Contemporary signage

Never too early to get a jump on the punchline.

February 26th, 2006

Technology can be an unexpected surprise

I’m a technophile within reason. I consider myself part early adopter, part pragmatist; I might rave about some new gadget, but the checking account usually doesn’t agree. So while I don’t surround myself with the latest and greatest, I try to take advantage of what I’ve got right now. Sometimes by accident.

Case in point: my car broke down last week. Heading back home during rush hour, on a very busy commute (there was a major accident bringing traffic to a standstill). That quickly sucked; I ended up having to pull over in a real hurry. When I was finally on the side of the road, I spent a few minutes making sense of it all. I even popped the hood (as if I expect to see what the problem is…I don’t even know what the heck I’m looking at). Eventually, I realized I was going to have to call a tow truck driver — which I do — at which point he tells me he’ll be there in “a few minutes.” Hearing that, and seeing the bumper-to-bumper traffic still around me, I expected to be there for a while.

I began to settle in by fidgeting with the radio, trying to find a station worth tuning into. A few seconds passed before I realized something: my phone has email and a browser…why not hop online for a while? As it turns out, my phone plan has a pretty fast internet connection, and it offers unlimited data usage. Still, I’ve only really been on the mobile internet when it was absolutely critical, and almost never for casual surfing (I’ve been burned by data plans before). Yet here I was, asking myself for permission to surf the web.

I immediately key in Google Personalized, my news reader of choice. I have it set to pull in articles from a dozen sites, and I hadn’t checked it that day. Bingo! Instant time-killer. For the next hour and a half, I was catching up on articles from 37signals, Guy Kawasaki, GMSV, Mike Davidson, Digg, Reddit, you name it. When I got bored, I checked my IMAP mail and even squeezed in a round of Solitaire. By the time the tow truck driver arrived (1 hour and 45 minutes later), I was in the middle of Digg’s page 3. I could have easily kept reading.

To me, it’s just amazing the source of these diversions came from a device that, in retrospect, was only expected to handle Palm-type functions when I bought it.

February 22nd, 2006

Recapping the MIT Young Alumni Seminar

The MIT Young Alumni Seminar went off without a hitch last Thursday. Lots of excellent speakers there, each of them focusing on their interaction with entrepreneurship.

The take-home points, delivered from the Shoreline Grill in Austin, Texas:

• You can be an entrepreneur in a large corporation — it’s only a function of your determination and effort.
• You must be willing to take risks. If you’re not hanging on the ledge, financially or career-wise, you’re not trying hard enough. The dot-com executives came from cush corporate gigs to cush salaries at a startup. Where’s the risk?
• The market dictates the success or failure of your product, not its sexiness or coolness. (keep in mind the audience here)
• Keep your operations efficient. Hold down overhead costs and pass the savings on to your customers.

There were two additional speakers at the event, in addition to Abha Divine and Norman Schumaker: Brian Hughes (Chairman and VP of Product Development, HBN Shoe) and Michael Davis (Founder and President of Davis Law Group, which specializes in IP). I didn’t realize it until I got home, but Mr. Davis was one of the judges for the most recent Moot Corp competition – an event that I attended. Small world!

It was really nice to meet a lot of the fellow attendees. Manay were interested in networking with fellow students, while others were looking to getting involved with the MIT Alumni Association. I even met one who was in the full-time program at McCombs.

The big-name speakers were key — their presence (and not surprisingly, the event’s price tag) really brought out the best of Austin. It’s a pleasure to be lumped in with that crowd!

February 16th, 2006

Best Films Never Made

The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Were Never Made

I’m not a fan of sci-fi any more than other genres, but it got me thinking of all the lost opportunities here. Great ideas, lousy execution. Kind of like Paul Graham’s theory on the value of ideas in startups — that they’re basically worthless.

Couple notes:

• I vividly remember watching the Aliens 3 trailer in high school, the one that announced the whole “earth” angle. Then, when I actually went to go see it, I was crushed to discover the story took place on some random planet that nobody cared about. Some advance notice would have been nice! I’m really glad somebody called the studio on that trailer.
• I need to put Shawn of the Dead on my Netflix queue.
• I watched RoboCop on HBO a few months ago, the first time I caught the uncensored version in probably a decade. If you haven’t seen it recently, go watch it again. Not only is the vision of the future so tied into 80’s pop culture, but the blatant f-bombing and needless violence is nothing short of hilarious. Plus, I still get a chuckle seeing Boddicker, the vicious gang leader in New Chicago Detroit, now playing the dad from That 70’s Show.

February 15th, 2006

ENHANCE Program at McCombs

I am quickly finding that attending a business school in the evening has its pros and cons when it comes to applying the lessons we learn.

On the pro side, you take classes during the evening, and go to work during the day. That means the stuff you learn in class the day before can be put to use immediately, and even brought back into the classroom for further discussion. This happens all the time in my classes. Contract that to the full-time program, where the application of a lesson in the “real world” has to wait until after classes are done, long after the professor and classmates have moved on to other subjects. The collaborative learning in the evening program (and for that matter, any executive program) really shines in this area.

Of course, there are the cons. With the evening program, you don’t have summers off. Not only are you still working full-time, but you’re also attending class. That means that some staples of the full-time program, like summer internships, are out of the realm of possibility. That’s a real shame too, since the internship can serve at a stepping stone in terms of experience and networking in the areas you want to pursue after school.

The good folks at the Texas Evening MBA Program at McCombs, however, have realized this imbalance, and have stepped forward to correct it. I’m sure the press release will shortly follow, but allow me to steal their thunder…

The McCombs School of Business is now offering a new summer consulting program called ENHANCE. ENHANCE is an 8-week consulting arrangement delivered by a team of 4-7 Working Professional MBA’s from the McCombs School of Business. Here’s how it works:

• Companies provide a project description to the program based on an existing business challenge.
• Student teams select projects that match their professional goals, with the expectation of spending 80-90 hours on the project over the eight weeks.
• Progress is reviewed by McCombs Executive Education staff halfway through the period to ensure the teams are on track. Advice and direction are also given to help ensure companies’ expectations match the project’s final deliverables.
• Students continue their normal summer session class workload while involved in the program.
• At the end of the 8 weeks, a presentation of the deliverables is given to the company.
• Best of all, it’s FREE.

There are, of course, certain guidelines that should be followed. You can download the full details of the ENHANCE program here (PDF).

It’s important to note that this is very different from an internship. While the man-hours appear to be equivalent (instead of one student working 300-400 hours, you have several students working 80-90 hours), the nature of the collaboration dictates that the project scope be defined at the outset. The resulting effort is the equivalent of 2 weeks of full-time work, so exposure to a tangible and immediate business issue is key.

As far as geography is concerned, companies located in Texas are definitely preferred (Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, etc), but the program is open to any company that is willing to work with the limitations of travel on the students’ schedules.

I’m definitely excited about the new program, as are a lot of other executive students. It gives the students and companies a chance to try each other out for eight weeks, and see if they like each other. Companies get free consulting, which is always good. If nothing else, everyone benefits from the networking opportunity that the business/education collaboration provides. Check it out if you’re interested!

February 9th, 2006

A tale of two teevees

Old TV, New TV
Originally uploaded by rubenmiranda.

My friend Eagle recently decided to upgrade one of the TV’s in his house. He offered Teresa and I the old TV (a 36-incher) on the condition that I come by and pick it up. Free stuff is cool!

Well, after some hellacious lifting to get it up the first flight of stairs (with help from a neighbor), we managed to swap it out in place of our old 25″ living room TV. Here’s the new TV, with the old one in the foreground. Not. Even. Close.

The sucker was incredibly heavy. Eagle says it’s listed at 85 pounds, but we pegged it closer to 200. Probably because it uses the old CRT technology. One thing’s for sure — we won’t be lifting that behemoth again. If we have to pay the movers a premium to move it, so be it.

I think we’re all set for the Super Bowl. Thanks again Eagle!

February 4th, 2006