum. Our forum aims to empower all AIM stakeholders to become bloggers without the need to setup their own blog.

In addition to this, our teams have already started producing paraphernalia such as stickers, posters and shirts with the AIM Bloggers Forum brand on it. The forum is the offshoot of many more things to come and changing our branding at this point in time would be detrimental to the brand equity and strategies we have mapped out.

The AIM Bloggers can however post in the FAQs portion of our forum that you are not one of the founders of this forum if you are amenable to this.

We hope you can understand where we are coming from.

Thank you,

AIM Bloggers

There you have it: My equivalent of Frankenstein's Monster.

Term-End

The Online Marketing mini-elective I taught with Professors Richard Cruz and Titos Ortigas had its 10th and last meeting yesterday and I had the pleasure of closing the class.

The class session was brief but we recapped what we learned for the last 10 weeks and had some final tips for the groups will be competing at the Google Online Marketing Challenge. We also had a quick evaluation of the strategies of the different groups for their respective companies/clients. We rounded out the class with feedback on how the class was handled and the course content. Thankfully, the feedback of everyone in the class was generally positive. (Well, I wasn't expecting a vicious feedback a la AIM Bloggers Forum on the Professors, but you get the picture :P)

I handled three sessions of the 10-session mini-elective (regular electives usually have 20 sessions), and I think it was a very good experience. I was there in almost all the 10 sessions to observe and learn as much about handling an MBA class from my more experienced co-teachers and I did learn a lot, especially on the "song and dance" part (or in-class people and time management).

Good luck to the three groups and I hope you learned a lot from this mini-elective. :D

One of The Best

I'm proud to share that The AIM Blogger has been selected by GraduateDegree.org as one of the 100 Best Blogs for MBA Students.

This blog is in good company-- blogs from MBA students, alumni & faculty from Wharton, Columbia Business School, Kellogg, Harvard Business School, Fuqua, London Business School, Ivey, Chicago Booth, Stanford, and Sloan were included in the list.

I just feel honored that The AIM Blogger was recognized as one of the best all over the globe. :)

AIM Girls Got Game

Just a quick one: In a basketball clinic where I served as one of the assistant coaches a while ago, the girls team of KT Tan, Karen Bitagun, Laurice Alaan, Bhavisha Dave, Carmie Pacheco, and Clarence Lim beat the boys of the MBA Cohort 3 in the all of the shooting drills and games.

The girls and boys competed in free throw shooting, jump-shooting, lay-ups games and the AIM girls slammed the boys on all of the events. The basketball clinic was a walkabout project and it was held at the AIM parking lot.

Congrats girls! :D

Freedom and Responsibility

I've been visiting the newly-launched "AIM Bloggers Forum," an online forum for all Asian Institute of Management initiated by, according to them, students and alumni.

The forum's heart is in the right place-- it wants encourage feedback from the all the AIM stakeholders and elicit change in the institute. However, in my last visit, I've been quite disappointed with the quality of posts in the forum. As of this writing, almost half of the forum posts are placed in the threads pertaining to AIM rumors (which reads like a gossip column) and AIM faculty (which reads like a mud-slinging campaign).

I'm disappointed because of the lack of responsibility of the forum posters. Here are samples:

I will just fill in the blanks -- He is a xxxxxxx. To his future student, specially the girls out there, better weara skirt and a plunging neckline to class.

Yes he can teach but he better stop talking after class. Not a good role model especially with the way he talks to students after class. Ladies beware.

From the grapevine.. A lot of dorm room hanky-panky has been goin on lately. You might just bump-in to your roommate having sexytime.. opppsss... need i say more.. we are watching you

And there are more of course.

I know maintaining a community is hard, but the moderators should show more teeth. Perhaps they should set the expectations in their marketing communications that have been filling my inbox lately. (e.g., make sure the people know what are the expected behavior and feedback to condition future members). People who post in the forums have a great deal of freedom on what to write about any person, so I guess it's only appropriate to stack some responsibility into that.

If things continue as it is, the forum can kiss its ambition of being a change agent goodbye and just be a regular run-off-the-mill gossip forum.

Why AIM is Not Part of the 2009 Inter-MBA Games

Last year, the Asian Institute of Management participated in the Inter-MBA Games, a sports league composed of the arguably the business schools in the Philippines. I was part of the basketball team that competed in the friendly games and we finished a respectable third in the basketball tournament, and we finished third over-all in the competitions. Thanks to my classmate Mark Chan and then AIM Student Association (AIM SA) Chair Macoy Del Pilar, the Inter-MBA games was one of the accomplishments of the Sports Committee of the AIM SA Sports Committee that I headed.

A few weeks ago, a couple of current MBA students asked me if why there was no Inter-MBA Games this year. I wasn't able to give a straight answer, and I was equally wasn't sure if there were games this year or it may have been delayed. But to my surprise, I was wrong.

I dropped by the Ateneo Graduate School of Business for an alumni meeting (I finished my other master's there) a while ago and I saw posters placed in the corridors that were eliciting support for the AGSB sports teams in the 2009 Inter-MBA Games! I checked the schedules and I learned that the games started last month, one year since the 2008 games.

I immediately called Macoy Del Pilar since I knew he still had ties with the organizers of the Inter-MBA Games and I learned from him that the organizing committee of the 2009 games contacted the Student Services, Admissions & Registration (SSAR) and the AIM SA. However, no representative from AIM gave a formal reply of any sort and thus the league, which AIM was a founding member, moved on.

I had a quick chat with Ms. Mitzie Silvestre of the SSAR about this matter and she told me that the AIM SA decided not join the Inter-MBA Games this year because they wanted to come up with a better project. She said that the games included in the league (Basketball, Volleyball, Badminton, Bowling, Chess, and Billiards) were games that the current student body were not so much interested in. She also said that instead of joining the Inter-MBA Games, the AIM SA will come up a more diverse set of games (which includes Cricket) to cater to a wider set of AIM stakeholders (students, faculty, alumni, staff, etc.).

So there you have it: The reason AIM is not in the Inter-MBA Games.

Was it the right thing to do? You tell me.

Business and Ethics

I was reading the news (yeah, I read the news), and one line from a news story caught my eye:

You’re (an) AIM (Asian Institute of Management graduate). You’re a financial wizard. You used your financial wizardry and look at what happened?

That line was said by Senator Mar Roxas to Celso de los Angeles, Jr., an AIM alumnus who earned his MBM in 1976. The senator was asking Mr. de los Angeles about the latter's involvement in the financial shenanigans of  the Legacy Group, a local group of financial companies that closed down last December 2008. The senate is investigating de los Angeles and other Legacy Group officials for allegedly masterminding a financial scheme that left bank depositors and insurance policy-holders with the proverbial empty bag.

I couldn't help but think about this whole issue. I have little doubt that the training de los Angeles got from AIM helped him master the financial instruments to use money to make more money. But the part where he  used the Legacy Group's funds as his personal piggy bank? It was all de los Angeles.

I had a nice quick chat with Prof. Larry Tan about this news story and he said that ethics can't really be taught in business schools. Prof. Tan also opined AIM and other institutions can provide frameworks for decision-making, but it boils down to the individual for choosing his course of action, ethical or otherwise. I think that makes sense and I agree with him.

The news story centered on the victims of the financial scheme and how they lamented how their lifetime savings just dissipated, the hopeless they were feeling, and the ill-feeling toward de los Angeles. You really don't need an MBA to know that de los Angeles put himself in the situation he is in.

NUS MBA Students Visit AIM, Part 2

I'm posting more photos from the recent visit of MBA students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.

The photos are courtesy of NUS MBA student Ooi Aik Hwee and the photos were taken during the Inter-MBA student interaction activity.

The Day My Identity Got Stolen (Sort Of)

Yesterday, I was having a nice Sunday afternoon snack in Greenbelt 3 when a text message from my good friend Mae went to my inbox. Mae alerted me that someone was using my Plurk account on the AIM Library terminal and that person was not me. (For the uninitiated, Plurk is a micro-blogging tool similar to Twitter). I got worried when another text message came saying that the person was threatening to do nasty stuff with my account. (View the transcript of their Plurk chat here)

My initial thought was that my account was hacked because I was pretty sure that I only used Plurk on my personal notebook. I hurriedly went to the AIM Library (Greenbelt 3 is a 5 minute walk to the Asian Institute of Management) and I saw this young guy who was probably in his early 20's in front of a computer. Undoubtedly, he was using my account to post micro-blogs as I saw him from a unobstructed vantage point.

I immediately called his attention and asked him to log-off using the account. He explained that he was just meaning well when he posted a message to remind me that I should log-off next time I use Plurk on a public terminal (I hear the idea of me just using Plurk on my personal laptop crashing and burning in my mind). I told him that I understood his position, but I maintained that if he really wanted to help, he should have logged off after he saw the account was still logged in. Apparently, he posted messages and added himself to my "friends" list and this was the main issue my friend Mae had.

The guy and I had a rather heated discussion inside the library and thanks to the guy's dad (who happens to be an AIM alum) and the security personnel at that time, cooler heads prevailed. The guys and I eventually shook hands thanks to the mediation of calm folks.

I was still a bit riled up from the incident, but good thing I attended the 6pm mass at the Greenbelt Chapel. I was able to reflect on the events that just transpired and made some realizations:

• I should have remembered to log off my account (and remember when I use a public terminal). Had I logged off, the whole thing could have been avoided. (Yeah, I admit it was my negligence that spurred the whole thing)
• My friend Mae really was concerned about the security and sincerity issue-- if the guy was really genuinely concerned, he should have logged off immediately and should not have done anything with the account.
  
• The guy really meant well, it's just that he wanted the world to know of his good deed by posting. He probably wanted a pat on the back, but he got something else instead. He also should have known better than to "play god" with my account and threaten a friend.
  

I looked at the situation further and realized the the folks who were at odds (my friend and the guy) did have good intentions but ended up having a flame war on the web. I guess that's what you get when you have too many people with good intentions. :P In a way, I'm thankful that this was the only outcome. (Heck, it could have been MUCH worse).

So what's the takeaway from all this? ALWAYS remember to log-off in public terminals. I guess I took this for granted because I'm used to secure browsers when I browse the web. Also, it would be a good step for the Information and Communications Technology group of AIM to install more secure browsers (like Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome) on the library terminals.

Google Online Marketing Challenge

The students of the elective I'm co-teaching with Prof. Richard Cruz and Prof. Titos Ortigas are now set to take on the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global competition for higher education students that will use the Google AdWords platform to launch marketing campaigns. Teams of students will promote a company's website using the Google's advertising platform and the best campaign (based on a set criteria) will win the contest. The winners of the competition and their professor/lecturer will receive a trip to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. I think this is a very good exposure for MBA students to get practical experience in Internet Marketing.

We've spent the last seven weeks preparing for this competition and the teams will be running an internet campaign for three weeks. I think the three teams are ready to take their proponents' websites to the next level:

• The Sexy Chef Cafe 
• Baseball Philippines 
• Biofuels Hub 

Good luck to AIM's Google Online Marketing Challenge Teams!

Asian Institute of Management Unofficial Stakeholder Forum

A new forum for the AIM community has been launched and it's called the Asian Institute of Management Unofficial Stakeholder Forum.

I assume that it's an initiative by a student (for his/her walkabout perhaps?) and it has been getting some promotion in the AIM student mailing list and even a comment in this blog pointed to this new site.

This is a very good democratization of the voice of the students, since this is gives the students another venue to voice out their angst and frustrations. This is evidenced by the thread that has gotten the most number of posts: the one about the AIM faculty. (Read this thread and it reads like a character assassination dossier). Since the forum is an unmoderated one where anonymous folks can post stuff, you could imagine the "fun" this forum will have in the future when it focuses on controversial topics.

I like this forum because it frees up people to say really truthful (read: bad) things about people and the school. But for my personal policy in blogging here at The AIM Blogger, I've refrained from directly zinging or calling out people, even now that I've graduated, because I've wanted to maintain a certain level of quality, tone, and perspective to this blog. I've done my share of criticizing, but I've reveled in writing parables, stories, and veiled potshots in making my point, albeit indirectly. :P

My tip to the creators of the Asian Institute of Management Unofficial Stakeholder Forum: Be vigilant moderators in calling out the BS from posters and always think about sustainability.

UPDATE:

I joined this forum and I was able to talk to the forum administrator via private messaging. He/she pointed out that my assumption was not accurate. Said the forum admin:

This Forum is not a Walkabout project by AIM students.
The AIM Bloggers are a group composed of Alumni & Students who's identities will be kept anonymous in the meantime.

Interesting...

Plan B

Well its been building up inside of me
For oh I dont know how long
I dont know why
But I keep thinking
Something's bound to go wrong

- The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby"

It's March 2009. Two months after the MBA graduation, nothing much has changed since December 2008-- the world's economy is still in the dumps and the career opportunities seem to follow the trail down the drain.

Among the things I leaned while studying at the Asian Institute of Management is the value of making plans, after all, it's one of the main tasks of a manager. I drew up some some sketchy plans on what I'll be doing around this time, and I anticipated the economic situation somehow. I figured that opportunities will pickup sometime toward the end of the first quarter, but to my disdain, it's slower than expected. Much, much slower. Sometimes, it gets a little discouraging, even for someone of my optimism (or denial? :P).

But when things don't go according to plan, it's easy to sink to a funk and withdraw. But I guess I learned to suck it up and seek elsewhere when things aren't happening for me. (Right now, things are really NOT happening for me).

Better draft Plan B.