MBET is going to Boston!

Posted on June 5th, 2007 by angie.
Categories: MBET.

Next week our entire class (sans a few stragglers) is heading down to Boston for a class trip. We’ll be flying out of Buffalo on the 14th and then we’ll be heading to the TieCon East Conference. We’ll also being taking a tour of MIT and meeting with Choate and General Catalyst. All in all it’s going to be a pretty eventful trip.

Previously I’d never heard about the TieCon non-profit group before and it seems like a pretty exiting concept. It is a global not-for-profit network of entrepreneurs. In addition 5% of US venture capital is arised by TIE members.

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Jungle and Art of the Start

Posted on April 29th, 2007 by angie.
Categories: MBET.

I just came back from the Jungle Business Plan competition in New York and I had a great time and a wonderful learning experience. I didn’t get a chance to see ther other teams compete as it was a closed presentation format and I couldnt’ stay for the finals but the feedback we got from the judges was excellent and it confirmed a few of the things that I learned from Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of the Start “.

The idea is important but the ability to communicate the idea is more important and don’t use business school terms excessively to communicate your business plan. I wish I had read the book before I started prepping for the pitch, because it provides guidelines that would have prevented a lot of the mistakes we made in our pitch and would have made our business plan a lot better. Oh well, hopefully it will make a difference in my future endeavours.

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Ode to the Course Evaluations

Posted on March 18th, 2007 by angie.
Categories: MBET.

My friend Jenn Prine has just alerted me to something very disturbing in our course evaluations. It states that “Course Load - typically a graduate course load should average between 10-15 hours per week. Bsed on a 13 week term, I would estimate the number of hourse per week spent in the course to be …. “

The Math:

There are 24 hours a day and 7 days in a week:

24 x 7= 168 hours per week

We are taking 11 courses:

10 x 11 = 110 and 15 x 11 = 165

So we should be spending between 110 hours to 165 hours per week on school which on average would be 82% of our time on school. Which leaves us approximately 4 hours a day for everything else including eating and sleeping.

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The Waking Dragon

Posted on March 18th, 2007 by angie.
Categories: General.

Although I’m always at the ready to defend my Chinese heritage, I’ve never really identified myself with China. It may seem very paradoxal; but culturally, Chinese Born Canadians are very different than individuals born in China or even Hong Kong or Taiwan for that matter.

I remember when I was at the University of Beijing taking a Mandarin language course that I was really reluctant to embrace China and living in China. At the same time I find myself always complaining about the state of China and how things could be better in terms of availability of education, distribution of wealth, and other public policy; but things are changing.

Everyone is now looking at China as the waking dragon; a country of massive potential that is now waking up and showing the world its true colours. As a Chinese individual that speaks fluent English with business and technology training I’ve been told numerous times that there are a lot of job opportunities for me if I learn Mandarin. I’ve always been very unwilling to entertain the idea, put off by the living standards and the cultural differences. Arrogant as it may seem, to be honest, perhaps there was a sense of superiority that was Western civilization is very prone to adapting. Now that some of my business training is really kicking in, I find myself entertaining the idea of working in China more and more appealing. The job market in North America is saturated, with less opportunities for growth, and the demand for Expatriates in China is immense. Not only that, but working in China give me a chance as a Chinese individual to aid in the development of China through contribution to the economy and knowledge sharing in a small way. Personally, it will give me a chance to learn more about my heritage and ancestry.

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Dubai and Abu Dhabi - EWB Conference

Posted on March 9th, 2007 by angie.
Categories: MBET.

I just came back from Dubai, where I spent four leisure days, and Abu Dhabi, where I attended a three day Education without Borders conference.

In Dubai, we spent the days sight seeing and the nights exploring the night life in the Middle East. Luckily my friend Jenn had a local expatiate (oxymoron) friend to show us to all the hotspots in Dubai. My initial impression of Dubai is that it has a culture that is very “face” oriented and while we in the Western world are often presented with the modern and very western influenced Dubai, across the creek (literally) there are old fashioned souks and locals in more traditional dress. Another thing I’ve noticed is that there is a big class division system as well as gender separation. In the souks, there was a notable absence of females and the males openly stared at our dress (shorts and t-shirts). As well, on the buses there are clearly labeled seats in the front of the bus “for ladies only”; I learned from Lonely Planet later that this was to protect ladies from male stares.

From conversations with some expatiates and some Dubai locals, as well as my own research into Dubai before I went I learned that there is also a big class division system. In general, foreign labourers are paid very little and live in “ghettos” outside the city, locals are very wealthy (a lot of them receive income due to the fact that Dubai has a local ownership policy where foreign companies coming in must have a local partner), and expatiates live a very jet-set lifestyle. As well there is an unstated preference to hire Caucasian expatiates, however this I heard from the rumor mill and I can’t confirm it 100%.

Perhaps we didn’t know where to go, but we also found that there wasn’t a lot of cultural sights to see within Dubai, we hit most of the souks and after that we spent a lot of time looking at modern architectural wonders, like the Burj Al Arab. I personally had hoped to see more Middle East culture, but I’ll be the first to admit that four days is a very limited time frame.

At night, we hit up a bunch of clubs and restaurants, the nicest of which I found to be QD’s (shisha bar/restaurant) at the Park Hyatt, with awesome waterfront views and a cool atmosphere).

We also attended an awesome 3-day, rumoured to be $30 million USD, Education without Borders conference in Abu Dhabi and it was way beyond my wildest expectations.

In the 3-days there was a variety of sessions ranging from speaker series, student paper presentaitons, and debating sessions. The most notable speakers for me were Nicholas Negroponte (creator of a laptop for every child) and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Professor Muhammad Yunus (Microfinancing). The days were so jam-packed I found myself wishing the speakers had more than the 10 minutes alloted to them so that they could go more in depth with their respective topics.

Aside from the speakers, the most amazing part of the conference was the no holds barred spending on entertainment (which was a bit hypocritical, considering we were there to bridge the gap between developing and developed countries, but so much money was spent on the frills. Not that I didn’t enjoy all of it though!

The entire conference was held at the Emirates Palace Hotel which is reputed to be the most expensive hotel every built with construction costs of over $3 billion USD. Probably because of all the silk tapestries, marble, and gold on every surface. On the first night of the Gala dinner we were presented with a 120 metre projection screen with artists rapelling up and down the screens firethrowers and rollerbladers parading across the screen, a guy in ball rolling around (American Gladiators style), and a opera singer on stilts; and that was just the introduction!

Throughout the rest of the night, we were presented with world reknown French magician, a Bangladeshi dance troop (who amusingly came back on and demanded an apology from the EWB), and an electric violinist. There was also an artist thrown in there who painted a picture that looked like gibberish upside down and then flipped it over to reveal a very detailed portrait.

The second night they drove us all out to the desert where we went dune bashing, ATVing, and camel riding. There were also shisha pipes, falcons, and they gave us some traditional dress to play with. After we all got settled in there was a symphony orchestra and opera performance with Plácido Domingo and an amazing display of fireworks.

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Entrepreneurship runs in the family

Posted on March 2nd, 2007 by angie.
Categories: General.

Time for a little shameless self promotion. My cousin, Austin, has just launched an online t-shirt store with his original designs. They are all silk-screened on high quality t-shirts and the artwork is quite amazing if I do say so myself. Check it out.

www.theriffraffs.ca

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Dubai/Abu Dhabi EWB Conference

Posted on March 2nd, 2007 by angie.
Categories: MBET.

Hey everyone … keep checking back for a very long blog on the whole EWB conference experience. Pictures will also be up as soon as everyone gets a chance to go through them and remove whatever unflattering pictures of themselve they can find.

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Lost all my previous entries.

Posted on February 20th, 2007 by angie.
Categories: General.

I accidentally deleted all my previous entries while cleaning out my webpage. Anyone know where BlogDesk archives posted entries?

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