Week 4 Hilary

Snow and cold was the theme for this week’s weather. The temperature dropped on Tuesday and on Thursday it actually snowed! Not altogether expected for a February in Oxford.
View from my window on Thursday morning
As far as work was concerned, this week was one of consolidation. After the mad panic of last week and its multitude of assignments, this week’s two were easily planned and executed. It therefore allowed some time to do work on our EP (Entrepreneurial Project) and discuss another group project entitled the ‘TMO’ (Technology, Market and Organisation) for which we need to write a commentary on a recent technological innovation. We are deliberating over online share trading, hybrid cars and the YouTube phenomenon and will decide which one during the coming week.

Also, this weekend I returned home to try to erect a new fence in our garden. The old one apparently took exception to the recent strong winds and decided to blow over (see photo). After several hours, we managed to get the broken post out of the ground however due to the miserable weather couldn’t put in a replacement as the ground was still too wet for the cement to be able to dry. Take two will be in a couple of weeks.
Our dead fence
I managed to get out in a boat again this week, this time with the Hertford College 2nd VIII. Hopefully if I train enough I should become a permanent fixture in the squad and be able to compete in Torpids (see rules), which is only 3 weeks away. There is a lot of work to do!

Other than that, there were many other activities this week:

Consumer goods panel discussion (Monday)
An interesting panel discussion attended by Tesco, Masterfoods, Carrefour and PTO Group (branding and packaging consultants). It made a change from the focus on the consultancies and banks that come here and offered a great insight into the consumer goods industry.

Citigroup Recruitment Presentation (Tuesday)
A presentation from Citigroup’s commercial banking division. They came to the school to present their associate programme, into which they recruit MBAs from the best schools. A good presentation giving a different view to the banking sector (we have mainly received presentations on the Investment Banking function so far). Interesting, but maybe not for me….

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants Recruitment Presentation (Tuesday)
On Tuesday I attended a recruitment presentation from another prestigious firm of consultants. Roland Berger (Berger for short) is the only European based elite consultancy firm and came here to explain why it is different and thus why we should apply. It was a good presentation by a charismatic partner of the firm and very well attended from our side.

Luis Cantarell, Nestle (Wednesday)
Luis Cantarell is Executive VP, Nestle SA and responsible for the European area. He came to give a talk on “Responsible and sustainable competitiveness: wishful thinking or business reality?” and talked about Nestle’s efforts to grow the business through sustainable and responsible practices. There were some interesting comments from the audience about the baby formula scandal however the speaker managed to deal with them with the skill of a diplomat and stressed that it now represented less than 1% of world-wide revenues and was firmly in the past. I believe that the school recognised that they may have been problems and thus made sure that security was tight (the attendance of security personnel didn’t go unnoticed).

Martin Varsavskv (Friday)
Martin is CEO of Fon.com (the largest Wifi network in the world) and a serial internet entrepreneur. He gave a talk on why people shouldn’t always assume that Silicon Valley was the only place that internet innovation took place. Martin is the epitome of the internet entrepreneur and gave a thoroughly engaging talk about his successful European investments.

Hertford Guest Night (Friday)
Namiko and I invited Akiko and Andrea to join us as our guests for this event in Hertford College. It was a joint event between the SCR (senior common room, i.e. Lecturers), MCR (Middle Common Room, i.e. post-grads) and JCR (Junior Common Room, i.e. under-grads) and started with a champagne reception in the Principals lodgings. There were many other MBAs there and it was a fun night.
Akiko, Maho, Takashi, Namiko and Andrea in Hertford HallMe, Nami, Kian, Akiko, Andrea and Takashi in the Principal's LodgingsLe Menu
Tonight, Namiko and I are going to have dinner with the family somewhere in Newbury. It will be a nice opportunity to catch up as we have not seen each other since Christmas.

That is about all for this week. Its funny to think that we are already half way through this term. It goes by so fast...