The end from another perspective

My blogging Warwick friend Chris is also feeling the end closing. But he has already started saying his goodbyes, this hasn't really started for us, although we have seen some of our own leave for good (to get cute little babies, for instance).
I haven't felt the sadness yet and the party at N2 yesterday was more of a celebration. But go check Chris' impressions out.

Now I can say that it is almost over

We had the final presentation of our thesis today at the Heraeus site in Hanau, and all went really, really well. Heraeus is an interesting German, family owned high-tech company and it is not everyday that you have the opportunity to present and discuss your findings to the two most senior managers of a company with 12 thousand employees in over 70 countries and a turnover of more than 11 billion Euro. Yeah, billion.

Our academic supervisor, our project sponsor (head of corporate development) and a great team!

The presentation went smoothly and was actually fun. I was very happy with the results of the team and so were the professor and the company, I had the impression. It was an intensive 2 months of work, getting ourselves into a very new subject for us, but the conclusion we got were solid and useful for the company. And we learned a lot, especially from the 10 or so interviews we conducted with senior managers from important corporations.
But not all is over, we still have 50% of our thesis to be written this week and, after that, we all will be MBAs, deservedly.

But tonitght we have decided to commemorate a bit. And I should go back to where the music is playing.

Façade in Mannheim

 

Just one spot I discovered today Mannheim. I must have probaly seen it almost everyday while walking to class, but hadn't paid attention to it.

Message to the next MBS Full Time MBA students

Hi all,

I understand that some of you are already arriving in Mannheim around the 10th of September. My plan is to see how I can bring you and the FTMBA 2008 students who are still around together. One of the great things of the MBA is to meet new people, and this should be fun. And useful for you, you should feel free to ask us any questions you have.

Until the 5th of September, none of us 2008ers will have much time, as we are all working on our thesis. On the 12th of September we have our graduation ceremony. So between the 10th and the 15th of September we should have several chances to meet.

Let me know your plans and we will work from there. You should also forward this message to your other colleagues and tell them to get in touch with me. I'll be happy to organize this.

Now let me go back to my project presentation slides.
All the best,
Fernando

Communicating the purpose through

I am eating something similar to a Soupy Snax, so I decided to publish this text I wrote as an MBA assignment. It is one case were I can combine the themes MBA and harmonica safely.

I had previously seen the Soupy Snax 4:00 example somewhere, but it is a very good instance where the purpose of the product is so well communicated to the client.
In yet another example of the harmonica industry, Hohner has secured for them the best name a diatonic harmonica could ever have: "The Blues Harp".
Harmonicas are divided in mainly 3 groups: traditional instruments, chromatic instruments and, the most popular, the ten hole diatonic harmonicas. The latter are the more affordable models and are the only ones whose notes can be soulfully bent, giving it the characteristic wailing sound so intrinsic to harmonica blues playing.
But these instruments are not known as ten hole diatonic harmonicas, but under the nick name "blues harp". So, by registering this name decades ago, Hohner has made sure that, when an aspiring musician comes to a music dealer and asks for a harmonica to play the blues, he or she will probably ask using the most common name in English (and several other languages, additionally): "I want to buy a blues harp". The consumer is not aware that he is using a specific model name, but he has narrowed the choice of the dealer to this Hohner product. If he or she asks for a blues harp and gets a Hohner Blues Harp, he or she will be reassured to be buying the correct item. If the dealer offers a Suzuki Folk Master, which is a very similar instrument, the customer might become confused.
Just as a side note, the most traditional blues harmonica is The Hohner Marine Band, which, for a harmonica, is an awful name, as it doesn't convey any meaningful message to today's population (the Marine Band was a popular American Navy brass band in the late 19th century).
Hohner has tried to name their chromatic harmonica in a meaningful way. A chromatic harmonica is a harmonica which, differently from the other two categories* of instruments, can play a full chromatic scale. It was probably the most significant invention in 200 years of harmonica history. The name the Germans out of Trossingen came up with was "The Chromonica", which should convey the differentiating quality of this instrument. They had success in that, as it is easy for a buyer to figure out that he or she is doing the correct purchase when looking for a chromatic instrument. But Hohner's hopes of establishing the name Chromonica as a synonym for chromatic harmonicas didn't really work out that well. Some older generation Germans will use it in that way, but most of the harmonica community uses the term "chromatic harmonica" instead.
During my stay there, we launched the "7 Blues Harmonica Starter Set", which is a set with 7 inexpensive and low quality harmonicas, for a very affordable price. We tried to manage consumers' expectations by including the "starter" word in the name and by mentioning in the package that this was the ideal product for starters wanting to experiment with different keys or tonalities. Furthermore, we refrained to use the expression "blues harp" to differentiate this product from the actual "blues harp" model.

*Okay, not really. Richter style harmonicas and even tremolo harmonicas can be played chromatically with the use of advanced techniques.

Recruitment Goes Mobile

I saw the title above in a twit from SJDelaney and thought that was a very counterintuitive thing. I don't want to look for jobs using the small screen of my mobile phone. And my Nokia E61 has a pretty decent screen. So I dismissed it as a hype, but went after the post anyway.
And lo and behold, I had to change my opinion after reading this paragraph written by Julian Stopps:

At the same time changes in corporate culture have motivated employees to migrate their job seeking off the PC and onto the mobile phone. The tightening of business policies and attitudes towards acceptable Internet usage has resulted in companies restricting access to career sites from office computers. Employees who wish to conduct their job hunt over lunch now have little option but to use an Internet cafe or their mobile device.

Well, I am looking intensively for a job from my own computer and wouldn't want to migrate to mobile. But now I see why other people might want to. Always question your assumptions.

This is the great team I have been working since June. During this project, we have interviewed all 5 Business Units of Heraeus to establish the technology fields we would look at, I developed an online algorithm for skimming the internet, we identified over a hundred information providers, had interviews with high profile professionals in 3 international high-tech corporations and got in touch with at least 2 VC firms.
There is still a lot of work to be done (like preparing the final presentation and actually writing the thesis), but I am very happy with the results so far, considering all the other paralel activities that have taken place (like job search and rowing competition) during this period.

Another Mannheim night scene

 

View of the train station.

Intercultural tidbit

I just happened to write down today's date on a (unfortunate) bill I just paid:

08.08.08

In Chinese, that's 八八八 (bā bā bā). And eight is a very lucky number in China.

So I guess that it is not merely coincidence that the Chinese olympic games start today.

The castle at night

One of the nice things of studying in Mannheim is certainly the castle where the university is located. I especially like to take pictures of it at night.

Short observation during the rowing competition

Yesterday we had a group of WHU MBAs visiting for a rowing event and get together. As I had observed in Berlin, the Spanish speaking croud (5 to 6 people) quickly came together. I do understand Spanish fairly well, but have a bit more trouble speaking, which makes me quieter than I would usually be in a conversation in German, Portuguese or English. Besides that me being quieter might be a good thing, It made me ponder that Brazil and Brazilians would be better off if the oficial language was also Spanish. Communication, especially with our neighbours, would be so more simple, with positive effects in all fields.
Brazil stands as the biggest and only Portuguese speaking in Latin America. I wonder if the unique language has some value as a differentiating factor. I am not sure, curious to see what others think.

The maritime career value chain

Great representation found on the website www.maritimecareers.com.sg, sent to me by a great friend.


Being a shipbuilding engineer (or naval architect), I am always keeping an eye on the industry.