MediaTech Trek: Silicon Valley

A few others have already blogged about our LGO Domestic Plant Trek so I thought I'd write about another trek I went on in the first week of January - the MediaTech Trek.  Before I do though, I thought it would be worth sharing at least one picture from the Plant Trek:

Don checking out a Tesla at the Detroit Auto Show!

Outside one of the Google buildings

I was able to go on the MediaTech trek because I am a member of the Sloan MediaTech club and also because the Domestic Plant Trek started on the second week of January.  There were about 25-30 of us on the trek, and the companies we visited in Silicon Valley included: Intel, Zynga, Charles Schwab, Cisco, Google, Facebook, VMware, eBay, and LinkedIn.  It was great to get more of the Sloan perspective of a few of our partner companies, as well as learn about some companies and their cultures that were more on the startup end of their life cycle.  It was also very interesting to visit all of these companies and to hear about the opportunities available to MBA students in the tech space.  Operations roles were always presented as potential career tracks we could follow, but other positions in product management, strategy, and business development to name a few were well represented as well.

Me and Limor at Facebook

For a few of our visits, we integrated with some of the Sloan E&I folks who were also out in Silicon Valley for their E&I trek.  Also, on one of the nights, we went to an MIT Sloan alum reception that was held at the Computer History Museum (go figure) in Mountain View so we got to see the rest of the E&I group, some of the alums who spoke at the companies we visited, and other alums who were from the area.  Overall, I had a great time visiting the companies, seeing Silicon Valley for the first time, and hanging out with MediaTech people on this trek.  The Silicon Valley portion of the trek was from January 3 - 5th.  Most of the group went on to visit Seattle for the remainder of the week, but I went back to Boston to tie up loose ends for plant trek and to repack for weather ranging from 20 degrees to 85 degrees, which was definitely tricky.  After having a few weeks off in December, things ramped up pretty quickly with all of the treks, InternshipFest, and InterviewFest.

By the way, good luck to all of those who interviewed!!          

Looking Back on the Fall Semester

Even though it's already February, Happy New Year!  Actually, I guess it's appropriate to say according to the Lunar Calendar.  :)

Before posting on more recent events, I wanted to blog my two cents on the fall semester.  As you might have already read in several of the other bloggers' posts, there was a definite contrast between the summer and fall semester both socially and academically.  A lot of applicants I spoke to over the semester asked how it's possible that we earn two degrees in two years.  I will admit that it's not a walk in the park.  Although the perspectives vary from LGO to LGO, there are definitely challenges faced and certain trade-offs (both good and bad) that need to be balanced in this program.       

Time was easily my biggest constraint in the fall.  Between all of the classes I was taking and clubs and committees I was involved in, I definitely felt like I was spreading myself thin.  For the most part, although I didn't do the greatest job in branching out, I'm happy with the relationships I've built through Sloan (i.e. my core team and Marketlab team) so far.  Below is a picture of my core team.  I only ended up being in three classes with them, but overall, I had a positive experience working in such a diverse team.  Between the seven of us, we represented San Diego, NY, Boston, Washington (state), Indonesia, Korea, and Brazil!

Mediterranean Penguins: Steve, Chris, Caesar, me, Luiz, Janet, and Giuliana

Best of Both Worlds

There are a lot of ways to get involved in the Sloan community, and by a lot, I mean for every professional, personal, cultural, and recreational interest you have, it is highly likely that you will find some club or group that shares your interests.  Going into the fall, I was already involved in a few LGO committees but knew I wanted to take advantage of the club opportunities at Sloan.  Because I'm interested in high tech, I joined MediaTech and MoMIT (Mobile, Media, and Internet Technology) as well as the Marketing Club and Sloan Women in Management (SWIM).

That may seem like a lot of clubs, but I knew my involvement in most of them would be pretty minimal given everything else going on.  More than anything, I wanted to be a part of these communities (and email distributions) so that if there was an event of particular interest to me, I would have the option of going.  So far I'm glad I joined them, because I've already had the opportunity to attend networking events for each one of the clubs.  Another big perk is that they've allowed me to integrate with the Sloan community on a more personal basis.

Of the four, I am the most involved in the Marketing Club, which has a semester long marketing project that members can participate in called MarketLab.  We're grouped together based on what project we would like to work on; I am in the group that is working with a roboticist in the Media Lab.  It's a good balance between using my technical background to understand his products and applying lessons learned so far in my marketing class.  I think my group is going to get a chance to tour the Media Lab next week, which I'm pretty excited about!

Overall, extracurriculars have definitely contributed to the highlights of my semester so far.  Being on committees and clubs in both the LGO and Sloan community has been one aspect of being able to take advantage of the broad opportunities presented to us in this program.

SIP Week & Fall Semester

First off, we're well into fall and it's so beautiful along the Charles.  :)

Last week was Sloan Innovation Period (SIP).  It was basically a week where we had a break from our Sloan classes and had the opportunity to explore classes in leadership and ethics.  Since LGOs still had engineering classes last week, we had different SIP requirements than the Sloanies and didn't technically have to sign up for any additional courses beyond the Core SIP Seminar.   

The Core Seminar titled "Ethics, Values, and Voice" was introduced for the first time this year.  The week started out with a case discussion on "BP and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster of 2010", was followed by a panel discussion on Ethics and the Financial Sector, and ended with class discussions on ethical frameworks and decision making.  I was enrolled in another SIP class, because I'm involved in a project called MarketLab, which I'll talk about in a later post, affiliated with Sloan's Marketing Club.  This class met Mon, Tues, and Wed evening.  Being out of sync with the normal semester schedule threw me off a bit, but overall, class discussions were interesting and for my MarketLab class, I enjoyed the time spent with my team members.   

SIP week is supposed to be lighter than other weeks but I think the week is just as busy for most LGOs.  Here's a comparison of my schedule:

Normal Week

SIP Week

Regular classes have resumed again, and I have to say, it feels good to be back to my normal schedule.  A few posts ago, I talked about the classes I was enrolled in for the fall.  Things have definitely changed since that post!  MIT's add/drop policies are pretty flexible and I have taken full advantage of them.  I ended up dropping my half-term marketing elective and my engineering course and adding another engineering course (15.093J Optimization Methods).  I made my add/drop decisions based on the time required for each class and how well I would or wouldn't be able to prioritize them.  I'm finding that one of my biggest constraints here has been time, and I'm constantly learning what my limits are in terms of what I can handle.       

Many of you out there may be going through the application process right now.  Becca Ford, LGO '10, wrote an awesome post with great advice regarding applications. I especially like what she wrote on essays.  She had a very realistic perspective and very helpful information on what to consider when writing them.  I got a chance to meet several prospectives yesterday during Ambassador Day.  It was great to see such a good turn out and such a strong interest in the program.  Good luck to everyone applying! 

Stay tuned...

How has it already been almost two months since I've last blogged?  So much has happened since the end of August.  Even though this upcoming week is SIP week, my schedule looks just as, if not, busier than my other weeks, so I think I'll write a mini series with updates starting next week.

As a reminder for myself, topics I would like to write about include:
SIP Week
Courses
Clubs
Cohort/Core Team
Being an LGO in the fall

Something I would like to mention in this post for all prospective applicants is that you should definitely try to make it to the LGO Ambassador Day and/or Information Evening on Monday, October 25th.  I went last year, and I thought it was a great way to learn more about the program, meet current students, and get a feel for Boston/Cambridge (it was my first time visiting the city!).

1 Semester Down, 3 to Go!

With 4 projects, 2 presentations, 2 project/simulation write-ups, 3 homework assignments, 1 test, and 1 paper, the last two weeks of the summer semester were pretty hectic to say the least.  But because so much of the work was group work, most teams pushed through the end by resorting to the divide-and-conquer method of completing all of the tasks.  Although it was hectic, the end of the summer was a lot less stressful than I would have imagined.

Following the final class and before our summer barbecue, we had an LGO version of the Oscars, where some of the awards worth mentioning included the Bobble Head Award (person who sleeps the most in class), the Game Show Contestant Award (person who is most likely to raise his/her hand in class), and the 1 Angry Man Award (person who was the most frustrated in class).  All of the winners received a colorful bow-tie in honor of our High Velocity professor, Steven Spear.  It was all in good fun and all of the award-winners were great sports.  :)  

All of the Summer Standouts!

One other thing I wanted to mention about the end of the semester was that we had a visit from the CEO of Flextronics, Mike McNamara, the Monday before school got out.  He was very down-to-earth and honest, and it was very interesting to learn about a company I wasn't familiar with.  The information he shared along with all of the Q and As definitely sparked my interest, and I plan to further look into what the company does.

Once the semester ended, I headed back home to San Diego.  It's been great out here as always - spent with amazing people in amazing weather.  This week is actually Sloan's pre-term week with review sessions on several of the core classes.  Because the LGOs have already taken a few of the core classes and because I wanted to take advantage of my vacation time, I decided to opt out of pre-term week.

As LGOs we went through our own orientation during the first week of June, but now we get to experience the Sloan orientation for about a week starting Monday, August 30th.  For orientation and throughout the Fall semester, the 48 LGOs will be evenly split among the six Sloan cohorts (a.k.a. oceans) and within those oceans we'll be sub-divided into smaller groups and no longer be working in our LGO summer groups.  I think Sloan sets up the groups so that no two LGOs are in the same one.  I'm looking forward to meeting my new classmates and the people in my cohort.  I'm also looking forward to the classes I'll be taking this semester which include:

15.010 Economic Analysis for Business Decisions
15.280 Communication for Leaders
15.311 Organizational Processes (often called Organizational Behavior at other b-schools)
15.516 Corporate Financial Accounting (all Sloanies and most LGOs take 15.515 Financial Accounting, but a few of us LGOs are taking this class instead due to a schedule conflict with an engineering class)
15.810 Marketing Management
15.821 Listening to the Customer (half-term course)
6.341 Discrete-Time Signal Processing

I'll also be taking two seminars:
15.972J Global Operations Leadership Seminar
15.972 Leadership and Ethics
 

It should be a busy semester, but I'm sure balancing the academic and social aspects of the program won't be a problem, as it wasn't over the summer.  Until next time!

The Flying V!

At the beginning of the program in June, we were assigned summer groups.  At first, I had a hard time understanding what exactly being in these groups entailed, but looking back at the last two months, I don't think I could have made it this far without them!  We meet several times a week, and all of our meetings start with a group check-in where each individual will share his or her input/thoughts on classes, assignments, plant trek visits or anything going on really.  Then we try to stick to the schedule we've mapped out for the next few hours.  Give or take a few times, I think we've done a great job staying on task.  We work on everything from group projects and assignments to simulation and case study analyses.     

     

Mike, Dan, Matt, Greg, John, and me

Our group, team five, is named The Flying V.  We got team shirts printed, and we wear our shirts on days we have leadership class.  In case the connection between the two isn't very clear, wearing the shirts on leadership days is in line with the theme of how a flock of birds have rotating leaders, which is something we also incorporate into our meetings.  We rotate through the group on who mediates the meetings for the week, and it's been pretty effective.  We manage to take the group name one step further by sitting in a V-formation during our leadership classes.  A bit dorky, I know, but I love it!  Today was awesome, because after our group meeting most of our group headed over to the Muddy Charles, the on-campus pub, and had a few beers while we worked on our Littlefield Simulation, which is a job shop simulation where we try to maximize our revenue through operations/production-related changes in a given amount of time.

At the Muddy Charles

We've worked in these groups for a majority of the summer, but last Friday we were assigned different groups for the day for the Leadership Reaction Course we did at Camp Edwards in Cape Cod.  Both Limor and Paul give descriptions on what the day was all about in their blogs.  Our team facilitator was Dr. Jaffe, and after it was my turn to play the leader role, he told me that I had a command-and-control style of leadership in that exercise, which I thought was interesting.  I had a great time working in a group with other members of my class.  We were also lucky enough to have Patty, the Program Coordinator, in our group!  

Sid, Amil, me, Daniel, Jose, and Patty

All in all, my LGO group experiences have been amazing so far, and it's bittersweet knowing that we'll be in new study groups in the fall when we're integrated with the rest of the Sloan first-years.