Love in the time of e-mail

[the age 30.09.2002]

Pertinent advice for an Aussie living so far away from home.

Clippings

Cameron's on again/off again venture, clippings is back on the air. As a well-travelled IT consultant, he has an interesting perspective on where things are headed, and why Australia is so different to the rest of the world when it comes to technology implementation.

Neglect

I've been neglecting the blog for the past week or so. I had three assignments due on the same day this week, so I was totally snowed under for the best part of four or five days. Things are a little better now, but I'm still annoyed that I seem to have no time to get out of town and see the rest of America. Two of the MBS exchangers here in New York have managed to get away this weekend. If I can manage my time well I might be able to follow suit next week.

BTW - subject reviews for Introduction to Venturing and Building and Managing Brands will be posted very soon.

Exposed: my life as a blog

The Australian ran an article a few days ago comparing the blog scene in Melbourne with that in Sydney. A few interesting quotes: ...

"Weblog culture seems to go deep; it is easy to find Melbourne weblogs with visual flair and good writing. None of this, of course, is obvious to an interstate visitor wandering along Swanston Street.

"Melbourne is very much a secret place," says Badger, who lives in East St Kilda.

"All our good bars and venues are hidden down scary, weird alleyways in places where the only sign is a projection on a wall opposite. We like discovering things, we don't want them to be too easy to get.

"So weblogs, and the anonymity they afford the writer, suit us and our dark, secret personalities – of course, this could well be just me."

Alas, I didn't receive a mention - probably because I've chosen not to take that anonymous route to the world of blogging.

Anniversary

It feels like a lot longer, but it's now a year to the day since I last did any paid work. On Sept 20th last year, I took my retrenchment package from Com Tech / Dimension Data after more than four years with the company. I was hoping Anthony (who took a retrenchment package just last week) would have posted his post-mortem essay by now, because I never really posted one in 2001.

Com Tech was a fantastic company with brilliant management and high aspirations. I truly admired its founder, David Shein, as a CEO, leader, and motivator. Unfortunately an international acquisition and a receeding economy caused major headaches for Com Tech. Hundreds of people have been laid off. Customers have left in droves, and the remaining staff, for the most part, do not have the same level of enthusiasm and loyalty that we all used to share together.

Add this one to your New York 'To Do' list - Arthur's Landing

I ventured out of New York state last for this first time since my arrival, to visit a restaurant called Arthur's Landing in New Jersey. I'll admit it's not very far out of New York state (7 minutes on the ferry), but that's America for you.

While enjoying a seafood platter, a delectable rack of lamb, good company and interesting conversation, I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the evening view of mid-town Manhattan from across the Hudson River. I'm not sure if it was the ferry trip or the company, but I was feeling very 'Sydney' all of a sudden. Perhaps I'm a little homesick.

(This was also my first opportunity to notice the gap in the skyline where the WTC used to be. I haven't visited Ground Zero yet, and to tell you the truth - I'm in no hurry to do so.)

New audience members

Readership of my blog has almost doubled in the past month. Two major reasons:

1. The MBS student community has become aware of the existence of the site, and
   
2. Soon-to-be-MBAs Tad and Martin have been sending new readers my way.
   

So, for everyone who is new to the site, I encourage you to read through the archives to get a feel for where I'm coming from. There's usually quite a bit of assumed knowledge when I make a post, so it's worthwhile getting up to speed. I try to post at least once every couple of days, but the MBA workload does get quite ridiculous at times, so hang in there if I occassionally 'disappear' for a week or so.

Life in New York

A few of you have been asking me to write about 'life' in New York, as well as just documenting the MBA student experience at Columbia. One must appreciate that 'life' as an MBA student is a very, very time consuming endeavour. A colleague of mine was commenting this week that, for him, the MBA is essentially lifestyle choice - instead of being paid to work 50 hours a week, we're paying to study closer to 80 hours a week and giving up virtually all our free time. Surviving the MBA requires skills in time management, prioritisation, and sacrifice - it's very difficult to find/make the time to do anything else ... but we try. In my both my first and second terms in Melbourne I found the time to travel interstate on three separate weekends. The Columbia MBA is definitely a notch higher in terms of intensity, but I am an exchange student after all and all I need to do here is pass my subjects (rather than striving for that magical mark of 80% which generates an H1 at MBS). In theory, I should relax a bit and ensure that I enjoy the New York experience.
So, what have I been up to since I arrived in New York three weeks ago? The short answer is: not as much as I was hoping to do. As far as the 'tourist' experience goes, I've revisited Times Square and the Guggenheim. I've attempted, on two occassions, to allocated a full afternoon to visit the Museum of Modern Art (temporarily located in Queens). I've caught up for dinner and a couple of beers at Washington Square with one of the MBS students studying at Stern. And I've been for the occassional walk/run in Central Park. In short - I'm not experiencing the tourist side of New York to the extent that I expected. It's amazing how much one can cram into a visit to a city when they've got the full day everyday available to them. I've had two short tourist visits to New York in the past, so I've been to most of the major museums, been to the observation decks at the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center (RIP), and taken the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. There are a few other 'typical' New York attractions that I'd like to visit, but they may have to wait until I'm either hosting visitors from out of town, or until I've finished my studies for the term. In the meantime, I'm definitely having the 'living' experience in New York, and I'll do my best to find the time to write about it.

The Seven Great Private Business Schools

On Thursday, I attended a forum held by Columbia Business School's dean, Professor Meyer Feldberg. He outlined the role that he plays within the school, how the school has improved during his tenure (1989 to present), and how Columbia interacts with and benchmarks against what he refers to as the 'seven self-appointed great private business schools.'

Regardless of the rankings that come out every year from Business Week, US News and World Report, and the Financial Times, the 'seven self-appointed great private business schools' (hereafter referred to as G7) remain the same group. These are the business schools that have stood the test of time. They have massive alumni networks, great locations, very impressive faculty, and receive upwards of 5000 applications each year.

When I did my MBA tour of the United States in 2000, my eventual shortlist for applications was Haas, Stanford, Kellogg, Harvard, Sloan, and Columbia. Guess what? 5 out of the 6 happen to part of the G7. Haas is public (it's part of the University of California, Berkeley), so it can never be a member of the G7. The other two members are Wharton and Chicago, which didn't appeal to me for various reasons that you can read about in my archives.

In general, the G7 b-schools have lasting appeal - they're the brand name schools. When one pays in excess of US$60,000 for an MBA at one of these schools, they're not just paying for the educational experience. They're buying a membership card into a prestiguous alumni network.

I received an email yesterday from 'Tad Holbie' who's currently going through the application process for his MBA. He's applying to seven different private b-schools in the USA. Can anyone guess which ones? ;-) You can read all about the applications process on his weblog (mbawire.blogspot.com).

Bull spread, bear spread, box spread, strangle, straddle, strip, strap

Believe it or not, these are all finance terms. More specifically, their trading strategies in the world of options. What's an option, you might ask - well, it's a contract which gives you the right to buy or sell an underlying asset (such as a share in a company or a commodity such as wheat) for a particular price at a particular point in time or over a particular period of time. Why should you care? Well, I'm taking a course at Columbia called Options Markets and I may be referring to it from time to time...

B8311 - Options Markets (Associate Professor Zhenyu Wang)

Zhenyu Wang uses the text Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives as the basis for his Options Markets course at Columbia Business School. In essence, my thinking is that this course will give me an opportunity to heavilly exercise my quantitative skills (we're talking calculus here ;-) and possibly give me a bit of an edge over my MBA colleagues in the application process for Investment Banks and other finance firms. It's also reasonably interesting - in the world of options trading there is always a winner and a loser for each trade, and you can make big money in options trading regardless of which direction the market is heading. Think a stock is about to plummet? No problem - buy a put option. Think a stock will rise a bit (but not a lot)? Try a bull spread to capture the small gain, but lower the cost by giving up the full upside potential. Of course, there is a downside to options trading - if any of your 'bets' are wrong, you could be seriously out of pocket.