Strategy

In May, I'll be heading to France to compete in the annual MBA tournament against some of the other fine business schools in Europe.

Among some of the events that we can compete in: rugby, basketball, rowing, and many others. And yes, CHESS!

This is probably the most demanding and perilous events of the entire tournament. To the winner goes Conquest and Glory for all Eternity...

Okay, maybe not.

But that's what I'm competing in. So I got together with chess event lead, Kapil. He introduced me to the website GameKnot. It's a free chess site and greatly speeds up chess-by-correspondence.

One of the side effects of this has been my renewed interest in the game. Now, it's much more interesting than when my uncle first taught me all the moves when I was very young. My uncle incidently, is rated at the Expert level. He played chess by mail for many years and there a separate Champion for chess-by-mail.

So I'm learning the Ruy Lopez, the King's Gambit, and something called the Hippopotamus Defense (very obscure by chess standards). Anyway, check it out, maybe you'll get hooked too.

WIKI WIKI

In my Information Systems class we were assigned to write a paper on a disruptive technology. It was assigned randomly and it was the one I wanted. We got wikis.

Some of the other choices: RFID, XBRL, WiFi, and few others. If you don't know what these are, GO FIND OUT! Seriously, these are going to shape the future of business and life in general.

In the course of finding information about wiki technology, we came across the origins of the name. So here you have it: Wiki means "quick" in Hawaiian, so wiki wiki means "super quick." This is a picture of the wiki wiki buses that drive or used to drive around Honolulu Airport. My team and I thought this was the funniest picture.

And we learned a whole lot about wikis in the process!

r_m

What we're here for!

Okay, so I've been away for awhile but I had to get into this a little bit.

I came to business school to learn about, well, how to run a business. One of the things about IE is that you have to submit a business plan in order to graduate.

Thankfully, it doesn't have to be the next Google or Ebay, but the business plan needs to be rigorous from a research and business perspective.

It is possible that some of those business ideas will be pretty good.

In the picture, it's Masayuki (I hope I spelled it right!) and my roommate Miguel. They are doing a real estate site called Unvistazo.com

It's been running for some time now and there's some pretty sweet places available all over Spain. These are for rent and to buy. What's cool is Miguel wrote the engine that supports the site. Anyway, a little free advertising never hurts right?

For now it's a free site for all, but soon that will change. And that's when the big bucks start rolling in!! Well, for these guys anyway...

r_m