Warning - Humorless Post Ahead. Strictly for Those Interested in the Academic Pursuits

I thought a more extensive post about my actual learning would help counteract the assertions I’ve been getting from people that I’m on a 12 week vacation. Now if you wanted to argue Business School overall was a 18 month vacation from reality, I’d be hard pressed to put up much of a fight. And there’s no question that the 2^nd year of business school is far easier than the first. But that’s also because the sheer volume of work in the first year is crushing. 2^nd year you have more chance to work on things you actually care about, which makes the work more pleasurable and more in tune with your everyday life.

So, I’m been quite pleased with how my assignments and projects have laid out. So this report just for the people interested in my academic progress along with geographic tracking.

Of most interest is the import/export project I’m working on for the MBS Incubator and Start-Up Business Consulting Class. I mentioned the company, Martin Conquest in an earlier post so I won’t go on and on about it. But here’s a project that has potential to turn into a real consulting gig down the road.

In a similar ilk, my Entrepreneurship paper is all about comparing and contrasting funding options for SME’s in Asia, Europe and the U.S. This research is helpful for figuring out where one might find early or later stage capital.

Over in Strategic Retail, we’re building a Market Segmentation for the UK’s largest computer retailer, PC World. For obvious confidentiality reasons I can’t go into too much detail here, but it actually afforded me the chance to feel like a grownup again today. We booked a meeting with PC World’s research firm, which is based outside Oxford. So I threw on my little shirt and slacks, took the train down 3 hours to Oxford, had about 3 hours of meetings with my group, PC World and the Research Firm, and am now back on the train heading to Manchester. For seeing different parts of the country, train rides aren’t bad. So I didn’t mind the long commute. Plus it gave me a place to concentrate on things I had to do – like study for my exam, finish up the mBalmer and write meaningless blog entries.

I know I have another class….Oh yeah. Marketing in a High Tech Environment. Very interesting class taught by an old IBM exec. For that class I need to finish up the business plan I needed to write for our little idea, as well as the UW Biz Plan Comp. So it’s a good place for models and charts that help the plan come along. Also, we are working on a group project regarding Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop that he’s trying to get built for kids in the 3^rd world. It's a really interesting story, one of those market changing events if it works. If you want to read up on it, we’re putting our paper together from a blog at http://mmtle.blogspot.com so we can see what each person is working on. You won’t see a whole paper there but you’ll see some info and links we’ve collected and starting to pull together in paper form.

Plus, I don’t think I can understate the eye-opening experience of dealing 1:1 with people from 10-15 different countries. There was a debate on the UW MBA Mailing List the other day about how some first years felt the International Students “slowed them down” when doing group work. I had to laugh because it’s possible I had similar views last year, but this quarter every group I’m in has at least 3 different nationalities, and sometimes it’s 4 or 5. You’d think that would slow us down even more, but the reality is that back at UW, the International students aren’t the problem. It’s the U.S. students trying to force them into their structure and not asking how they’re used to doing projects. Anyway, I’m off on a soapbox and need to come back…

So that’s the Academic side to this little savings-account clearing adventure. This would turn into a great story and nice investment if the import/export thing turns interesting.

Ok – long boring blog all taken care of.