The Musing Mill

Here’s what we did in class at BU this week;

Marketing 723 - Targeting and positioning. Techsonic case analysis, VW New Beetle case analysis.
Statistics 716 - More on normal distributions. Time series data analysis. Simpson Pharma case.
Accounting 710 - More key ratios, inventory accounting, FIFO and LIFO effects on reporting.
Finance 723 - More NPV calculations, calculating annuities, evaluating long-term cash flows.
Org Behavior 713 - Organizational change. Telemachus case roleplay.
Presentation Skills 700 - Message structure, strategies for openings.

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Last week was definitely more in-the-groove. I’ve gotten the drive time down to 30 minutes each way. That helps. We’re in a rhythm with the MBA-family balance. The kids have gotten used to it. I see them in the mornings, a couple nights for dinner and then weekends.

I’ve been enjoying the hard skills classes more. They are filling in gaps in my accounting, finance and marketing knowlege areas that I was uncomfortable with. These professors are top notch. The softer Org Behavior stuff is leaving me flat. In truth, the Autodesk Leadership Program (ALP) is much better, meaning more effective.

I’m going to bring this up with the faculty and see if OB can be improved for future classes. The second year students made big improvements for us, and it shows. Each class needs to improve the BU experience IMHO.

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The MBA is definitely fun and a much needed change from working for a living. Right now I am partying like a 25 year old again, as you can see from the picture (I didn’t know Vincent was behind me). That won’t last. I will need to start working again in a couple months, so I’m relishing it right now. First mid-term exam next week.

I’m starting to get more excercise than I have in a long time. It feels great. This coming week I’m playing tennis and also have flag football practice. Ahhh - the college life again.

Meanwhile, my Mom is helping out with the kids, so Susan is able to also take an excercise class and start practicing with a choir. She’s wanted to do that for a long time. Life is good.

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To the left is Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 US gold-medal olympic hockey team, a BU grad, a member of the BU Sports Hall of Fame. I’ll get to him in a minute. But first, a bit about the first week of the MBA…

I’d characterize the first week at BU as mild hazing. They want to induce some stress to make you perform with your new team. So there are classes until 9 at night, assignments every day, class all day Saturday, etc. I refuse to freak out about such things, but some of my classmates are buying it.

I’m starting to realize what a difference the age gap (I’m about 10 years older than most there) is going to make. On Saturday we saw a documentary film about the 1980 US olympic hockey team to analyze the leadership style of its coach, Herb Brooks. Brooks is a deity in Minnesota, the other hockey powerhouse in the US (BU is, of course, the first).

The film showed the US team’s win over the Soviets and the effect it had on the morale of the country given the political climate at the time (Carter, hostage crisis, gas lines, etc). Eruzione had scored the winning goal and was the emotional magnet, accepting the medal. I had been 14 when this happened and remembered it well.

It was a bit of a culture shock to realize that only a few other people in the class remembered this event. We’re talking GRAD students here, not college undergrads. That means they also don’t generally remember Reagan or the Columbia space shuttle disaster.

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For those of you meeting me at BU, here’s a campus map. The SMG Building (School of Management) is near Kenmore square. It’s building number 37 on the map. To orient you - the big blue thing is the Charles River.

The favorite hangout during orientation appears to be Cornwalls. It’s a bar located at the top of the T-stop steps on the north side of Kenmore Square. There are also a huge number of, er, “reputable establishments” two blocks up around Fenway Park.

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If you’re a student (like me ) then here’s [what looks like] a good link to find academic software…including Revit and Revit Series.

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O’Reilly [love those guys] had an interesting article on a better way to develop web applications.

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I covet these. I’ll have to figure out a way to work them into a design.

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Sometime, when you need some entertainment, type “.NET” in as a search term in Google images and see what you get. Page through it to get to the more interesting stuff. (Hint: I was looking for a logo - when you get to the violin images p6-7, let me know)

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Tonight was the first social for incoming MBA students at Boston University. It was a pretty fun group, mostly attended by entering students living in New England, and exiting students looking for free food and drinks Some people came from as far away as the UK and Taiwan.

The entering class (about 150) will be of pretty diverse backgrounds - I can’t wait to meet them all. To get a feel for the atmosphere, you can look at MSMBA.net, an unoffical forum posted by the MBA class to keep eveybody in the loop.

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