Start Ups / Entrepreneurs / VC and other interesting things for us to look at while at Mannheim Business School:
Mannheim Business School - Institute for SME's
http://www.entrepreneur-guide.de/
Venture Capital Summit for Students in Feb 2010
http://munichventuresummit.megabyet.net/
Social Media to the extreme:
http://pleaserobme.com/
Other websites:
http://www.deutsche-startups.de/
http://www.vc-magazin.de/
http://www.gruenderszene.de/
www.nexxt-change.org
Would love more insight into the German / Euro market...
MBS Stammtisch - It's happening!
You are invited to the Mannheim Business School Stammtisch evening:
The Inaugural MBS Stammtisch - 5th March 2010 @ 18:30 at Novus (M4,1)
Stay for one drink, or many. Stay to meet one person or many. We invite you nonetheless to take the opportunity to meet new people, explore other cultures, meet other students from the Full Time MBA, the EMBA, the EMAT across all year levels.
After many meetings and feedback from you all (see attached for a summary), we would like to kick off a monthly networking event for students, alumni and friends of the Mannheim Business School.
SA State Championships - AUBC win Mens' Eight!
SA Rowing First Grade State Titles from A.M. Ramsay International course West Lakes, 20/02/2010.
AUBC win Mens' Eight at South Australian State Championships.
Results for the rest of the regatta - Phil Mangelsdorf
AUBC win Mens' Eight at South Australian State Championships.
And it was the Adelaide Uni mens eight who won the 117th and last race of the weekend on Sunday and the state title in the mens eights from their arch rivals and last years winners, the Adelaide club.
The two rivals were level after 500 metres of racing but then the Adelaide Uni crew, stroked by Mathew Bolt, settled on a rock solid 35 strokes per minute and took the lead over Adelaide who were always rating two or more strokes higher and looked short in their stroke making as they tried everything to keep up with the speed of the Adelaide Uni crew.
Adelaide Uni put on a finishing burst towards the end of the race but it was hardly needed as they crossed the finish line 7.29 seconds in front of Adelaide with the St Peters College crew 8.67 behind third and Prince Alfred College fourth.
The Adelaide Uni crew was again successfully coached by Michael Jeffries and contained several of the men who won the Australian Universities title last year and for this race was further strengthened by the inclusion of the experienced Australian representative Bolt and Olympian Chris Morgan.
Results for the rest of the regatta - Phil Mangelsdorf
RFID / Barcodes Do we need them?
Machine vision is now so powerful it can detect slight changes in skin movement (See video on the graphics behind The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ted.com for ideas) under many light conditions. In the case of warehouse and supermarket inventory/POS management systems it would seem that the next step forward is to remove RFID and barcodes altogether and replace the readers with machine vision. Training machines to read objects, to recognise certain logos, colours and shapes is relatively simple technology. As long as the features are distinctive and all objects are placed within view of the camera they can be 'read'. There would be no need to scan anything physically just simply put the items along a conveyor and let the machine do the scanning.
Clearly there are already sunk costs in infrastructure at warehouses and supermarkets but over time the current systems will need to be upgraded in any case. Marks and Spencer, Ikea and others are already experimenting with self serve cashiers. Machine vision could be the next generation.
Clearly there are already sunk costs in infrastructure at warehouses and supermarkets but over time the current systems will need to be upgraded in any case. Marks and Spencer, Ikea and others are already experimenting with self serve cashiers. Machine vision could be the next generation.
Mannheim One School Stammtisch Proposal
“One School” Update:
8th February 2010
A number of us from the Mannheim Business School met on Friday at Novus to further discussions and keep this project moving. Included were program management, representatives from the EMAT and Fulltime MBA as well as Alumni from the EMBA.
Firstly, thanks to those who came along. It was a most enjoyable evening meeting you all and to get feedback and develop ideas on how to go forward bringing the school together.
Key discussion points and resolutions were:
8th February 2010
A number of us from the Mannheim Business School met on Friday at Novus to further discussions and keep this project moving. Included were program management, representatives from the EMAT and Fulltime MBA as well as Alumni from the EMBA.
Firstly, thanks to those who came along. It was a most enjoyable evening meeting you all and to get feedback and develop ideas on how to go forward bringing the school together.
Key discussion points and resolutions were:
Infosys Company Presentation
Aditya Nath Jha, Head of Global Branding and Corporate Marketing at Infosys presented on the 2nd of February. I took notes, luckily, because it was one of the best company presentations we have been seen at the Mannheim Business School this year.
We never know what we will get at these presentations. Sometimes the speaker simply tells us how good their company is, sometimes they don't even mention the company and simply give us a presentation to somehow inspire us to join the company. This one from Infosys was somewhere in between. Unfortunately for many of us who are interested, they are looking for experienced German nationals to give them a direct contact with the industry here. They are expanding rapidly in Germany currently. Due to their employee demographic being 96% Indian they have had troubles previously getting traction in the German market. It looks like they have woken up to this and are starting to make some progress. So although not so useful to us as a recruiting drive it was a great presentation nonetheless. Here are some notes:
Six Key changes in Marketing:
We never know what we will get at these presentations. Sometimes the speaker simply tells us how good their company is, sometimes they don't even mention the company and simply give us a presentation to somehow inspire us to join the company. This one from Infosys was somewhere in between. Unfortunately for many of us who are interested, they are looking for experienced German nationals to give them a direct contact with the industry here. They are expanding rapidly in Germany currently. Due to their employee demographic being 96% Indian they have had troubles previously getting traction in the German market. It looks like they have woken up to this and are starting to make some progress. So although not so useful to us as a recruiting drive it was a great presentation nonetheless. Here are some notes:
Six Key changes in Marketing:
Four Square - A clever analytical tool?
Foursquare is really quite an interesting experiment. With Facebook and Twitter, as well as many other sites, there are more and more opportunities for people to present their latest ideas and movements online to share. But why?
Communicating:
I can see why people want to use Facebook (i'm an addict by the way!) to communicate. It aggregates all your friends and links them to photos and interests. It's in a way just a better organised email system with nice features such as photo share. Similarly, Xing and LinkedIN are specialised aggregators of contacts aligning common professional networks.
News:
Twitter and other apps are news broadcasters. While you can communicate using Twitter, it's very disjointed in my view. I don't use it for much more than collecting news streams and screening over the news and other interest sites.
Online Presence:
It seems Foursquare and another I have seen blippy.com are attempting to entice people to put more information about their lives online. Foursquares is presented as a game to collect info on local cafes and 'places'. People then say where they, via mobile devices, and if they frequent it more than other users then they become the mayor of the location. I see Harvard University has listed all it's campus locations on Foursquare. In essence it is becoming a clever analytical tool to see where people are going and perhaps even learning why. Like Google analytics tracks users through a site, Foursquare may attempt to track humans in real life thanks to their willingness to input the data! How that will get monetised remains to be seen - a cool game at the moment. I'd love to find out more.
Blippy attracts even more extraverted people who list what they have recently purchased. So, while there are people who don't want to have a presence online under any circumstances, there are others who want to have absolutely everything online. Personally I find it a little strange
Where next?
I see these sites taking the input information from these extroverted people and aggregating that information (their movements, their purchasing patterns and whatever next) to build profiles to then target further information when presenting to them. Maybe it may even become a turbo powered calendar2.0 (calendar3.0!) system showing what's hip and happening according to an algorithm based profile...any thing is possible!
Communicating:
I can see why people want to use Facebook (i'm an addict by the way!) to communicate. It aggregates all your friends and links them to photos and interests. It's in a way just a better organised email system with nice features such as photo share. Similarly, Xing and LinkedIN are specialised aggregators of contacts aligning common professional networks.
News:
Twitter and other apps are news broadcasters. While you can communicate using Twitter, it's very disjointed in my view. I don't use it for much more than collecting news streams and screening over the news and other interest sites.
Online Presence:
It seems Foursquare and another I have seen blippy.com are attempting to entice people to put more information about their lives online. Foursquares is presented as a game to collect info on local cafes and 'places'. People then say where they, via mobile devices, and if they frequent it more than other users then they become the mayor of the location. I see Harvard University has listed all it's campus locations on Foursquare. In essence it is becoming a clever analytical tool to see where people are going and perhaps even learning why. Like Google analytics tracks users through a site, Foursquare may attempt to track humans in real life thanks to their willingness to input the data! How that will get monetised remains to be seen - a cool game at the moment. I'd love to find out more.
Blippy attracts even more extraverted people who list what they have recently purchased. So, while there are people who don't want to have a presence online under any circumstances, there are others who want to have absolutely everything online. Personally I find it a little strange
Where next?
I see these sites taking the input information from these extroverted people and aggregating that information (their movements, their purchasing patterns and whatever next) to build profiles to then target further information when presenting to them. Maybe it may even become a turbo powered calendar2.0 (calendar3.0!) system showing what's hip and happening according to an algorithm based profile...any thing is possible!
Alumni Ideas for Mannheim Business School
Below I have listed some things that are done in other schools around the world. The issue lies in that being a German program we need to match the cultures of our bigger and older US and UK counterparts with that of the German culture. I don't know what that necessarily is. Thus one suggestion has been to arrange a Stammtisch style event. It brings together the idea of networking and community of common purpose together with the German tradition. At this moment, I'm not all that clear on the way forward. For it to work there needs to be motivation for all parties.
In any case, after a brief search on the internet here are some things the Alumni departments do:
In any case, after a brief search on the internet here are some things the Alumni departments do:
Ethics
Introduction
Senior Managers have a variety of conflicting ethical challenges to identify, understand and act upon in today’s Global Banking Sector crisis.
Senior Managers have a variety of conflicting ethical challenges to identify, understand and act upon in today’s Global Banking Sector crisis.
Oberstdorf
I've pulled up quite well from skiing actually. I'm being fed silly here at Fredy's place in Neresheim but never complain about food! In fact because they are a French family, it's cheeses, wines and all things good.
Yesterday was a great day. It's been snowing here quite a bit so travelling is slow. However once i'd hired some skis and we were on the slopes the speed picked up! I'm no skier and so was more of a liability to myself and those around me. I came very close a few times to running over a few kids. Luckily the slopes weren't too busy. I had some great crashes for Fredy's benefit. He loved it. I'm glad I provided the entertainment without breaking myself. He has skiied there often and is a great skier so I think it was nice but a little boring. Some patches were very icy but on the whole the snow was pretty good. Fred gave me some pointers and I think I improved throughout the day. I need a couple weeks more skiing and i'll be a gun! Considering i've only done 4 days skiing in my life and came home in one piece I did ok!
We skiied at a place called Fellhorn, near the village of Oberstodorf. It's right on the southern border of Germany to Austria. We literally went from Germany to Austria as we went around the ski area! The views from the top were superb. There was a layer of cloud about half way up the mountains so above that we were in sunlight - and actually got a little bit sunbburnt! Also a novelty! Because it was a Friday there weren't too many people on the slopes or waiting for the lift or waiting for lunch (it meant I could eat my Leberknoedelsupppe in peace!).
After the lifts closed (4:30) we skiied all the way down, or in my case, skiied, crashed, skiied, crashed etc all the way down for a beer at a snow bar. Happy days!
Yesterday was a great day. It's been snowing here quite a bit so travelling is slow. However once i'd hired some skis and we were on the slopes the speed picked up! I'm no skier and so was more of a liability to myself and those around me. I came very close a few times to running over a few kids. Luckily the slopes weren't too busy. I had some great crashes for Fredy's benefit. He loved it. I'm glad I provided the entertainment without breaking myself. He has skiied there often and is a great skier so I think it was nice but a little boring. Some patches were very icy but on the whole the snow was pretty good. Fred gave me some pointers and I think I improved throughout the day. I need a couple weeks more skiing and i'll be a gun! Considering i've only done 4 days skiing in my life and came home in one piece I did ok!
We skiied at a place called Fellhorn, near the village of Oberstodorf. It's right on the southern border of Germany to Austria. We literally went from Germany to Austria as we went around the ski area! The views from the top were superb. There was a layer of cloud about half way up the mountains so above that we were in sunlight - and actually got a little bit sunbburnt! Also a novelty! Because it was a Friday there weren't too many people on the slopes or waiting for the lift or waiting for lunch (it meant I could eat my Leberknoedelsupppe in peace!).
After the lifts closed (4:30) we skiied all the way down, or in my case, skiied, crashed, skiied, crashed etc all the way down for a beer at a snow bar. Happy days!
Contact Points
Adrian Oest
Email: ajoest@gmail.com
Email: adrian.oest@mba-mannheim.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ajoest
Skype: ajoest
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/ajoest
Blog: http://ajoest@blogspot.com/
Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Adrian_Oest
LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ajoest
Webpage: http://ajoest.googlepages.com/home
It's a bit ridiculous really...but drop my a line anyway!
Email: ajoest@gmail.com
Email: adrian.oest@mba-mannheim.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ajoest
Skype: ajoest
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#/ajoest
Blog: http://ajoest@blogspot.com/
Xing: https://www.xing.com/profile/Adrian_Oest
LinkedIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ajoest
Webpage: http://ajoest.googlepages.com/home
It's a bit ridiculous really...but drop my a line anyway!
Christmas - New Years 2009 - 2010
Just some notes.
Photos from assorted cameras are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ajoest/ChristmasAndNewYears20092010#
Arrived Christmas Eve at Luton from Zurich with Patty, caught the bus to Oxford and got picked up by Tim to be taken 'home' to Merton.
Photos from assorted cameras are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ajoest/ChristmasAndNewYears20092010#
Arrived Christmas Eve at Luton from Zurich with Patty, caught the bus to Oxford and got picked up by Tim to be taken 'home' to Merton.
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