The Games in pictures

Follow me on a trip through the MBA Olympics at HEC, just outside of Paris.

Click on the photo to see more pictures


Now, bed.

Go Team

A plug for the MBA classes to come. Go to the MBA Tournament (MBAT)! It's a great opportunity to take a few days out of our busy schedule and play sport with other MBA students from top Universities throughout Europe.

Forget what they say about MBAT being an opportunity to meet and network with other MBA students - primitive, tribal feelings surface very quickly and it becomes an opportunity to really bond with your classmates and do battle with LBS!

Here are a few tips for any of next year's class:

• Foosball is what they call babyfootat HEC
• Eat a big lunch, dinner is very late and sometime a little complicated
• We are closer in culture to Cambridge than any other team
• Many of the other teams take the games very seriously and turn up fully decked out in sponsered outfits for each sport
• LBS in particular takes it very very seriously!
• Make a real effort for the salsa competition, Oxford now has a rep to protect.
• Even if don't do well, if we beat Cambridge then we're happy
• HEC has free wireless internet access on their campus
• Invite HEC to the Media Summit and treat them very well, they determine which hotel we stay in...
• Do all your assignments before you get here, it's a killer if you are trying to work while here.

Many, many pictures to come, watch this space.

Off to MBAT...

... see you at the games in Paris!

53,651...

...is the number of geeks who subscribe to Techcrunch, a Silicon Valley techie site. According to a non-Valley VC, too many startups are targeting the same 53,651 people rather than looking at the mainstream users around the world.

I ♥ BBC

What a great company!

I think that my love affair with the BBC began when I first moved to the UK and discovered that there were not one, but two television channels with no ads on them. And the programming was pretty good, if sometimes inexplicable to a non-British person too.

It continued when earlier this year Richard Sambrook gave an inspiring talk on the future of media at the Oxford Media Conference January of this year.

Today in my Media class, we had a visitor from the BBC who spoke with us about the current debate going on about the future of the BBC. Every 10 years they have to go through a public consulting period in order to get their Charter renewed. The charter allows them to collect licence fees from the public which is then used to develop programming as a public service. Their plans are laid out in “Building Public Value” (warning it's 136 pages long).

A quote:

“The BBC, however, believes that the potential – and the need – for public value in broadcasting has never been greater. Creating a fully digital Britain is a public challenge which the BBC must help to lead.”

What I find interesting about this particular public broadcasting service is that it is funded by the people through but not by the government. It exists to serve the public, yet in order to do so, it must remain independent and impartial in order to critique whatever political party is in power. It must be representative of the population, whatever it currently is and in so doing gives visibility and voice to minorities which would not normally have been heard. It is the ultimate social organisation however it exists in an increasingly market led environment.

Nice.

Exeter College

So, yesterday I took some time off from my Business in China report to visit Exeter Chapel for Evensong with some friends from the course. It was a beautiful chapel and the choir sang like angels. I can't belive that I've only got a few more weeks to enjoy the benefits of coming of Oxford. You can't go back in time, and I certainly have had a great time here, but it does feel like there is still loads to be done.


Afterwards, we went for a walk in the Exeter grounds which is ajacent to the Bodleian library and overlooks the Radcliffe Camera and reminisced about the last year. Exeter also has one of the most beautiful dining rooms and they are very generous with their meals as we discovered at dinner a little later.


A lovely evening. And we still managed to get the assignment in on time :-)

Mela

Last night we celebrated a night of Indian culture and experiences at the business school. This has become an annual event and is one of the big student led events along with the Chinese New Year and the upcoming Sylvester Awards.

It is an opportunity to demystify the Indian culture, learn a bit about modern India as well as allows us all to dress up in beautiful outfits and eat yummy food. Some have more fun than others...


Afterwards, sitting in the common room with some friends and looking out on the sea of faces all chatting and swigging on the free Cobra beer, it struck me again how fortunate I was right now to be surrounded by the world. My class is a live demonstration of how people from all over the world can live and work together and achieve great things.

I was chatting a guy I met the other day at one of the recent media events who has come along to a few more events since and he said that he can literally feel the energy in the air at the business school. We've created an atmosphere where people value the diversity around us and have found ways to work with each other and produce superior results. It sounds a little happy-clappy but it does mean that when we leave this place, we have the confidence that regardless of race and culture, we can find a way to work together. A valuable insight.

Sit beside me
I'm at N18 R26 C44

India Night Preparations

Despite not having a drop of Indian blood in me (that I know of), I have somehow found myself as one of the models in the India night celebrations taking place at the Business School on Friday night.

I shall be wearing a brilliant blue shalwar with gold trim and a lot of jewelery (not shown in the picture). I have to walk on stage, do a twirl, smile and walk off, all to some modern Indian music. Should be a fun evening :)

2nd Media Summit

Yesderday, Saïd hosted it's second annual International Media & Communications Summit and MBA students from all around the world congregated to watch a film, hear speakers and participate in master classes.

The keynote speaker in the morning was George Osborne, Conservative MP and Shadow Chancellor. Among other things, he spoke about the conflicts involved in the protection of IP on the internet and the need to have a light touch with respect to regulation.

The day continued and we broke up into with Masterclasses. I went to two:

• Buddy Ye, founder of WangYou media which is a Chinese media and entertainment company.
• Junghoon Kim, Professor at Keio University, Japan

Both were facinating, and brought sharply into focus the fact that so much in the internet and new media space is happening in East Asia that we in the West don't have any idea about. In particular, it was interesting to learn that in Japan, the entire city has access to fiber optic broadband internet with speads of up to 100mbps. This infrastructure provides the foundation for new media innovation in that country.

It was also sobering to discover that the same problem of finding the Business Model which allows money to be made from the internet has also been eluding our Eastern compatriots.

MBA Students
The best bit however, was meeting students from other top European business schools and just hanging out.

After a dinner in the beautiful Exeter dining hall we all retired to The Turf where we enjoyed a pint and a chat. Many of them will be along to the MBA Olympics (MBAT) at HEC next week so it was good to meet up and get to know them beforehand.

More later.

Watch out California!

Yahoo! SCP
As the penultimate segment of our course, we all get into groups of four for our summer consulting project (SCP) at a company. It's a fairly competitive process however yesterday we (Vencat, Debanjan, David and I) discovered that of the three teams who submitted a brief, we were selected for the Yahoo! SCP. I'm so excited! I look at my last post and then this opportunity materialises which is exactly what I wanted to do, going to California is just an added bonus.

As well as doing a fabulous job at Yahoo! David and I plan to hit the bar-b-que circuit in the Bay area. So if you're having a party in July and August, drop us a line, we'd love to meet up.

So psyched!

Results
To top it all off, we got our results from last term and I'm happy to report good news on all fronts again. Phew! Now to concentrate on my Trinity subjects.

My path

I've been doing some thinking over the last couple of days about the future and what I'd like to do. On Wednesday, Alan Giles, CEO of HMV spoke to us in our "Media Strategy, Management and Regulations" class - a very good lecture I thought. Then on Thursday, Thomas Hesse, head of Sony BMG spoke with us. Yesterday we had the Oxford & Cambridge recruitment fair and this weekend is the Media Conference at the Business School.


You know what I really want to do?

The internet is a fascinating evolution of technology and communication which has exploded in front of our eyes. Ok, so I may have been one of the first people in Jamaica on the internet 14 years ago but for many people, and particularly companies it's still a fairly new, scary thing.

I want to help a company or companies to embrace and gain a competitive advantage through incorporating insights gained from the internet. The rise of blogs, the shift of the habits of many people to search for information online, the convergence of communications technology and the imminent (and painful and soon to be more so) realignment of the role of content providers is creating tremendous opportunities for companies which many are not seeing.

I want to help. And catapult the firms into the new stratosphere while doing so. Now to find the right company or consultancy, and convince them that this is a valuable thing to do and that I'm the right person to do it with them. Hmmm... easier said than done!

Next Thursday, the Science and Technology OBN has arranged a "Geeks and Grapes" evening where Oxford internet techies mix with business school entrepreneurs and we'll see what happens.

A wee goal

** WARNING: This post may gross you out a bit **

Now that football season has started again (I know this because my male friends have told me, not because I have any interest in football), it's also the time for the entrepreneural juices to start flowing.

A friend of mine from the business school has started a company which is selling, wait for it, a urinal entertainment system called Wee Goal. I think you can imagine the purpose of the game, if not, then have a look at the website and maybe buy one or two.

Happy Birthday Saïd

This year, the Saïd Business School celebrates its 10th anniversary. Yep, that's right, the school is only 10 years old but how it has grown. Here are some intersting facts that you probably didn't know.

• Students in the first year had classes in the Radcliffe Infirmary, students passed patients in the hallway on their way to learn about business.
• The site on which the current business school was built used to be the home of the Oxford Rewley Road railway station. This station was taken down gently and transported to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre where model railway enthuasts can enjoy the architecture of this old building
• The mound in the garden of the business school is the visible part of an archieogical of the ancient abbey, Rewley Abbey where Cistercian monks once studied back in the 13th century. The business school is not allowed to build there so instead we have a beautifully landscaped garden where we can play croquet in the summer. Lovely.

Last night, I attended the reunion dinner as a representative of the current class. It was a little weird to be dressed in a posh frock and have a three course dinner at tables in the Common Room which had been the location of the roudy South America night at Happy Hour the night before. But it was great to meet some of the students from the class of 1996 and hear their stories and to speculate with some of the others from my class, what we will be like when we come back for our 10 year anniversary.

Well done SBS, I hope that your next 10 years are a successful as your last ones.

The Oxford Moment

On a completely different train of thought, I have been published! Early on in Hilary, I recieved a mass e-mail inviting any Oxford student to submit photos which represent their Oxford experience to be made into a book and the proceeds given to a number of Charities. So I did. And it got selected to go into the book!


No, it's not this photo, this is just a teaser. The book, Our Oxford, may be pre-ordered on the site and will contain a photo of my friend Kate at our St. Hugh's matriculation. The photo is imaginately titled "Matriculation photo", hmmm...

Capture the Oxford Moment is a book of photographs of Oxford University life and Oxford University traditions - photographs taken exclusively by students. No other book featuring Oxford has ever been composed solely of photographs taken by students.

All profits from sales of the book will go directly to five Oxford charities with a small portion sent back into a printing fund for further copies:

Exeter College Vacation Project - taking underprivileged kids on country holiday
The Gatehouse - a drop-in shelter
Jacari - English tutoring for immigrant children
Oxford Adaptive Rowing Club - rowing for people with disabilities
Emilie's Charities - support for children's programmes in developing countries

All good causes in my opinion, so a good reason to get it, otherwise, at least one of the photos in the book is fantastic and worth the expense!

Skype me

Ok, so I know that this isn't particularly recent news but after listening to Saul Klein, the Marketing Directory at Skype speak tonight, I went home and thought about how this technology has really changed my life.

Coming from Jamaica, and having parents who still live there, I used to speak with them on the phone once a month, and my phone bill for that call alone used to be around £30. Jamaica isn't exactly the centre of the world so the per minute cost is quite high. But you have to stay in touch with family, so I paid up.

Now, my parents have installed Skype on their computer and I have gone from speaking with them once a month to two or three times a week. It really means a lot to me to be able to talk with them whenever I want without worrying about the price.

From his talk today, Skype have come a long way and they have some very interesting plans for the future. It is a company which is operating in exactly the space that I'm interested in. I think I'll apply.

Entrepreneurs everywhere

Every once in a while at this business school, you really get a feel for what they mean when they say that the MBA program has an entrepreneural focus. Take today for example:

Hiring and being hired in a startup
This lunchtime, I went to a talk by Rod Cook, a local HR consultant who works for a number of small startup companies as their HR department. He spoke with us about the importance of getting a good team together when you start a new company. He also reinforced what we have been hearing which is, the most frequent way that one gets hired by a startup is through networking.

So you're a startup, what now?
In my Entrepreneurship and Technology Ventures class this afternoon, we had a guest speaker in, Hakker Overli (right) of Active Health Partners, came in to give us a view into starting up and growing a successful business in the UK.

What happens when you make it big?
As if that wasn't enough, in the evening I attended a lecture by Thor Bjorgolfsson, the Icelandic billionare who is not yet 40. What an amazing man. The key to his success is to "spot the trends", "take a risk" and "surround yourself with hard headed people, like yourself".


I asked him "what was your biggest failure and what did you learn from it" and he was stumped. I'm not sure that failure is even in his dictonary :) He said that he has little failures every day but he tries to learn from everything that happens and take it to the next endeavour. You know what, I believed him. I think that when something goes wrong, like the Summer of 98 in Russia and the Equity that he had sorted from the bank fell through when the Russian Government had their crisis, he didn't see a failure, just a small setback and an opportunity.

I'd like to work for him.

It could be you next
I look around at my classmates, some of whom have already started companies, others who will go on to do so, and still others who will join those companies and make them big. This year out is a break, a reprise from the work which distracts and an opportunity to focus and think about the rest of our life. Who will be the next Thor Bjorngolfsson? It could be any one of us.

Carbon footprint

With Oil and Energy being *hot topics* in business and at the Business School, it is interesting to get a view of what your personal "carbon footprint" looks like.

BP have got a nifty little tool which gives you a quick snapshot of where you are. Check yourself using their "Carbon footprint calculator".

My Avatar

See what I look like in Cyperspace...


Get your own here from Yahoo!

The cycle of life

So, I've taken a little break from writing my blog. Not for any particular reason, I'm not too busy, interesting stuff has been happening and I have a few half written pieces, I just haven't posted any of them. Perhaps it is because I think that I finally realise that I have an audience in my blog. You are reading this. Why?

I've been very honest in my posts in the past and it occurs to me that perhaps it is wise to be careful about what I post. So I started to think about it, maybe a little too much, and my writing began to turn from the spontaneous outpouring of my thoughts and feelings, to this structured piece of literature which lost some of its essence.

Sack it.

C. A. R.
It all started last Tuesday when I went to hear the former prime minister of the Central African Republic speak at the Oxford University Strategic Studies Society meeting. I have made the concious decision to go along to more non-business school events happening at the University this term and I hope that this was the first of many. HE Martin Ziguele was a well spoken, well educated African man who spoke about the percieved injusticies which have taken place around the democratic process in his country and the lack of media attention that the country has had from the rest of the world.

"No one even knows who we are"

he says, as he calls for greater international involvement and help for a country which is slipping further and further into chaos and ruin.

Chatham House Rule
We then had a lively discussion about the country and the international response under the Chatham House Rule. I wasn't quite sure exactly what it meant however when I looked it up, it really made me think... it states:

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed"

Interesting, you could look at the pros and cons of such a rule - it provides information for the "haves" and enables them to succeed in ways that is not accessible to others or it is a useful tool which encourages the free debate of an idea without the fear of it coming back to bite you at a later date.

Week 1
is over, and I still cannot believe that I am in my final term of classes here. We keep speaking about it, commenting that we've only just started, how can it be that it will soon be over? I won't be the only person who will be sad to part ways with such a great bunch of incredible people. One thing is sure, when we leave this place, everyone on the course will go on to great things.

May Day
I completely missed this great Oxford tradition. I heard it was pretty cool though. Hey ho.