MBET Blog
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Answers Deux
Hello again.
So, the other question. Before I answer, let me tell you a bit about my own situation which may (or may not) be repetitive. I'm 33, married with 2 kids who are 4 and 6 years old. Technically speaking, I live in Toronto. Practically speaking, I'm there on weekends and spend the week in Waterloo. My 10-year undergrad reunion is this summer. But I didn't find it that hard to come back... maybe I'm just a weenie for school but structured education hasn't changed much in ten years. Hell, it hasn't changed much since 1850. School is so wonderfully structured compared to the real world. There was an interesting piece in the weekend's Globe and Mail...
The aforementioned Dr. Scheele is the author of The "Good" Student Trap which I've never read, but the excerpt sounds interesting.
Anyway, school is a big game. The rules are actually simple - do what people (professors) ask for, no more, no less. Be somewhat creative, but not too much so. There is little intellectual brainpower available to devote just to marking your paper. Ask for help and clarification whenever possible. Professors don't want you to fail, they want you to learn.
This is, of course, in stark contrast to the "real world" where your competitors and a small number of your cow-orkers do, in fact, want you to fail.
So, if you've been out of school, I wouldn't worry about coming back much. But on to the questions from "Anonymous":
Heavens, yes! This is a major focus of the program! We've had speakers and met people from more companies than I can remember. I'd have to check my notes to list them all. Plus people from Toronto, a couple of people from the US, venture capitalists - the networking opportunities are numerous.
So far, no, but we still have a couple of months to go. I think it will help my chances of getting a job, but no more or less than any advanced degree would. The program has certainly provided a lot of incredible networking opportunities and helped me to see how I can use my own professional network more effectively.
Definitely. The people working on practicum projects of their own creation have done a lot and come up with some serious business plans. They're building real enterprises. Now, real enterprises have a failure rate around 80% so chances are that they won't all succeed. But I'd bet that the MBET failure rate will be a heck of a lot lower than the average.
Is it common? Well, the faculty and staff aren't allowed to talk about other people's records, admissions, etc for privacy reasons. And probationary admittance doesn't often pop up as a topic of conversation. But you did in fact ask the right person - I was admitted probationarily (if such a word exists) and know at least one other person in class in the same situation.
If you apply yourself to the program it will not be hard to get 75%. You would have to be lazy, stupid or both to not keep up a 75% average. In grad school you're expected to keep about an A average. My wife did her Master's in Religion at the University of Toronto and her description of their marking scheme was (to paraphrase), "If you get a B it's their way of telling you to re-write the whole paper because you don't know anything." I, personally, have not had a problem maintaining the required average and I don't think anyone else has either.
So, anonymous, good luck! I think you'll be able to navigate the tricky waters of balancing school and home life in the MBET program. Actually, if your child feeds himself more than 20% of the time you have it pretty damn easy in my book. And does he (or she) eat anything but peanut butter? If so, I again have no sympathy for you. As for the school part I think you'll find that 10 years of experience does indeed count for something and that you'll have a lot to contribute to the class.
Hello again.
So, the other question. Before I answer, let me tell you a bit about my own situation which may (or may not) be repetitive. I'm 33, married with 2 kids who are 4 and 6 years old. Technically speaking, I live in Toronto. Practically speaking, I'm there on weekends and spend the week in Waterloo. My 10-year undergrad reunion is this summer. But I didn't find it that hard to come back... maybe I'm just a weenie for school but structured education hasn't changed much in ten years. Hell, it hasn't changed much since 1850. School is so wonderfully structured compared to the real world. There was an interesting piece in the weekend's Globe and Mail...
School puts children in unnatural groups of a single age and then teaches them to be obedient. It tends to reward students who give teachers precisely what they ask for. Frequently, assignments are so specific that if a student gives more than what's asked for, the teacher takes marks off.
Many teachers even spell out exactly how to get bonus marks, Dr. Scheele noted. Students never have to do things over or make them better. And at the end, they are automatically promoted to the next grade. It kills creativity and the child's ability to figure out a true calling later on.
The aforementioned Dr. Scheele is the author of The "Good" Student Trap which I've never read, but the excerpt sounds interesting.
Anyway, school is a big game. The rules are actually simple - do what people (professors) ask for, no more, no less. Be somewhat creative, but not too much so. There is little intellectual brainpower available to devote just to marking your paper. Ask for help and clarification whenever possible. Professors don't want you to fail, they want you to learn.
This is, of course, in stark contrast to the "real world" where your competitors and a small number of your cow-orkers do, in fact, want you to fail.
So, if you've been out of school, I wouldn't worry about coming back much. But on to the questions from "Anonymous":
1. Does the program allow you to create a strong networking with companies in the area?.
Heavens, yes! This is a major focus of the program! We've had speakers and met people from more companies than I can remember. I'd have to check my notes to list them all. Plus people from Toronto, a couple of people from the US, venture capitalists - the networking opportunities are numerous.
2. Have the program allowed you to find a job?.
So far, no, but we still have a couple of months to go. I think it will help my chances of getting a job, but no more or less than any advanced degree would. The program has certainly provided a lot of incredible networking opportunities and helped me to see how I can use my own professional network more effectively.
3. Have the program allowed you to develop a concept or idea thus far?.
Definitely. The people working on practicum projects of their own creation have done a lot and come up with some serious business plans. They're building real enterprises. Now, real enterprises have a failure rate around 80% so chances are that they won't all succeed. But I'd bet that the MBET failure rate will be a heck of a lot lower than the average.
4. Since your point of view, is the mark of 75% feasible?.
5. Have you heard that someone else had been admitted as a probationary student in the program by CBET?. Is it a common practice from the department?.
Is it common? Well, the faculty and staff aren't allowed to talk about other people's records, admissions, etc for privacy reasons. And probationary admittance doesn't often pop up as a topic of conversation. But you did in fact ask the right person - I was admitted probationarily (if such a word exists) and know at least one other person in class in the same situation.
If you apply yourself to the program it will not be hard to get 75%. You would have to be lazy, stupid or both to not keep up a 75% average. In grad school you're expected to keep about an A average. My wife did her Master's in Religion at the University of Toronto and her description of their marking scheme was (to paraphrase), "If you get a B it's their way of telling you to re-write the whole paper because you don't know anything." I, personally, have not had a problem maintaining the required average and I don't think anyone else has either.
So, anonymous, good luck! I think you'll be able to navigate the tricky waters of balancing school and home life in the MBET program. Actually, if your child feeds himself more than 20% of the time you have it pretty damn easy in my book. And does he (or she) eat anything but peanut butter? If so, I again have no sympathy for you. As for the school part I think you'll find that 10 years of experience does indeed count for something and that you'll have a lot to contribute to the class.
Friday, May 28, 2004
Answers Revealed
Wow! Two replies from future MBET students. Excellent.
First, from Khurram:
Well the program is definitely presented in a Canadian context. There's a law class and it covers primarily Canadian law. Now, intellectual property law is fairly similar the world over so there is some general stuff to be learned. The specifics of some classes (law, tax) are definitely Canadian though. Most of the knowledge is applicable anywhere I think. There current class is over one-third international students coming from places like India, Phillipines, Mexico, Uganda and China and they all seem pretty happy with what's being covered.
Pretty much. Again, things like tax, accounting and law are general subjects but subjects like e-business are focussed on tech companies. This degree will probably not get you a job in investment banking. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing.
Well, yes and no. Personally, I spent the summer before the program began hanging out with my wife and kids. You'll be pretty busy all year long so clear up all those loose ends in your life before things begin. Get your loans all sorted out if you need them and do that project you need to finish up because you won't have much spare time while you're here. You'll have some time - it's not unbearable - but expect to be busy.
I hope you have a great time in the program! I think you'll enjoy the campus, the city of Waterloo and all the friendly people on campus. If you're coming from Africa remember that winter in Waterloo can be cold, so buy a good pair of boots in the fall before you need them.
Wow! Two replies from future MBET students. Excellent.
First, from Khurram:
Is MBET more inclined towards entrepreneurship in Canada or can I maybe use the knowledge to start a company in Africa? Hope you get my drift!
Well the program is definitely presented in a Canadian context. There's a law class and it covers primarily Canadian law. Now, intellectual property law is fairly similar the world over so there is some general stuff to be learned. The specifics of some classes (law, tax) are definitely Canadian though. Most of the knowledge is applicable anywhere I think. There current class is over one-third international students coming from places like India, Phillipines, Mexico, Uganda and China and they all seem pretty happy with what's being covered.
Also is the focus completely on Technology based companies?
Pretty much. Again, things like tax, accounting and law are general subjects but subjects like e-business are focussed on tech companies. This degree will probably not get you a job in investment banking. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing.
Is there any particular skill I need to sharpen before I join the program? Is there anything I could do to be better prepared for it?
Well, yes and no. Personally, I spent the summer before the program began hanging out with my wife and kids. You'll be pretty busy all year long so clear up all those loose ends in your life before things begin. Get your loans all sorted out if you need them and do that project you need to finish up because you won't have much spare time while you're here. You'll have some time - it's not unbearable - but expect to be busy.
I hope you have a great time in the program! I think you'll enjoy the campus, the city of Waterloo and all the friendly people on campus. If you're coming from Africa remember that winter in Waterloo can be cold, so buy a good pair of boots in the fall before you need them.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Questions
With only a couple months left to go I want to throw the ol' blog open for questions once again. Will you be an MBET student in the fall? Looking for grad studies ideas and wondering if the MBET is for you? Curious which type of grass seed will work best in a full/partial shade area? Fire away!
With only a couple months left to go I want to throw the ol' blog open for questions once again. Will you be an MBET student in the fall? Looking for grad studies ideas and wondering if the MBET is for you? Curious which type of grass seed will work best in a full/partial shade area? Fire away!
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
About Mark Kerbel
About Mark Kerbel
Mark is a good guy who used to be the President of the Toronto Java User's Group. He ran a Java consulting company that got swept up into part of a larger company that provides data interchange for Ontario's quasi-deregulated electricity market. Now he's thinking a lot about "environmental capitalism".
That is some cool entrepreneurial stuff.
About Mark Kerbel
Mark is a good guy who used to be the President of the Toronto Java User's Group. He ran a Java consulting company that got swept up into part of a larger company that provides data interchange for Ontario's quasi-deregulated electricity market. Now he's thinking a lot about "environmental capitalism".
That is some cool entrepreneurial stuff.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Catching Up
First of all Pyra/Google has, with Picasa, come up with a free photoblogging tool, "Hello". Blogger users will aready have seen the pitch. So perhaps we'll see a few MBET photos before we wrap everything up this term.
So, what has the MBET class been up to as of late? Term 3 is "Market Development" so the classes have nominally focussed on building markets. Stress "nominally".
Accounting is getting into Prof Armitage's personal area of expertise, activity based costing and activity based management. Which is interesting but a lot more applicable to manufacturing operations rather than something like a pure software startup. One really great exercise we ended today's class is super relevant to everyone and that was analyzingcustomer profitability. Which customers are losing you money? This is a pretty good question to try to answer.
E-business and Entrepreneurial Applications of IT are trucking along with more cases this term. 610 has a large project where we need to compare and contrast two young, public IT companies in the same space. The first major challenge is finding two companies that fit those criteria... there haven't been any major IPOs in about, oh, four years. So "young" is relative. We're doing 724 and Digital Insight. It will be interesting to try to dig into 724 - a real Canadian success and then not-quite-so-much-success story.
Operations and Management of Technology are mostly projects this term - two individual projects and a group project. The marketing project is also individual which is a small blessing - one less group to wrangle with.
We also have, of all things, a big group market research project for the business skills module. I have tons of market research to do already for my practicum project! Cripes, I need to do more market research like I need a hole in my head. Luckily we seem to be pulling it together pretty quickly so perhaps it won't be such a big deal. Also, the topic is biodiesel and my dad was head of research at Imperial Oil for a number of years so I have an expert in the family for what it's worth.
Tax is over and there will be some sort of law assignment but hopefully nothing to fear.
Last week we went to a big Communitech event, "Surpass Yourself", a leadership and motivational conference. The GM of Nokia Canada did the morning keynote and the speakers were quite interesting. I saw Laura Garton's presentation on "Leading Tech Talent" which I thought was pretty insightful. Joanne Steinberg's presentation on gathering market intelligence was also excellent and her slides are VERY detailed. Perhaps too much so.
Finally, spring is finally here and it's just beautiful. We've got a team in the ultimate frisbee league and I'm biking to class every day. A nice change.
First of all Pyra/Google has, with Picasa, come up with a free photoblogging tool, "Hello". Blogger users will aready have seen the pitch. So perhaps we'll see a few MBET photos before we wrap everything up this term.
So, what has the MBET class been up to as of late? Term 3 is "Market Development" so the classes have nominally focussed on building markets. Stress "nominally".
Accounting is getting into Prof Armitage's personal area of expertise, activity based costing and activity based management. Which is interesting but a lot more applicable to manufacturing operations rather than something like a pure software startup. One really great exercise we ended today's class is super relevant to everyone and that was analyzingcustomer profitability. Which customers are losing you money? This is a pretty good question to try to answer.
E-business and Entrepreneurial Applications of IT are trucking along with more cases this term. 610 has a large project where we need to compare and contrast two young, public IT companies in the same space. The first major challenge is finding two companies that fit those criteria... there haven't been any major IPOs in about, oh, four years. So "young" is relative. We're doing 724 and Digital Insight. It will be interesting to try to dig into 724 - a real Canadian success and then not-quite-so-much-success story.
Operations and Management of Technology are mostly projects this term - two individual projects and a group project. The marketing project is also individual which is a small blessing - one less group to wrangle with.
We also have, of all things, a big group market research project for the business skills module. I have tons of market research to do already for my practicum project! Cripes, I need to do more market research like I need a hole in my head. Luckily we seem to be pulling it together pretty quickly so perhaps it won't be such a big deal. Also, the topic is biodiesel and my dad was head of research at Imperial Oil for a number of years so I have an expert in the family for what it's worth.
Tax is over and there will be some sort of law assignment but hopefully nothing to fear.
Last week we went to a big Communitech event, "Surpass Yourself", a leadership and motivational conference. The GM of Nokia Canada did the morning keynote and the speakers were quite interesting. I saw Laura Garton's presentation on "Leading Tech Talent" which I thought was pretty insightful. Joanne Steinberg's presentation on gathering market intelligence was also excellent and her slides are VERY detailed. Perhaps too much so.
Finally, spring is finally here and it's just beautiful. We've got a team in the ultimate frisbee league and I'm biking to class every day. A nice change.
Monday, May 17, 2004
The Best Time in History
So today we had a practicum team meeting about building a website. Prem had been away last week meeting with lawyers and doing presentations for potential customers and had lots of interesting news.
One of his meetings was with a bunch of senior executives all wearing suits. Prem and his co-founder were in business casual shirts. The executives were old. Prem graduated last year. Executives are well-connected and experienced. Prem has drive and intellectual property. To paraphrase Prem: "The is the best time in history to start a business. They don't care who you are or what you look like. You could show up ugly, unshowered and with horrible teeth. All they want to know is what you can do."
Joyce said I had to blog that. Probably because it's true.
So today we had a practicum team meeting about building a website. Prem had been away last week meeting with lawyers and doing presentations for potential customers and had lots of interesting news.
One of his meetings was with a bunch of senior executives all wearing suits. Prem and his co-founder were in business casual shirts. The executives were old. Prem graduated last year. Executives are well-connected and experienced. Prem has drive and intellectual property. To paraphrase Prem: "The is the best time in history to start a business. They don't care who you are or what you look like. You could show up ugly, unshowered and with horrible teeth. All they want to know is what you can do."
Joyce said I had to blog that. Probably because it's true.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
The New Template
I changed the template. For first time visitors, you have no idea how much better this is. For returning visitors, you realize that things are only marginally improved. I switched from HaloScan to Blogger comments which gives me six of one instead of half a dozen of the other.
I changed the template. For first time visitors, you have no idea how much better this is. For returning visitors, you realize that things are only marginally improved. I switched from HaloScan to Blogger comments which gives me six of one instead of half a dozen of the other.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Finnish Friday
So on Friday we had a group from Finland in visiting. The whole entourage was led by Dr Peter Kelly who is a K-W native, went to London Business School and is now a professor at the Helsinki University of Technology. Dr Kelly gave a talk at the Communitech breakfast talking about what's going on in Finnish high-tech and how Finland is alot like Canada. Later on they came by CBET and got a talk from Paul Guild about research on innovation and high-tech company growth in the K-W region. The rest of the group was from Culminatum which is a development organization for high-tech in Finland.
Overall, really interesting stuff. UW has done a lot of work studying our local high-tech cluster. Prof Guild had a really interesting slide talking about how you start by studing a phenomenon and then move to building theories and then trying to influence changes. Sometimes you take things for granted but UW is really looking a lot more aggressively than a lot of schools at how to accelerate commercialization. Great stuff.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Free As In Beer
Although I never saw any notice of it, Blogger's bStats is now free. They used to charge for it as part of Blog*Spot Plus but if you log in at http://stats.blogger.com with your regular Blogger login it will just work. Cool.
Although I never saw any notice of it, Blogger's bStats is now free. They used to charge for it as part of Blog*Spot Plus but if you log in at http://stats.blogger.com with your regular Blogger login it will just work. Cool.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Snark Hunt
Someone asked how the job prospects were looking. I meant to post about that but like everything else I meant to post about I never quite got to it. So I'll post as a way to avoid having to send out resumes.
First, having April off was great. Some people did a lot of practicum work, some just hung out. I went home and saw my wife and kids for a change, helped clean out the basement, installed a new basement sink and babysat my wife who came down with strep throat. Many people commented that it was good I was home to take care of the kids while she was sick. One person pointed out that she never got sick until I got home and that it was probably my fault. After I told her this my wife decided that that was indeed a good theory. So stay away from me I guess.
Jobs. Jobs jobs jobs. Job hunting is a funny thing. MBA people and undergrads just finished and did their inteviewing in the fall or in the winter. Which is out for us. Most of the full time jobs I've seen advertised are immediate openings which means that they're not interested in waiting for 3 months for you to start. I've missed getting two intervews because of this. So my experience has been mixed. I've gotten some interest at RIM and I had lunch today with the VP Sales & the VP Marketing of another small Waterloo software company. So all is not lost. But nothing concrete yet.
As for the larger class, some people aren't looking for jobs right away - some will continue working on their own business plans. One or two have indicated an interest in pursuing an academic career. But most are looking. CBET is going to organized a class web site and shop it around to prospective employers but it's just getting started and everyone is still writing their condensed resumes. But it will be like the book that the Queen's SciTech MBA program shops around to companies.
Overall awareness of the MBET program is growing though and it's pretty exciting. Apparently Deloitte & Touche in Toronto has come through with some sponsorship money and there are some student resumes in there. So the outlook is bright but still in potentia.
Monday, May 03, 2004
