Fwd: *Babson CIMS March 20, 2008 Workshop Announcement*

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Schaus, Kathleen <kschaus@babson.edu>
Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 12:31 PM
Subject: *CIMS March 20, 2008 Workshop Announcement*
To: "Schaus, Kathleen" <kschaus@babson.edu>

Dear Babson MBA Students:

 

The Center for Information Management Studies (CIMS) at Babson College cordially invites you to our next workshop on

Thursday, March 20, 2008, entitled From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0.

 

Please see attached flyer for more details.

 

To register, please call the CIMS office at 781-239-4531, or email kschaus@babson.edu.

We are online at www.babson.edu/cims

 

We look forward to seeing you!

 

 

Cathy Schaus, Administrative Assistant

Center for Information Management Studies (CIMS)

Babson College, Babson Park, MA   02457-0310

phone-781-239-4716  fax- 781-239-6416

kschaus@babson.edu      www.babson.edu/cims

 

--
 Li Hong
 MBA Class of 2008
 Babson College
 Cell:508-333-3616
 Skype: cefs99
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/lihong

12 hour difference

I just realize this may be a quite big thing. I subscribed to the Chinese version of Financial Times and WSJ back to 2005. And read them since then. Never feel any thing special but till 2 minutes ago.

What's wrong? Now it's Sunday evening, Feb 24th in Boston but already Monday morning, Feb 25th in Beijing. So I start reading news of Feb 25th actually when I am still in Feb 24th. Interesting feeling, huh. Feel like a time machine...

So it's globalization. Quite sure every Wall Street banker may check out what's going on in China/Asia the first thing when they are at their Feb 25th Monday morning tomorrow... So what if a Chinese customer wanna talk to someone in the States to do a deal? What if a Chinese/Asian competitor such as Samsung launched a new attach of Motorola mobile biz today in Seoul but the Motorola CEO finds most employee are in Sunday-evening-tv-show-watching mood? Yeah, authorize the power to local team. But, weird feeling, huh.


So if there is a guy in Beijing going to read my blog, he will find out I am posting from the "past"...

First Meebo Chatter from my blog

After I installed Meebo widget at this blog almost half a year ago, I'd seen couple of folks reading my blog via this meebo widget. But unfortunately, only had one classmate once said "Hi" via the meebo widget.

So two days ago, while I was working online, a stranger suddently shot me a question via the meebo widget "Can I ask a question about Dell X50 and Skype?" WOW. It's amazing. Like finally an alien had sent a message to the earth. Sadly the guy didn't say anything else...Unreliable wireless signal from his neightbourhood, I guess!


Then this is a big thing. While companies such as liveperson is offering those online webchat tool for companies like T-Mobile etc to offer customer service on the fly, this Meebo thing could be more pervasive. So not only I can enjoy asynchronized communication with bloggers via comment or email, but I may be able to do real-time communication. That's awesome! So people seeking quick response may just search Meebo's Widget Expert Directory (a cool idea for new product, Meebor!) rather than go to using other P2p consulting service like Gerson Lehrman Group Councils
(where I am a signed domain expert of Internet industry in China:-).

Then consider the "Meebo Room" feature, what if there is an Expert channel has people with different domain expertise? Consider Meebo's big user base, will this be a killer app to kill other asynchronized Q&A service such as yahoo! answer, Baidu Zhidao and P2P consulting service such as Ether?

Technorati Tags     meebo,GLG

Compaq C700 - Ubuntu Linux - Wireless Setup

Finally had enough with firefox's poor performance at Windows vista. It takes 500M+ memory! So I decided to continue my Ubuntu linux journey.

As Linux is "notoriously" great for old hardware, Ubuntu inevitablly had problem again at my newly purchased Compaq C700 in Dec 2007. Everything is fine but the most important wireless. It's a broadcom BCM93411 chip and Ubuntu has difficult to get it working. Seems simply because Ubuntu 7.1, the newest version, doesn't include the driver for this new wireless chip. But here is a great solution.

Then after a while, I realized sometimes firefox lost keyboard focus. That means firefox doesn't response to my keyboard input and seems it's due to the fact I am using SCIM input system as the default input since it allows me to input Chinese...But here is another solution for this problem.

Technorati Tags     linux,chinese,ubuntu,scim,broadcom,BCM93411

SV VC-funded Mobile Dating Startup Seeking PM in Beijing, China

OK. A Job Offer. A leading Silicon Valley Venture Capital fund invested fast-growing mobile dating startup, based in Seattle and founded by serial enterpreneur/former Mckinsey/Microsoft employee, is looking for experienced project manager for their R&D center in Beijing, China. English/Chinese skill is required. You will report to GM directly. The company targets both US and China market, and will launch product in Verizon and China Mobile network very soon.

Forward your resume to lhong1 @ babson.edu

Bountyjobs.com

A classmate of my "marketing for entrepreneur" class had mentioned a very interesting startup  during the class when my team presented our startup idea. This startup is Bountyjobs.com, co-founded by Jeremy Lappi, fomer co-founder of versity.com. Following is a quick summary of its biz model that I found quite amusing. Actually, if replacing "job" or "recruiting" with "travel" at its "about us" page, that's my startup:)


1. Bountyjob let company post a bonus for each position
2. bountyjob hold the money from company for 60 days before passing to recruiter
3. making competitive information available for everyone. Like guru.com. will u want to work on a bid where 20 ppl are working on now or a big only 3 are working on?
4. track record of each recruiter
5. recruiter pay for every resume submitted  if the recruiter not elected by the company
6. remove the burden on recruiter to do sales/bd with companies

CVP for recruiters:

- outsource bd/sales
- improve your time efficiency
- we handle all paperwork, colelction with company

major changes since launch:
- rank all post by company's last login date so active company get better  position

additional info:

Interivew at ERE 2007

By 2007, 3000 recruiters, 40%-50% active, closing 2 deals a day,

Interivew at Recruiting Lounge



http://www.cheezhead.com/2007/11/30/bounty-jobs-2/

BoutyJob.com co-founder Ron Elitzur. interview part 1 and part 2. Including  a quick demo of its website. Useful since it's not open for public.

Sue whom, really?

Just saw this "MPA Members Sue Chinese File Sharing Network Provider"
piece today at PC World website. And it reminds me a discussion I had with friends a few days ago. Our discussion is while a company can be sued for many wrongdoing things, should the institutional investor of the company be sued as well? After all, the investment of those institutional investors did nothing but give the company confidence to continue their business practice. And those investors are sophisticated enough to understand the legal implication of those companies. So in this MPA case, will the MPA sue Google which happen to be an investor of this Chinese File Sharing Network Provider, XunLei? Clearly there is no fundamental business model change before and after Google's investment so Google's investment did help XunLei to continue their business practice in a bigger scope.

Then back to my early post about venture capital money contributed significantly, if not decisively, to the copy-cat movement in the Internet industry in China. Since lots US VCs cannot get China-based innovative biz model right, Chinese entrepreneurs from both mainland and oversea had figured out that the easiest way to get those VC money maybe sell a copy-cat story. And it seems works well. For example, Facebook's China clone, Xiaonei.com, claimed to received funding money from US angel investors, then was acquired by another bigger company, Oak Pacific that backed by Doll Capital Investment. So even I am a mainland Chinese myself, I quite agree with the feeling of the author of the post "Losing Your Hard Work to a China Copy Cat".

I'd rather to see less money in China but more on true innovation. Who said Chinese cannot develop unique startup?



Technorati Tags     google,xunlei,mpa,xiaonei

The Pioneer

Well preparing assignments for our  newly developed Capstone class at Babson MBA program, I have a thought in my mind. More specifically, I'd like to give credit to the article "The Laptop Wars Business.View" from Economist. This is a required reading for the class and generally talking about whether the charity approach chosen by Mr. Nicholas Negroponte, the renowned MIT professor and director of Media Lab at MIT, is the best way to develop low-price and low-cost laptop for poors in developing countries. The article ends with "Judging by Intel's enthusiasm for selling the Classmate, there may be a decent for-profit market to be created. Mr Negroponte certainly deserves credit for highlighting the need to get laptops to children in the developing world, and for pointing out a business opportunity, even if inadvertently. But that does not mean his is necessarily the best organisation to deliver the goods."

I am not going to argue which approach is better but I want to say that the reason why people give so much credit to pioneers is not really about the direct outcome of proposals of pioneers but the overall impact those proposals could generate. For example, without Mr. Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, others such as Intel and Asus may never enter this market. This is the value of pioneer. Even if OLPC and its XO laptop didn't become the standard or market winer at last, it still deserve most applause.

It's always easy to critize new things because without those new things presented in front of us, we may not know how and where to critize. That's why it's called initiative.

Technorati Tags     MIT,Babson,OLPC,Davos,Ecnominist,Negroponte

Twittering on Facebook

I am always more of a Twitter fan than a Facebook fan. I don't know but never really get into the Facebook-mode. Quite surprised to learn one of my best buddy in China, K from Canada, told me that he is a crazy Facebook fan. Hmmm.. Is it because I didn't have my undergraduate in the States so didn't have a big network here.

The good news today is that I just have a sparkle about finding application to sync my status on facebook and twitter automatically. I found it! the twitter facebook application. I installed it and it works like a charm.

Then surprising I found out that Twitter is way less popular in East coast, at least in Babson. None of my classmate is using this twitter application though so many have facebook profile. Interesting...

But the twitter blog talking about this facebook app was at May 2007. I am so late...

Technorati Tags     twitter,facebook

Marketing for Entrepreneur class at Babson College

I am keeping have great professors and courses at Babson College at my last semester study. Bob Caspe, a serial entrepreneur, is teaching Marketing for Entrepreneur class as an elective course for MBA students at Babson College. His rich startup experience allows him to really get the key point and have us focus on what's the most important thing, if only one thing, for us to do.

After conversation with him, I realized how much entrepreneurs are obessed with what they could do (the bright future) but not what they should do (the crucial reality). Bob urge us to simply focus on generating cash flow asap, talking to customers right away even without your product ready. Why? Having customers atest your product/service idea to see if the CVP is strong enough, to see if the hypothesis is right.

The format of the class is also interesting. Every student can pitch idea at the first class to try to recruit other students in the class to join forces. Everyone must end up either running own team or being part of others' team. While Bob will teach key part of startup process in every class, he also ask 3 team a time to present in each class to update the class their recent progress and discuss issues with the rest classmates.

Fortunately M and I have a team with J and A. Thank you J and A! It's a great pleasure to see people are having interest in Rilik.

Also as Bob agreed, I will share his excellent "Marketing for Entrepreneur" class materials here: the handbook itself and the course description. It's very helpful to read through.

Technorati Tags     startup,babson,mba,rilik,caspe