Quarter 7 - Week of Exams

It's been six months since I wrote a final exam. I am delighted to note that I could still be frazzled as ever. Nothing really changed, I still stayed up till 11 PM, "thought" I was up till 2 AM when in fact I had slept right over my book, woke up at 5 AM and suddenly realized that I was nowhere near prepared for the exam, and rushed to the hall 5 minutes before it was about to start.

And to think I missed my days in engineering... how naive can I get!

All things said and done, Research for Marketing Decisions, my one and only exam this quarter completed at 2 PM. I've been on cloud nine ever since.

My plan for the next two weeks is simple. Work like a normal human being, and sleep like one.

Until next time...

Quarter 7 - Week 10

Irrespective of the two-week-earlier deadline, it looks like we've managed to wrangle all submissions till this week. The same old bleary-eyed student swearing at the professor, his team mates, his colleagues, his life made an appearance today, and with everyone giving each other the same look, it was a we're-in-this-together atmosphere all around.

All that was fine on the first day, but on the second there was a great upbeat feeling going around. While it was partially due to the fact that projects were being submitted, and load lightened, and partially due to the fact that the quarter was getting over, the overwhelming reason was that half of the students were leaving college, and attending their final class on Saturday. The seniors all had their awesome teeny-weeny Cybershots out and were clicking away to glory, lest they forget the miseries they've been through together. And yes, they were all very nostalgic when they thought of their time here together.

The juniors were happy that we finally get to pick whatever courses we want without having to jostle with the seniors, but very few of us missed the opportunity to tell the nostalgic seniors that we could exchange places. The fact that misty-eyes immediately gave way to frightened eyes, and hence brought seniors back to reality is a different matter altogether. All jokes apart, our batch wishes them the best-est in their future, and hope that they further the cause of the PGSEM programme, and give us all reason to hold our heads high.

E-Business Models and Strategies

The final week continued with presentations of our cool new e-businesses that we were claiming to start. It finally dawned on me that we were all primarily just starting new businesses, and were less worried of whether we'd handled the taught frameworks correctly. But then again, I'm sure we got it fairly well, the prof and the guest lecturers taught from their experience. It's difficult to miss out when someone talks about hard learned lessons. I, for one, am definitely not going to forget the fact that entrepreneurs and bigshots are normal people, just like us. To their credit, most of them didn't need to do an MBA to start a business and make it successful.

Research for Marketing Decisions

Similar situation out here like in EBMS. Project presentations and a bunch of gleeful seniors twiddling their thumbs and thinking of how they'd still be twiddling their thumbs next weekend without worrying about god-forsaken assignments and team mates.

I don't know where our profs get their patience from. They must have expected serious, nose-up-in-the-air sophisticated IT folk in this course, and they find this jabbering bunch of gleeful kids who're trying their level best to skip assignments and projects. Their claim to fame over the general full-time students? They have more work experience and jabber a little less.

I think our profs deserve the gold medals that are being dished out to that student of the year.

Marketing Communications

I really liked the first session on Viral Marketing and Word-of-mouth marketing. The case was one of Hasbro games, who were launching their game called POX. It was really interesting to know how they identified alpha-pups (what a cute name! Alpha-pups! for lead generating kids!) from various schools in the Chicago region and let them loose with their gadgets. Interestingly, these kids were key influencers in their social circle, and they would pass the toys around to their close-knit group, who'd then influence other kids to buy the toy. Worked like a charm! However, it didn't make sense to run their intense operation on a country-wide campaign as it might have bankrupted the company. Still, it was pretty cool to see that these guys tried out some cool new ways of marketing their products and driving diffusion of the game.

Another way to look at it is the very way of doing it. They actually misused kids into selling their games! It's evil when you really think about it! To drive your sales, you mislead some kids into thinking they're very cool and give them the power to flaunt their awesomeness. And then, you capitalize on the wave of demand that you just created amongst other kids! Brilliant, but evil. Where's the line to be drawn? It's so difficult to choose whether to admire the concept, or be repulsed by it.

The second session had a final case on an Indian Ad agency called Rudhra. Interesting one no doubt, it talked of how the company chooses to keep its segments clearly defined and hire specialists for each of these. A good peek into the life of an advertising agency. Unfortunately, there was a major rush towards the end of the class since we were running out of time, and I'm sure I missed a couple of important lessons from the case, but it was a good end to the course. A reality check on how ad agencies run, and what we might be faced with.

And now to study for the final exam, which will hopefully be chilled out. Unless the prof suddenly turns around, shows us his true colors and gives us the one reason why he shouldn't be given a gold medal.

Quarter 7 - Week 9

There must have been some sort of internal memo that went flying around in IIMB, something that said "All projects should be submitted a couple of weeks in advance of the end of the quarter". Whatever it was, almost every one of the courses have asked for the presentations and the reports by this week. A bunch of panicky Skype calls and Google Doc sessions later, and we have a submission that is likely to make it through the door. Of course, a little needling-and-wheedling got us an extra week for one of the subjects, but hey, no more panicking at the absolute end of the course anymore! Now we can panic earlier! Yay!

E-Business Models and Strategies

Our prof has gone out and told a couple of VCs that we've got some fairly awesome biz plans and so they should come and rip us to shreds. Nicely and neatly. And so the VCs came, and shred they did. Nicely and neatly, just like they were asked to. But maybe it came across that way because most of the ideas were actually pretty nice. And it was amazing and inspiring to see that a few of these were really under progress! A few of our seniors have already quit their jobs, and they're doing something they want to do! I've got a hunch, which I might need to check up on, that amongst all the colleges and courses, the PGSEM definitely has a greater percentage of people who churn out startups! Let me back that - in some other post.

I'd have loved to tell you guys what sort of stuff these guys dreamed up, but hey, early venture and hush-hush and all that. Maybe in a year or two, you'll hear of them anyway!

Research for Marketing Decisions

A similar couple of sessions which had us listening to presentations by teams, instead of the prof. The prof would ask some clarifying questions for the benefit of the class, so that some theoretical points came through for us. But more than anything else, people were a lot more chilled out than usual. The second session had a few teams present their marketing projects, and since some of them have actually gone out and done ACTUAL market research, instead of the watered-down versions we see for other projects, it was fun to see the results!

Marketing Communications

Same-to-same. First session was a bunch of study presentations made by different groups. The obvious favourites was the online social-networking based ad presentation. It's almost like they had an unfair advantage. They had members in the team who're in the social media space, who're in the advertising line, and so it's very easy to say that they had things handed to them on a digital platter. I keep telling myself that's the reason they trumped the others. Someday I'll believe it.

The second session was on Mobile Advertising. We had a guest lecture from someone who has started a venture in this space, and they're actually doing quite well! So he goes all the way from how many mobile subscriptions are in India, to how ads can be personalized, and finally to how specific trends like the usage of augmented reality are actually putting a whole new cool spin on the Mobile Advertising arena. Good fun!

And so, we wait for the last week of the quarter. A couple of presentations left, but I think we'll live. Like I've been saying through the whole of this quarter, the funda to chill has been figured out.

Quarter 7 - Week 8

For once, I was actually looking forward to going to work on Friday after class. I'm damn sure that work hasn't really gotten better. So that means....

E-Business Models and Strategies

The first session was hosted by this really inspiring entrepreneur-graduated-to-VC guy. I call him inspiring because of the way he communicates with us. He spoke to us in a simple manner during our orientation to PGSEM way back in May 2009, and he did the same even now, the only difference being some added management-y jargon. He went on to give a very realistic portrayal of why VCs behave the way they do. They apparently put some fire under our backsides, mainly because of the fire under theirs. Quite interesting to understand the different aspects of getting funding from these guys.

The second session was about this joint creation of Pandesic by SAP and Intel. You'd never have thought that a company created by two amazing giants could have such problems. But then again, you wonder if the baby of two highly intelligent people is intelligent. Nature and the corporate life have a strange sense of humour. Anyway, learnings from the case were that when you try doing something new, try and keep some checks and balances in place that will ALWAYS challenge your assumptions. When you have a very good inflow of resources, it becomes really easy to waste them. It's entirely upto us to figure out what we can do to keep wastage to a minimum. Or pull the plug if its futile.

Research for Marketing Decisions

True to our expected attitude, we forgot there was a study presentation till the day before it. If anything, I now totally believe in the statement - Past behaviour is the best indicator of future behaviour. (I only talk for my team here, the other teams appeared very well prepared *cough*).

Imagine how thrilled we were when the prof took longer than expected to teach us something through which we slept, only to find out the presentations had been postponed to the next day! That's all we needed, more time! Too bad we just used the same ppt anyway. Should do MUCHO better.... next time.

The second session had quite a few presentations that had us looking through various aspects like New Product Development, Pricing Research, Customer Relationship Management etc.

Marketing Communications

This media agency comes along and gives us a guest lecture for the first session. Now our guys were really looking forward to guest lecturers, especially after the last one we'd had for MC. I was totally expecting some set of hotshots who'd come by and give us some decent gyaan. Unfortunately, for me, less than half the way in the talk, I fall asleep. I've NEVER fallen asleep in a guest lecture. I mean, who falls asleep in a guest lecture?? But hey, things were the way they were. And THAT's why I was looking forward to work, these guys zapped the hell out of me.

The second session was supposed to be on Digital Marketing. While it was all right, I was looking forward to hearing the guy from the advertising agency. Too bad he couldn't make it due to some urgent issues. In any case, it was fun. Nothing too new or old that we didn't already know.

Peaceful week. Only two more weeks to go. I need to submit all assignments and projects by end of next week. That gives us enough time to chill out before the formidable Q4 begins.