7 Weeks to Go: Graduation and 2 More Commendations

It's hard to believe but I have only seven weeks -- six study weeks and one exam week -- to go before I'm done with my MBA!

I started this term with five courses and two of those -- Brand Management with Mark Ritson and Consumer Behaviour with Brian Gibbs -- I'm done with. Well, except for the Brand Management take-home final exam which I hope to work on this weekend.

The remaining three -- Corporate Strategy with Geoff Lewis, Strategic Management of Intellectual Property with Michael Vitale & Duncan Bucknell, and Business and Sustainable Development with Jeremy Baskin -- start next week.

Graduation

Meanwhile, today I received my Graduation Intention form (the paperwork you need to fill out if you want to graduate) and invitations to the Melbourne Business School (MBS) post-graduation lunch and the MBS Valedictory Dinner. Wow...this MBA-ending thing is getting real!

My official graduation ceremony is on 17 May, by the way.

Commendations!

To my surprise, I also received two commendations from the Dean for a couple of courses that I took last term. I got a commendation for "all round excellence, both in terms of academic achievement and classroom participation" for E-Commerce with Pat Auger and "outstanding academic performance" for Negotiations with John Onto. I'd received H1's in both those courses but I wasn't expecting this. Needless to say, I am feeling both honoured and, well, a little chuffed :)  Pat and John: Thanks!

By the way, last year I received a commendation for class participation in the Managing People for High Performance course with Carol Gill.

Yes...I'm feeling happy today :)

RealEstate.com.au's Simon Baker in Smart Company

Simon Baker, CEO of RealEstate.com.au and MBA graduate from Melbourne Business School (MBS), was recently featured in Smart Company. In a Q&A with Amanda Gome, he talks about how he's spent the last seven years turning RealEstate.com.au around.

The article provides some excellent insight into entrepreneurial strategy, particularly for an e-commerce company. For example:

Basically we’ve got two ways you can grow this business. One is through organic expansion – throw up a new website and then start from customer number one. The other is through acquisition. Now in 2005 we weren’t 100% sure which was the best way to go. We were, in terms of expansion overseas, babes in the woods, so what we said was ‘well let’s do something simple’.

He also talks about people, culture, and other HR issues. Overall, it makes for a fascinating read.

Running/Working in a Startup

Jason Calacanis wrote a really good post called How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips). And, while I don't agree with him on all of his tips -- like "Buy Macintosh computers" or "[ask for 10-30% off] from each of your vendors every 6-9 months" -- it's a really good list.

His basic point is: Don't focus on "stuff" that is needlessly expensive or will take you away from the work you've set out to do. For example, "Outsource accounting and HR", "Use Google hosted email", and "Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs". Focus instead on people since your money is better spent on them. That is, let your people work when they want to, where they want to, in the way they want to and throw in some perks that make the work environment really cool. For example, get them all second monitors and get "an expensive, automatic espresso machine".

Working in a Startup

As you'll read in Calacanis' post, there were some complaints about tip #11 which said "Fire people who are not workaholics...".  This happened mainly because he didn't clearly explain what he was trying to say and so people naturally assumed that he meant the worst. What he meant, of course, was that you should fire (or, better yet, not hire) people who are not passionate about their work and are not willing to work hard because, really, you can't run a proper startup with people who are there work in a nice, cushy job. 'Cushy job' and 'startup' simply do not go together.

I say that from experience because I've worked in startups for most of my life and have found that (a) as a startup-oriented employee you don't get true job satisfaction and (b) as a startup owner/manager you can't run a startup properly until and unless everyone there is passionate about the work that they're doing. And if you're not willing or are not wanting to work odd hours or weekends, or do all sort of tasks that were never part of your  original job description, then maybe the startup life isn't for you.

To give you an example, my job as General Manager (Islamabad) and SAT/GRE/GMAT teacher at The Princeton Review, Pakistan was really hard. I did GM work during normal working hours and my teaching work after 3pm for the SAT courses, 6pm for the GRE/GMAT courses, and on weekends for all of the courses. And if it hadn't been for semi-flexible working hours, almost complete freedom in how I ran the place, a office-purchased laptop, and so on -- basically, a 2004 Pakistani version of the perks that Calacanis talks about in his post --  working there would have been a lot less rewarding. (Of course, it helps that I love teaching and it appears to be something that I am good at.)

Now, I don't know what kind of job I'm going to doing six months from now but what I do know is that, if I end up working for a startup, I had darn well better be willing to put in the 'hard yards' (as the say here) to my job done. And if I'm not willing to do that, then I shouldn't have applied for that job in the first place. And, in that respect, Calacanis hit the nail on the head: fire the people who aren't willing to do that. At the end of the day, it really is that simple.

Staffing for Social Computing

More and more companies are starting to understand the benefits of social computing. If not the benefits, at least they're starting to understand the risks of not getting serious about social computing because, increasingly, their customers are demanding a two-way discussion with them (and the companies that do offer this two-way discussion stand out).

However, the companies that want to get into social computing/media/networking [1] don't always know how to go about doing that. From my personal experience I've noticed that when companies have gone in to "the whole social media thing" without any real experience, expectations, or strategy around social computing, they've often made a mess of things.

What Mess?

One typical outcome is that they start by not doing the research on what their consumers want, how their consumers want and prefer to communicate, and what kinds of communication the company itself can and wants to support. Because of this, they end up doing something inadequate like installing a message board on their website and, well, leaving it at that. Then they wonder why it's not working.

At this point they either fix things -- usually by doing some research and getting an idea of what is and isn't working in their industry -- or they give up.

Why Does This Happen?

In my opinion, this mess-up happens because they haven't really thought through their objectives of getting into social computing or even what the point of social computing is. A major factor in this lack of planning -- or, worse still, a lack of awareness -- is that they haven't hired the right marketing and communications people (ultimately, all of this is a marketing exercise) and this is where the Forrester Research report called 'How to Staff for Social Computing' comes in.

Two Crucial Roles

As Jeremy Owyang, the report's author, mentions in his blog, staffing for social computing boils down to two crucial roles: (1) the Social Media Strategist who pushes for social computing internally (convinces management, gets resources, etc.) and (2) the Community Manager who actually runs the community itself (which he wrote more about in an earlier post).

Of course, all of this sounds pretty simple when put like that -- you have to pay $279 or be a Forrester client to get the full-detail version -- but, at one level, it really is that simple. You need the right people -- who will do the right planning, the much-needed internal advocating, and the crucial open and honest external communications -- to get the job done properly.

I'm glad Forrester has published this report because something like this is much needed and will be really helpful to people like me who advocate the use of social computing in organizations and, often, simply end up banging their heads against a wall.

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[1] Or, if you want to use the unfortunate buzz word, "Web 2.0".

Lead Time for Advertised Jobs is 2-4 Weeks

I followed up on the management job openings I posted yesterday by phoning Sean Smith from Michael Page. It turns out that most of these job openings have a 2-4 week lead time associated with them -- tending more towards the 2 than the 4 -- and so, obviously, I'm out of the running for these particular ones.

What I mean by "lead time" is that, if you want to be in the running for a particular job that's been advertised, it's best to either (a) apply almost immediately after the job is posted or (b) already have your information on file with the recruitment agency that posted the job. Of course, it's best if you occupy the top-of-mind position with the recruitment consultant that's handling that position. That way, you'll be one the first candidates they think of and try to match to the role.

I've heard from other people that other recruitment agencies -- and companies in general -- have the same 2-4 week lead time for the jobs they advertise. What that means for me is that I can't start applying for advertised jobs for another month or so. Bummer.

Let's just hope, then, that my job hunt, instead of being nice and predictable, turns out to be a brilliant and wildly exciting photo finish!

Digital Space Around Australia (BRW Report)

Ross Dawson, in his 'Trends in the Living Networks' blog, points to last week's BRW feature on the digital space in Australia and comments on how doing this kind of analytical journalism is cool in an industry that is typically hard to put down on paper:

Foad Fadaghi, the technology editor of BRW, has come to the media business from the research industry, having held senior analyst and director positions at Frost & Sullivan, Jupiter Research and IDC. This way of looking at the world results in the BRW Digital issue showing how journalism at its best is becoming a lot more like analysis, creating real value-add and insights that can’t be found elsewhere.

Why is the Web 2.0 space to difficult to analyse? Dawson answers (quoted from the article):

The costs involved in web 2.0 development are so low it has spawned a large number of small one and two-person companies that can be profitable with a small user base, Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says. This means web 2.0 development is unnoticed by venture capital and other investors.

Which makes articles like this doubly useful since there isn't much else out there in terms of hardcore research and analysis on this industry sector.

Two Management-Level Job Openings

So far, most of the job openings I've talked about on this blog have been for business analyst (BA) or consultant roles. Last week, thanks to Michael Page, I came across two job openings for project management roles that seem to suit me -- i.e. my interests, experience, qualifications, and career progression -- better.

The first is for a job with "one of the premier employers in the Information Technology and Internet space":

E-Commerce Manager

Working across various e-commerce solutions your role sees you managing and consulting across your designated countries online solutions portfolio.

This includes managing all portal products and online product streams.

And the second is with "one of the most successful and longest standing players in the web" and, specifically, for "one of the best ranked sites in Australia":

Product Manager - Web

Working as a Product Manager, you will be responsible for the day to day management, enhancement and innovation of leading products for the web. You will work with a talented team of creative and technical staff and have full ownership of a particular product stream with the business manager.

Your role will see you utilizing your extensive knowledge of the web and product life cycle management to provide best practice process and methodology across all new and existing products in your command.

I'm tempted to apply to both, even though I'm still eight weeks away from the end of my current study term. Of course, before I do that I'll phone Sean Smith, the recruitment consultant in charge of both of these openings, and ask him about the closing date and expected start date for these jobs. Here's hoping he says two months.

Melbourne Business School on Dopplr

I came across Dopplr in June last year via Web Worker Daily ('Social Networking Dopplr Connects You When You Travel' by Stephen Collins) and thought it was a great networking tool for people who travel a great deal:

How often have you thought to yourself, “I’m going to <insert random conference/city/event here> next week. I wonder who else I know is going.” At this point, there’s invariably a chain of ill-timed emails, inevitably missing someone who is actually going to be in the same place as you at the same time. Dopplr aims to resolve this issue through providing a way for those serendipitous moments to be under your control, rather than left to random chance.

After signing up for Dopplr, you enter your upcoming travels, building a list of your movements. As you add connections with people you know, Dopplr comes into its own, letting you, and your connections, know when you will be in the same place at the same time.

Yesterday, while searching for MBS-related blogs, I discovered that in November last year Dopplr opened up its then-in-beta website to business school travellers from a hundred global b-schools (called its 'MBA 100') and that Melbourne Business School was included in that list.

Dopplr's service has since been launched to the public and, from what I've heard, it's pretty good. I don't have much use for it myself -- I don't travel much, at least not yet...maybe I will once I get a job -- but I'm sure others will find it useful. And who knows, maybe our faculty and Alumni department already use it. I guess I'll ask.

For more on Dopplr, read this Webware.com post by Josh Lowensohn.

Melbourne Business School Blogs

UPDATE: I now maintain this list on its own page.

A few days ago I mentioned to a colleague that very few Melbourne Business School (MBS) students, faculty, and staff members are also bloggers (to my knowledge: two faculty members, three students, and four staff members).

Later it occurred to me that I might have spoken too soon. Yes, I had done quite a bit of research on this in the past -- which is why I was confident enough to have made that statement in the first place -- but was my statement completely accurate?

To check, I did a much more comprehensive round of research on the 'net and, whaddya know?, I found some more MBS blogs. Here's an updated, more comprehensive, listing:

Current Students

Alumni

Staff

I know of three other staff members who blog but, since they haven't declared themselves as MBS staff on their blogs, I'm not going to mention them here.

Also, one of my part-time MBA class mates, who is also the CIO at MBS, wrote an blog post (don't know if he's going to contribute there regularly) so he also gets a mention:

Faculty

I haven't found any new faculty member blogs so I thought I'd list faculty member websites instead. Also, since a lot of our faculty members have their publications listed at the Berkeley Electronic Press website, I've included a link to that as well:

Have I missed anyone? If so, please let me know. Thanks.

Web-Enabled Job Hunting

Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb posted an interesting article called 'The Resume, Rebooted: A Look at Web-Enabled Job Hunting' in which she covers the latest in dynamic, multimedia-enabled, online resumes.

And while she did cover social networking, she didn't mention the power of blogs, or even a personal website, in helping people get jobs...though, come to think of it, that could have been outside the scope of her article. Anyway, the jury is out on whether any of this online stuff does indeed help people in the general population get a job. I would, however, contend that, for people in the web world, having stuff about you online is crucial. And if that stuff by or about you is good and positive, that's even better. After all, on the web, all you often have is your online reputation.

MBS' Class Profile Brochure

Now that I'm close to graduation, I've gotten myself a spot on MBS' Class Profile Brochure.

The brochure is a quick, personalized overview of the latest MBS graduating batch; i.e. not just a class profile summary of the latest incoming batch. It's an e-book with eight student profiles per page and will be available to recruiters and employers who want to learn about MBS and its students.

It will give recruiters and employers a good overview of the students who will be graduating soon (i.e. students' skills, experience levels, backgrounds, languages spoken, etc. -- more so than what recruiters can currently access) as well as a means to directly contact the students they are interested in (via e-mail).

This is particularly useful to those companies -- notably international ones -- that can't visit the campus to make a presentation or talk to students directly. It's also a great way for MBS to show off its incredibly diverse student body.

Here -- with a munged e-mail address and my Commander Khan avatar instead of my professional photograph -- is my profile:

KHAN, Ameel - Pakistani; 32
ameel.khan@edu.mbs
English (MT), Urdu/Hindi (Fl), Punjabi (I)
BSc (Hons) Computer Science, LUMS (Pakistan)

6 years in IT consulting & management; 4 in development, business integration & marketing of web portals & intranets

Content & Governance Consultant - Melbourne Business School
- Conducted business analysis & planned governance for new school intranet
Intranet Migration Coordinator - Shell Australia
- Conducted project management tasks across teams in Australia, India & USA
- Managed the migration of a 2,000+ page US-based intranet portal
Manager Tech & Portal Services - Pakistan Development Gateway Foundation
- Managed multiple national portals in the development & government sectors
- Managed a popular disaster relief info portal after the 2005 earthquake
General Manager; GMAT, GRE, SAT Instructor - The Princeton Review, Pakistan

 

FYI: In the language area, 'MT' stands for mother tongue, 'Fl' stands for fluent, and 'I' stands for intermediate user. Meanwhile 'LUMS', which is in the previous-degree area, stands for Lahore University of Management Sciences.

So, er, does anyone out there want to hire me? :)

Three Interesting Job Openings

As I cross the three-months-left-to-graduation mark (4 February to 4 May), a number of good job openings have been posted online. Among these, the following three are the most interesting.

Business Analyst Online Projects:

Business Analyst required with 1-3 years experience preferably in an online environment to work with Media Communications organisation. They are looking for a highly motivated, meticulous individual who shares the passion of producing the highest quality and innovative web solutions to clients. [via Seek and ITCom]

Portal Business Consultant:

The Portal Consultant is responsible for gathering requirements for their country customers and developing solutions to meet their business requirements, managing the projects through the development phase, and developing launch strategies and training in support of these systems. [via Seek for realestate.com.au]

Business Analyst / Project Officer Information and Intranet:

Work for a leading government organisation that is seeking a Business Analyst / Project Officer Information & Intranet to be responsible for business analysis of processes and systems whilst providing analytical knowledge and quality support to the business for the HR information system. [via IT Wire and Hudson]

Each of these job openings is for the kind of work I want to do -- i.e. more consulting and strategy work than technical work -- and, had this been early March instead of early February, I would probably have applied for them as well. One more month to go...

Media & Marketing: Old School vs. New School

Web 2.0 has changed the marketing landscape. However, not all people agree with that and one of the traditionalists that falls on this old school side is Simon Hammond. Laurel Papworth, meanwhile, teaches people about the power of social media and falls very clearly on the new school side.

Recently, Hammond was quoted in an article in AdNews written by Nina Lees:

Web 2.0 obsessive uptake of social interaction, user generated content control and unbridled interactivity has meant the lunatics are running the asylum. That's according to Melbourne adman Simon Hammond, chairman of Photon-owned communications agency Belong.

And Papworth...well, responded.

Closing vs. Disabling Your Facebook Account

The New York Times' Maria Aspan has written an article on how hard it is to really delete your Facebook account:

Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data.

While the Web site offers users the option to deactivate their accounts, Facebook servers keep copies of the information in those accounts indefinitely. Indeed, many users who have contacted Facebook to request that their accounts be deleted have not succeeded in erasing their records from the network.

[...]

The technological hurdles set by Facebook have a business rationale: they allow ex-Facebookers who choose to return the ability to resurrect their accounts effortlessly. According to an e-mail message from Amy Sezak, a spokeswoman for Facebook, “Deactivated accounts mean that a user can reactivate at any time and their information will be available again just as they left it.”

But it also means that disenchanted users cannot disappear from the site without leaving footprints. Facebook’s terms of use state that “you may remove your user content from the site at any time,” but also that “you acknowledge that the company may retain archived copies of your user content.”

And thus privacy and data ownership continue to be the most important debate 'n discussion topics in the evolving social media space.

We've Been Cloned!

Thanks to Joshua Gans, I have today learnt that MBS has been cloned by Richmonds University in Ontario, Canada. Well, at least according to Richmonds' website.

They have the same students, the same building, the same tag line, even a Dean who's lived the same life as ours has...you get the picture. Check out Gans' post to see what I mean. Or, better yet, compare the two websites:

Oh, and if you have any doubts about who copied who, check out the URL of About Richmonds University section (and of some of the other pages as well) or, for example, the site's Location page.

Like Gans said, I guess we're good enough to be imitated :)  Oh, and a special shout out to MBS' ITS department for creating such an awesome site.

Microsoft & Yahoo!

By now, everyone's heard of Microsoft's $44.6bn bid for Yahoo! and everyone's talked about it as well, though Yahoo! isn't saying much for the time being.

Here, in my opinion, are some of the most interesting articles currently published on this topic:

In fact, if you're only going to read one article on this topic, read Thurrott's. Though it would be good if you checked out the comparison table in Zheng's article as well.

Finally, in light of all this merger talk, check out Josh Lowensohn's article on Dot-com pioneers -- where are they now?. It makes and interesting read.

What a CMS Should Be

Eight Black's Simon Chen wrote a really good article today on what a Content Management System (CMS) should be. He argues that, for a company considering a CMS solution for its website, "buying into a stand alone CMS is just not logical." Instead, open source CMS' like WordPress are the way to go.

I agree. In fact, in my last job in Pakistan, I spent a couple of years trying to convince firms working in that country's development sector (both government and NGOs) of exactly that. I didn't use WordPress, but I did use, among others, applications like Mambo, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, phpBB, Alfresco, Moodle, MediaWiki, as well as countless plug-ins, add-ons, components, and modules. Each CMS has its own strengths and weaknesses, of course, and some are designed for specific things (you can't do much else with the message board system, phpBB, for example) but all of them do their job quite well. [Good article on how to choose an open source CMS]

And, though over the last year I've worked mostly with commercial systems like Intranet DASHBOARD (iD) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), I really do think that open source systems are a great way to go for most small companies and, increasingly, for medium-sized companies as well. It's only large firms that need much more than just a CMS solution that truly benefit from all the other features that systems like iD and MOSS bring with them. In fact, I'd almost feel silly using something like MOSS in a small company environment. That's like having a 40-seater bus as the company car for a firm that employs 15 people.

Anyway, my point is that Chen makes a good point, though it is worth it to look at much more than just WordPress.