Category: Sloan

Change

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Cambridge writing this. (Thank God for enlightened hotels with broadband.) I just left one of two company presentations that I’m involved with today at MIT Sloan. Got a chance to see a very high energy evangelist from my company talk about where we’re going in the mobility market. Talked to a few grad students about my experiences so far. Even though I’m operating on about three hours of sleep, it felt really good. In fact, I felt “at home” in a way that I have rarely felt since I started this job in July.

I wonder about that. More than most other people I know (or maybe they do a better job of hiding it) I really go into a shell when I go into a new experience. I could be on top of the world one day, as I sometimes felt at Sloan (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding) and go into a new situation the next and totally withdraw. There have been times over the last month where I’ve just shaken with frustration over my inability to engage, to act, to do anything. It’s like a crippling fear of leaving my office.

Today all that was gone. I think there’s something about just being in the old environment where I was on top that makes it easier even to admit to myself what I just wrote. I wonder if this is something everyone goes through. I know I felt it to an extent when I started at Sloan until I got my feet under me.

Jay gets beta fever

Looks like Jay got into the Xbox Live trial. I guess there’s no NDA on participation :). This is good–we’ll get some really good perspectives from him about how that’s going. The man thinks critically about his gaming, a trait I admire.

First thoughts from Jay: “…the bad news is that I cannot log into the server where I have to register. Evidently, Microsoft is overloaded and cannot handle the situation! Hah, how funny is that, an online service that won’t even let you register.”

I hope it’s just congestion on the backbone between Redmond and Boston…

Sloan Roundup

I’ve had a few conversations about Sloan recently. I got my first call as an alum from an entering student two weeks ago. George and Jay continue to blog. George has become pretty prolific in spite of slipping away to Cape Cod every weekend.

Jay’s been quieter, for good reason: he’s been learning CSS and getting bored with his Xbox. Hang in there, Jay, though I can’t tell you why–and check out some of my posts about CSS and redesigning my site earlier this year.

Charlie’s been heads down at the office, from what I hear. Bransby just resurfaced in Newport Beach. No word from Niall.

Paper: Recession DOES make a difference in IT spending

Anna Pavlova: Adjustment Costs, Learning-by-Doing, and Technology Adoption under Uncertainty. New paper by one of the “young turks” in financial research at the MIT Sloan School about the effects of recession and organizational capability on technology adoption. Basically, the model shows that, under uncertainty, the rate of adoption of technology is critically dependent on capital expenditure and organizational capability.

This formally describes what many of us suspected already: companies with better technological capabilities will be better able to adopt new technologies even in down times. I wonder what this says about the wisdom of technology outsourcing strategies.
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Going back, not returning

Looks like I’ll be heading back to Sloan in early October for company recruiting. I wondered when I accepted HR’s request to help out how it would feel to go back to my school so soon. Now I think I know: familiar and strange. I still have a ton of friends in the greater Boston area and it will be good to hang out with them—but my home and my job are out here now.

Also, Sloan was the center of my emotional and intellectual energy for two years, and now that center is moving. I’ve postponed thinking about the effects of that, but you can’t avoid the emotional ramifications of a major life change forever.
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Good to have friends, part 1

It’s been a day of remembering why friends are important. We were unable to go rafting with Michele this weekend, much to our chagrin, and I was feeling bad that we were letting the friendship down. After all, we haven’t been able to hang with Shel for a few years while on different coasts, and now we can’t make it work on the same coast.

But when I got home last night there was a package from Amazon. Was it the new AV cable I ordered? No, it was addressed to Tim and Lisa. Inside was a pasta roller attachment for our Kitchenaid mixer. The note said something about “in case we ran out of the dried stuff,” and was signed by our friends Charlie and Carie Page.

Of course this is the point. Friendships that are built through a long period of relationships aren’t destroyed by one missed weekend. But it’s a good idea not to take them for granted anyway.
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On the value of wasting your friends’ time

I’m so proud of George. I felt bad when we were working together on a technology strategy project on the videogame console industry, and I got him hooked on MAME and vintage arcade games. Now at least he’s moved on to more productive obsessions: weblogging and home network administration. Don’t forget to keep up with the OpenSSH patches, George! It’s a brave new world full of new and exciting dangers…
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George vs. Mung

In the spirit of publicizing grass roots word creation: George vs. mung.

2 casts and about 10 pounds of mung later, I called it quits. I am still trying to find a definition of Mung, but it seems to be what locals call the weeds out in the water on the Cape.

Of course the OED thinks “mung” is “mong” (“A mingling, mixture”) or “moong” (“Either of two legumes, native to India, the seeds of which are an important food”). Which means that George and the Cape locals should get credit for a new usage of the word: “bay scum that tangles your lines and ruins your fishing.”
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George has broadband

Looks like George finally got broadband. I’m jealous of his short cycle… then again, the broadband fairy visited us only about five days after I got there. He writes:

In summary:

Tuesday, July 16: DSL order placed – service center will call to set-up install
Wednesday, July 18: Verizon calls back to schedule install (Availability next day)
Tuesday, July 23: DSL set-up as scheduled
Total: 7 days/5 business days.

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