Thursday, April 15, 2010
Science policy program
My system architecture prof. Crowley spoke at White House after President Obama's Science Policy Announcement.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Odor
Before Spring Break, I met one biology student at laundry room, who told me that is her first time to do laundry in the spring semester. I could not believe it until I see how many load of clothes she is doing. Lately I have been sit next to a few 'smelly' students in the class, or some students hair have been clearly standing up, I wonder if there is a ratio between stress and hygiene cleaning practice.
Now CNN has a video.
Now CNN has a video.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Celtics
Boston's weather is like little baby's face, one moment with rain and wind, another moment has 80+ degree. That was what we had on Tuesday. Suddenly I realized that I have not prepared summerish clothes here :( But outside blooming cherry trees totally let you forget that short moment of concerning 'what to wear'. I took time walking by Charles river, all what I could say is 'WOW', never thought this part of Cambridge/Boston beauty, which is totally stunning. A lot of boats by the river. One of my classmates asked me to take Sailing class since we all can get a sailing card here and MIT has a great collection, why not.
This afternoon I had the most disagreed talk from one of my class. The prof. has strong opinions about believing to bring manufactor back to Europe and U.S., and think regulation is the fundamental reason to drive companies' innovation. I challenged with facts of U.S. skip building plants domestically but another country. The current high tax has not helped U.S. economic development. NYTimes Friedman's column has one article about his interview with Intel CEO last month. Though we all have our own opinions, the great part of this talk, or should say the great part of MIT is to tolerate everyone's opinion and everyone will listen instead of avoiding.
Then evening my CEO perspectives class has Celtics' CEO to speak. Have to admit, even for me, a totally non-sports person, totally got fire up by his words, even want to see Celtics' place. Sports management is quite foreign to me, he really articulate well about how he transitioned himself from VC to own a basketball team, all about passion, about taking risks, trusting your guts feeling, on top of that, his wife really gave him huge support, despite they could potential lost all the deposit for purchasing the team, while other investors did not want to join. He credited to the people, let yourself surround with best people, aim high, as high as possible(do not set bar for life, but in short timer), and just hanging in there and be little longer, you will see. He started to tell us that he is not the best CEO but he learns and work hard, do not try to be one he is not.
This week I am reading book, very good one, comparing with first half-term user-center, user-driven innovation, this is quite different perspectives.
This afternoon I had the most disagreed talk from one of my class. The prof. has strong opinions about believing to bring manufactor back to Europe and U.S., and think regulation is the fundamental reason to drive companies' innovation. I challenged with facts of U.S. skip building plants domestically but another country. The current high tax has not helped U.S. economic development. NYTimes Friedman's column has one article about his interview with Intel CEO last month. Though we all have our own opinions, the great part of this talk, or should say the great part of MIT is to tolerate everyone's opinion and everyone will listen instead of avoiding.
Then evening my CEO perspectives class has Celtics' CEO to speak. Have to admit, even for me, a totally non-sports person, totally got fire up by his words, even want to see Celtics' place. Sports management is quite foreign to me, he really articulate well about how he transitioned himself from VC to own a basketball team, all about passion, about taking risks, trusting your guts feeling, on top of that, his wife really gave him huge support, despite they could potential lost all the deposit for purchasing the team, while other investors did not want to join. He credited to the people, let yourself surround with best people, aim high, as high as possible(do not set bar for life, but in short timer), and just hanging in there and be little longer, you will see. He started to tell us that he is not the best CEO but he learns and work hard, do not try to be one he is not.
This week I am reading
Monday, April 5, 2010
Breath in and Breath out
Have not updated blog for several weeks, just solid busy and constantly feel behind.
During Spring break, I went to Russia, mainly Moscow for a week, which was great. The moment I landed Boston, I was in the unstop clock, even busier than the time I left. Literally, I can see now is the heaviest time I have in MIT. After one week trying to catch up, especially friday to work late on papers, Saturday I was sort of on strike after finishing my reading. I need to be away from MIT campus, where should I go? search....
There is the World biggest Pillow fight in Boston on 3rd afternoon, well, I have to experience one, bring my pillow, heading to Harvard Spare, ready for a 'fight'. Really, how often can you hit someone, and still legal?? when i reached there, oh, my, I run to a group of very buff guys, asking if I could join, considering I am wearing glasses, now I am all set, throw the pillow to whoever I could see or not see... if adviser suggests that we need a break and should find a way to relief your stress, I am definitely doing that, soon, arms sore and I was out the fight.
Sunday is Eastern, for past several years I go to Dragt family to spend the day with them, join the family picture taken, oh, I miss them!! Fortunately, my Olympia friend Spee's daughter Anneke invited me to join her family to celebrate the day. She has a beautiful and cool daughter. the reason of being cool is that she does not do those screaming cry or whining sounds, not too shy, so, soon I got playing with her, feeding her(I only wonder after she has ate quite a few food, how come she is so skinny?? I asked the same question to Anneke.) and just bouncing her on my knee. I have to say, this is my best relaxing moment. What a joy to have a little one who keeps smiling face looking at you. I told Anneke that I should come here to play with Mary Lou often.
Keep breathing, I can do this!
During Spring break, I went to Russia, mainly Moscow for a week, which was great. The moment I landed Boston, I was in the unstop clock, even busier than the time I left. Literally, I can see now is the heaviest time I have in MIT. After one week trying to catch up, especially friday to work late on papers, Saturday I was sort of on strike after finishing my reading. I need to be away from MIT campus, where should I go? search....
There is the World biggest Pillow fight in Boston on 3rd afternoon, well, I have to experience one, bring my pillow, heading to Harvard Spare, ready for a 'fight'. Really, how often can you hit someone, and still legal?? when i reached there, oh, my, I run to a group of very buff guys, asking if I could join, considering I am wearing glasses, now I am all set, throw the pillow to whoever I could see or not see... if adviser suggests that we need a break and should find a way to relief your stress, I am definitely doing that, soon, arms sore and I was out the fight.
Sunday is Eastern, for past several years I go to Dragt family to spend the day with them, join the family picture taken, oh, I miss them!! Fortunately, my Olympia friend Spee's daughter Anneke invited me to join her family to celebrate the day. She has a beautiful and cool daughter. the reason of being cool is that she does not do those screaming cry or whining sounds, not too shy, so, soon I got playing with her, feeding her(I only wonder after she has ate quite a few food, how come she is so skinny?? I asked the same question to Anneke.) and just bouncing her on my knee. I have to say, this is my best relaxing moment. What a joy to have a little one who keeps smiling face looking at you. I told Anneke that I should come here to play with Mary Lou often.
Keep breathing, I can do this!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
a week of ups and downs
This week started with so many ups and downs. in the end, I would say, the journey is much more enriched and full of surprise.
Start on Monday, March 8th, do you know what day is that? I walked in my HAL lab, finding a beautiful bouquet on my table, soon I found out that our labmate Armin from Romania who bought all the flowers for all the ladies in the lab to celebrate this international women's day. Wow, for 11 years in U.S. this is the first time I know someone around who know this day. He told me that back his country on this day, every lady has flowers in her hands, which he wants to make sure we all have flowers, how sweet! I told him that back to China, ladies even have this day off, doing nothing and just enjoying, relaxing...
I started looking much pale, from short of sleep, having been consistently short of sleep. Finally my body fought back, I am sick. When you are sick, you miss all the familiar food and familiar friends, brain, eyes, nose and throat are all giving me red alarms...
For past 4 weeks, every Thursday we have two hours Clay Christansen's lectures. He's research and influence in technology innovation and development have been influnced over 20+ years of tech interested people. I read his book of innovator's dilemma three times already, still want to read again. This week, the lecture got changed to Tuesday. During last week one, he took 10 mins to go beyond research and academic study, advice us in personal life's choice and decision-making, at one moment, he was emotional and his word touch our hearts deeply. We could not believe that he could share with us so much personal life wisdom, the career, marriage, family and social responsibilities. He will start his kimo, I pray that he will go through this hard time and recover soon.
Tuesday night was SDM information session. Due to this year lack of enough ladies, only 4 women, I was invited to be on the panel facing all the potential applicants sharing my choice to SDM, experience so far. I really try to not give any bias opinion but to let them see the prons and cons. Looking at them, I was reminded of past couple years while I was searching, exploring options, wondering if that is the right one, questioning how this could help me grow professionally and personally. It was a long session, then I have a group meeting on the final preparation for Wed. presentation.
The presentation will be on Technology Strategy in Prof. Utterback class. Our topic is the diffusion of innovation and substitution, which covers in so many fields changes, how disruptive technology helps the business to be successful or fall out the market, how to analyze this chunk data have been challenging, plus, we delegate almost two books per person. Nowadays, the rate of my reading speed is improved, starting from wave shape to S-curve now(remember in our innovation book, we talked about S-curve so often!). I am one of presenters, and start first. This is one thing I told myself that I will volunteer for more public speaking to keep practice, actually, I really enjoy the public speaking but sometimes I speak too fast, or not articulate the thinking well, which should be one of my main focus to get better during the study.
This week is also the SDM business trip week. Only for the distance students, this is business trip, for rest of us, it is free lunches & dinners, more related speakers week. Michael Davis spoke about the product development and technology strategy, marvelous, which I will definitely take his course in the fall.
My CEO perspective course speaker this week is Donkin donut CEO, who brought so many donuts to lure our stomach, especially the new baking one. I did not know there will be food, plus, so sleepy, I came to the class with Starbuck's coffee, while the CEO asked me if I would consider to switch to his company's kind. Seriously I never try that one, plus being live in Washington, I got to like Starbuck's, so honest me telling him that I would prefer to stick with my favorite kind. That certainly lead us to some interesting discussions.
Thursday evening is SDM banquet. Oh, this program feed us too good, I really need to think about my weight. We had lobster with great wine. There are SDM'08,'09 and'10 there, what a good networking event! My table has so many fun smart and kind people, Super Matt works in the company in China, his efficiency working style totally wins him with the title of 'Super Matt', Swope with his wife who is expecting a baby in July(which he currently just acts like a kid :), I always consider him as the 'guard' of my team work before we submit since he can sharp the final draft to the next level, Vicent is such a good listener, which he still hold the 'grudge' to me while my team beats his team badly during power and negotiation class; Brian with his wife, who are serious runner, and huge motivation for us to get more invovle in community work; Donny, oh, great personality and you can always count on him if you need help.
Boston's weather is not getting nice at all, raining, no, should say pouring with crazy wind. I have been walking to the library with wet pants after walking outside. It certainly has not help my cold, soon my voice starts squeezy, like a duck!
Friday is my last H1 course on user-centered innovation. Solute to this wise professor Eric Von Hippel, not only teach us knowledge, but train our mind to think and learn how to analyze, esp. find the patterns among chaos of facts through the history.
There is definitely a down moment. "How can you communicate with others well?" becomes a fundamental challenge in one of my research project. How can you express your opinions, decisions, aline with the direction in a very professional way? This is academic field, a lot different with industry, but we all circle with "Communication", such a big word and require so much time to go through.
By end of Friday, it is draining, I could not go to SDM game night activity, instead, I was longing for some fun uplifting music, so I went to performance in Boston Opera House. Oh, this is a fabulous architecture, gorgeous, the performance is top of notch, some music, I almost want to sing along.
No doubt, I need to finish more assignment and catch up with my reading during the weekend. Since this is March 14th, Pi day, here at MIT, there is Pi competition tonight, coming to eat a pie, while watching people to compete with their Pi memory, so, how far can you remember pi? the winner got to 119 digits after decimal!!
Start on Monday, March 8th, do you know what day is that? I walked in my HAL lab, finding a beautiful bouquet on my table, soon I found out that our labmate Armin from Romania who bought all the flowers for all the ladies in the lab to celebrate this international women's day. Wow, for 11 years in U.S. this is the first time I know someone around who know this day. He told me that back his country on this day, every lady has flowers in her hands, which he wants to make sure we all have flowers, how sweet! I told him that back to China, ladies even have this day off, doing nothing and just enjoying, relaxing...
I started looking much pale, from short of sleep, having been consistently short of sleep. Finally my body fought back, I am sick. When you are sick, you miss all the familiar food and familiar friends, brain, eyes, nose and throat are all giving me red alarms...
For past 4 weeks, every Thursday we have two hours Clay Christansen's lectures. He's research and influence in technology innovation and development have been influnced over 20+ years of tech interested people. I read his book of innovator's dilemma three times already, still want to read again. This week, the lecture got changed to Tuesday. During last week one, he took 10 mins to go beyond research and academic study, advice us in personal life's choice and decision-making, at one moment, he was emotional and his word touch our hearts deeply. We could not believe that he could share with us so much personal life wisdom, the career, marriage, family and social responsibilities. He will start his kimo, I pray that he will go through this hard time and recover soon.
Tuesday night was SDM information session. Due to this year lack of enough ladies, only 4 women, I was invited to be on the panel facing all the potential applicants sharing my choice to SDM, experience so far. I really try to not give any bias opinion but to let them see the prons and cons. Looking at them, I was reminded of past couple years while I was searching, exploring options, wondering if that is the right one, questioning how this could help me grow professionally and personally. It was a long session, then I have a group meeting on the final preparation for Wed. presentation.
The presentation will be on Technology Strategy in Prof. Utterback class. Our topic is the diffusion of innovation and substitution, which covers in so many fields changes, how disruptive technology helps the business to be successful or fall out the market, how to analyze this chunk data have been challenging, plus, we delegate almost two books per person. Nowadays, the rate of my reading speed is improved, starting from wave shape to S-curve now(remember in our innovation book, we talked about S-curve so often!). I am one of presenters, and start first. This is one thing I told myself that I will volunteer for more public speaking to keep practice, actually, I really enjoy the public speaking but sometimes I speak too fast, or not articulate the thinking well, which should be one of my main focus to get better during the study.
This week is also the SDM business trip week. Only for the distance students, this is business trip, for rest of us, it is free lunches & dinners, more related speakers week. Michael Davis spoke about the product development and technology strategy, marvelous, which I will definitely take his course in the fall.
My CEO perspective course speaker this week is Donkin donut CEO, who brought so many donuts to lure our stomach, especially the new baking one. I did not know there will be food, plus, so sleepy, I came to the class with Starbuck's coffee, while the CEO asked me if I would consider to switch to his company's kind. Seriously I never try that one, plus being live in Washington, I got to like Starbuck's, so honest me telling him that I would prefer to stick with my favorite kind. That certainly lead us to some interesting discussions.
Thursday evening is SDM banquet. Oh, this program feed us too good, I really need to think about my weight. We had lobster with great wine. There are SDM'08,'09 and'10 there, what a good networking event! My table has so many fun smart and kind people, Super Matt works in the company in China, his efficiency working style totally wins him with the title of 'Super Matt', Swope with his wife who is expecting a baby in July(which he currently just acts like a kid :), I always consider him as the 'guard' of my team work before we submit since he can sharp the final draft to the next level, Vicent is such a good listener, which he still hold the 'grudge' to me while my team beats his team badly during power and negotiation class; Brian with his wife, who are serious runner, and huge motivation for us to get more invovle in community work; Donny, oh, great personality and you can always count on him if you need help.
Boston's weather is not getting nice at all, raining, no, should say pouring with crazy wind. I have been walking to the library with wet pants after walking outside. It certainly has not help my cold, soon my voice starts squeezy, like a duck!
Friday is my last H1 course on user-centered innovation. Solute to this wise professor Eric Von Hippel, not only teach us knowledge, but train our mind to think and learn how to analyze, esp. find the patterns among chaos of facts through the history.
There is definitely a down moment. "How can you communicate with others well?" becomes a fundamental challenge in one of my research project. How can you express your opinions, decisions, aline with the direction in a very professional way? This is academic field, a lot different with industry, but we all circle with "Communication", such a big word and require so much time to go through.
By end of Friday, it is draining, I could not go to SDM game night activity, instead, I was longing for some fun uplifting music, so I went to
No doubt, I need to finish more assignment and catch up with my reading during the weekend. Since this is March 14th, Pi day, here at MIT, there is Pi competition tonight, coming to eat a pie, while watching people to compete with their Pi memory, so, how far can you remember pi? the winner got to 119 digits after decimal!!
Saturday, March 6, 2010
close to the weekend -- Energy conference
March 5, after a long day classes and project meetings, I was so looking for the break, at 8 on campus there is Jazz performance. What could be more relaxing than going to a concert. There was one piece singing accompanied only by string bass, which made me miss my bass very much!
Saturday is MIT 5th Energy Conference.. This is such well-organized conference, with so many important players from corporate, government, industry, VC and Angel. From Technology to policy, from networking to business potentials, what global and industrial carbon emissions face. Energy, this is not my field, not quite something I know deeply, but in Jan. I did energy research and followed up what this trend is, finding this is quite interesting. The electric vehicle session is quite fun, what is car's future, how to short Hybrid, predict future will be completely EV after 10 years. For EV, it requires a lot of infrastructure changes, effective and useful milage balance, 3 primary charges location(home, work, shopping/parking locations). It got me, not a car fan, to get interests, esp. want to try BMW Mini E (completely EV).
Some highlights
---need government sponsorship on regulations and policies, but not to make decisions, only let capital market choose.
---U.S. is very behind this energy game and seriously needs to consider its position. For example, in nuclear energy part, U.S. did so much talking but no executing. Comparing with China, one of MIT professors pointed out how much he sees the immediate executing after making decision in China, but in U.S., people still do talk only. He pointed out that U.S. 'Visa Policy' is a problem, prevent U.S. getting more talented people involve in nuclear energy. He even spoke at congress, still do not see the improvement.( What a surprise to hear from this prof., and what a not surprise for me about this fact!)
---sequence: Government, research(academic, industry), angel, VB, corporate, capital market. Considering current situation, the capital market needs government's involvement to help out, only temporary, then go back to the circle again.
just so much information, very good discussion. I met people from all kinds of countries and industries, talking about how we can reduce energy usage, improve technology and keep innovative.
Now, I am so sleepy :)
Saturday is MIT 5th Energy Conference.. This is such well-organized conference, with so many important players from corporate, government, industry, VC and Angel. From Technology to policy, from networking to business potentials, what global and industrial carbon emissions face. Energy, this is not my field, not quite something I know deeply, but in Jan. I did energy research and followed up what this trend is, finding this is quite interesting. The electric vehicle session is quite fun, what is car's future, how to short Hybrid, predict future will be completely EV after 10 years. For EV, it requires a lot of infrastructure changes, effective and useful milage balance, 3 primary charges location(home, work, shopping/parking locations). It got me, not a car fan, to get interests, esp. want to try BMW Mini E (completely EV).
Some highlights
---need government sponsorship on regulations and policies, but not to make decisions, only let capital market choose.
---U.S. is very behind this energy game and seriously needs to consider its position. For example, in nuclear energy part, U.S. did so much talking but no executing. Comparing with China, one of MIT professors pointed out how much he sees the immediate executing after making decision in China, but in U.S., people still do talk only. He pointed out that U.S. 'Visa Policy' is a problem, prevent U.S. getting more talented people involve in nuclear energy. He even spoke at congress, still do not see the improvement.( What a surprise to hear from this prof., and what a not surprise for me about this fact!)
---sequence: Government, research(academic, industry), angel, VB, corporate, capital market. Considering current situation, the capital market needs government's involvement to help out, only temporary, then go back to the circle again.
just so much information, very good discussion. I met people from all kinds of countries and industries, talking about how we can reduce energy usage, improve technology and keep innovative.
Now, I am so sleepy :)
fire alarm
This is a busy week, projects work, presentation and cases study, all my classmates feel the heat. I have not got much sleep. Thursday(March 4) night, I was reading my case study for business of software platform course, the fire arm went off. The speaker announced the evacuation.
I looked at the clock, almost midnight, and so much reading to finish. well, take my bag pack, coat and emergency bag(passport, legal docs and 3 days emergency kit) and run out. Every since my experience in Feb. 2000 Iowa middle of evening evacuation, I learned my lesson and prepared just in case.
It was cold outside. When you have so many students outside, you started chatting, i ended up meeting a Portuguese Ph.D. in energy, I got some basic energy 101 study from the conversation, while fire track got here. It was quite a scene. In the end, the cause of first floor big smoke and fire was generated in the kitchen. One of students misused the oven, instead of baking, she used boiling. Well, you can imagine that, somehow, the story is not new to me.
That was a long evening.
I looked at the clock, almost midnight, and so much reading to finish. well, take my bag pack, coat and emergency bag(passport, legal docs and 3 days emergency kit) and run out. Every since my experience in Feb. 2000 Iowa middle of evening evacuation, I learned my lesson and prepared just in case.
It was cold outside. When you have so many students outside, you started chatting, i ended up meeting a Portuguese Ph.D. in energy, I got some basic energy 101 study from the conversation, while fire track got here. It was quite a scene. In the end, the cause of first floor big smoke and fire was generated in the kitchen. One of students misused the oven, instead of baking, she used boiling. Well, you can imagine that, somehow, the story is not new to me.
That was a long evening.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
bathroom -- how would you like your toilet paper stay?
Another busy but learning day, after a course of listening speaker sharing with us his experience to analyze Apollo 13, I tried to imagine to be born and lived around that area, people must all crazy about space and want to be astronauts.
My group project meeting is about product design and development. Due to limited information sharing, I am very thankful to all my friends who involved in the user group surveys to help my team to better understand the user needs, totally user-center driven instead of several of us, bunch of engineers holding pens and looking at the sky, wondering what we can come up with, maybe a unrealistic product not meet market needs. Gradually I see the point what designers and many prof.s tried to tell us, do many feedback, analysis loops to get conceptual done, do not jump into the solution too fast, which applied to so many fields study. Since we finalized the area is bathroom user group, from the survey of ranking the relative importance of these customer attributes we listed, we spent over 3 hours talking about toilet paper, operands,attributes, subsystem, functions(daaaa!)... when I left office, talking with my mother on the phone, the conversation was:
"did you eat something?" my mother asked
"not really, just finished group meeting, I am starving but what I just discussed has not helped my appetite."
"what did you do?"
"analyze bathroom toilet paper and its stand"
"really? didn't you work on the kitchen sponge last time?"
"ye"
"when you come home this summer, you will go shopping with me."
P.S. how would you like your toilet paper stay in your bathroom? and where do you put your rest toilet paper?
My group project meeting is about product design and development. Due to limited information sharing, I am very thankful to all my friends who involved in the user group surveys to help my team to better understand the user needs, totally user-center driven instead of several of us, bunch of engineers holding pens and looking at the sky, wondering what we can come up with, maybe a unrealistic product not meet market needs. Gradually I see the point what designers and many prof.s tried to tell us, do many feedback, analysis loops to get conceptual done, do not jump into the solution too fast, which applied to so many fields study. Since we finalized the area is bathroom user group, from the survey of ranking the relative importance of these customer attributes we listed, we spent over 3 hours talking about toilet paper, operands,attributes, subsystem, functions(daaaa!)... when I left office, talking with my mother on the phone, the conversation was:
"did you eat something?" my mother asked
"not really, just finished group meeting, I am starving but what I just discussed has not helped my appetite."
"what did you do?"
"analyze bathroom toilet paper and its stand"
"really? didn't you work on the kitchen sponge last time?"
"ye"
"when you come home this summer, you will go shopping with me."
P.S. how would you like your toilet paper stay in your bathroom? and where do you put your rest toilet paper?
Monday, March 1, 2010
iWalk
A new week, a lot to learn, a lot to generate and a lot to explore.
Afternoon IBM person spoke at our technology stretagy class, since I have dealt with Mainframe and conversion of legacy apps from Mainframe to client-server, IBM has been quite a firm/icon to study. I do not know how to obsorb the information he present, choose to put into more consideration.
Tonight speaker is a great person, Hugh Herr, asso. prof. here, founding iWalk. His stories or should say, his founding journey is surprising, amazing and fabulous! In 82, he was caught at an accident, which ended to amputated his both feet and part of lower legs, every since, he challenges the robotics design to get a better feet. When he came in, no-one could tell that he is wearing a pair of artificial legs, which he walks normal, no difference leaning the wall! He said that when you have 10+ pair of shoes, he has10+ pair of legs in the closet. He is such sports person, rock climbing is his passion.
He predicted that by the end of this century, that no-one will consider the list of disabilities as 'disable' as technology could help. He used an example of people's nearsighted, which was considered 'disabled' before having glasses. nowadays, no-one even think nearsighted is a disability. When he talked about this, it really reminded me of my senior year in high school, after I failed the eye exam during physical exam, it completely ended my dream to be an ER surgeon, as by then, you will not be allowed to wear glassed in the surgery room, in another word, if you are nearsighted, you are not qualified for that position. It still bothers me whenever I think about this.
I sat at the first row, closely facing Hugh when he shared his stories, what a person, not give up his dreams, not ended up with pity himself but challenge to seek the better technology to help all the amputees. a side of story he shared about his education, he nearly failed his high school as he just wants to do rock/mountain climbing, even went for 4-5 years, then take couple years of math, got in MIT in ME, went to Harvard for Ph.D. in Physics, got tenure in both Harvard and MIT. Who could judge a below average high school student that he does not have a good future? He even increased his artificial legs one inch per week during graduate school, until someone does notice that he keeps growing.
His founding journey was not easy, buy approaching Nike with his designed shoes, Nike did not take it. In stead of depending on another big com, he creates product on his own, wisely using grants and consistently apply grants funding on his work;
-- major lessons: using grants, get good team members(he used headhunters to find his team members.)
--approach his design with both series and parallel elasticity on the artificial legs, focusing on how to help people, even people have legs, but had hip surgery
-- his products help a lot of soldiers injured in Afghanistan
--the powerfoot, could potentially replace mountain bike
When I left the class, I watched him get on sagway left. Looking forward to seeing his next invention.
Afternoon IBM person spoke at our technology stretagy class, since I have dealt with Mainframe and conversion of legacy apps from Mainframe to client-server, IBM has been quite a firm/icon to study. I do not know how to obsorb the information he present, choose to put into more consideration.
Tonight speaker is a great person, Hugh Herr, asso. prof. here, founding iWalk. His stories or should say, his founding journey is surprising, amazing and fabulous! In 82, he was caught at an accident, which ended to amputated his both feet and part of lower legs, every since, he challenges the robotics design to get a better feet. When he came in, no-one could tell that he is wearing a pair of artificial legs, which he walks normal, no difference leaning the wall! He said that when you have 10+ pair of shoes, he has10+ pair of legs in the closet. He is such sports person, rock climbing is his passion.
He predicted that by the end of this century, that no-one will consider the list of disabilities as 'disable' as technology could help. He used an example of people's nearsighted, which was considered 'disabled' before having glasses. nowadays, no-one even think nearsighted is a disability. When he talked about this, it really reminded me of my senior year in high school, after I failed the eye exam during physical exam, it completely ended my dream to be an ER surgeon, as by then, you will not be allowed to wear glassed in the surgery room, in another word, if you are nearsighted, you are not qualified for that position. It still bothers me whenever I think about this.
I sat at the first row, closely facing Hugh when he shared his stories, what a person, not give up his dreams, not ended up with pity himself but challenge to seek the better technology to help all the amputees. a side of story he shared about his education, he nearly failed his high school as he just wants to do rock/mountain climbing, even went for 4-5 years, then take couple years of math, got in MIT in ME, went to Harvard for Ph.D. in Physics, got tenure in both Harvard and MIT. Who could judge a below average high school student that he does not have a good future? He even increased his artificial legs one inch per week during graduate school, until someone does notice that he keeps growing.
His founding journey was not easy, buy approaching Nike with his designed shoes, Nike did not take it. In stead of depending on another big com, he creates product on his own, wisely using grants and consistently apply grants funding on his work;
-- major lessons: using grants, get good team members(he used headhunters to find his team members.)
--approach his design with both series and parallel elasticity on the artificial legs, focusing on how to help people, even people have legs, but had hip surgery
-- his products help a lot of soldiers injured in Afghanistan
--the powerfoot, could potentially replace mountain bike
When I left the class, I watched him get on sagway left. Looking forward to seeing his next invention.
Getting even busier
Now, when I think about January time, I could not say that is the busiest time in MIT. So far, when Spring semester starts, only 4 weeks in, more readings, projects and research, the very solid busy schedule, putting your brain constantly thinking, evaluate...
After Zhiyong left, I felt emotional hard to make transition, but force myself to concentrate the school, as summer will be around the corner and I will be looking forward the happy moments. The readings are great, I could not skip part of it. The amazing parts are all those readings from different classes are quite connected, so, in order to finish it, I need to increase my reading speed, decrease my sleeping hours and say 'no' to all sounds-cool outings, which turn out very hard.
Friday, my classmates won the 2nd place in Muddy redesign competition. I went to cheer them up and had a dinner with them. Ever since I came back, starting my research paper, which lead me all the way till Sunday around 7:30a.m. to take a nap before Church. well, I got 5 hours sleep on Friday night, that was about it. I even have to skip Sloan Investment Management Conference Saturday which I registered a month ago, a Schumann concert, crazy classmate pub crawl and chinese hot pot festival(the end of celebration of Chinese New Year.) You may ask if that is worth it, well, I need to prioritize and be accountable for the task I was assigned, before I could go for fun or learn other additional knowledge. As you can imagine, my Sunday afternoon was my completely wondering time, which I just need to be away from campus, sort of drifting around Boston common, totally mindless.
Friends are great, who are there for you through your happy time, also be there for you when you are in need. After a very rich conversation, I was heading back to my apt. Meanwhile, there is a Flamenco music dinner SDMer organized. Hey, I have not eaten, dinner sounds good! It was a wonderful dinner, good meal, great wine, wonderful music, singing and dancing, then went back for a good night sleep.
Girls want to be with her; Guys want to be with her; Apparently she is also MIT graduate, doing research in CS. After she overheard me mention 'Ashdown', my campus apt. housing, she surprised us telling me that she graduated from course 6 (refer to EECS, a hard core). So, she does research during the day, dance and teach Flamenco at night!
After Zhiyong left, I felt emotional hard to make transition, but force myself to concentrate the school, as summer will be around the corner and I will be looking forward the happy moments. The readings are great, I could not skip part of it. The amazing parts are all those readings from different classes are quite connected, so, in order to finish it, I need to increase my reading speed, decrease my sleeping hours and say 'no' to all sounds-cool outings, which turn out very hard.
Friday, my classmates won the 2nd place in Muddy redesign competition. I went to cheer them up and had a dinner with them. Ever since I came back, starting my research paper, which lead me all the way till Sunday around 7:30a.m. to take a nap before Church. well, I got 5 hours sleep on Friday night, that was about it. I even have to skip Sloan Investment Management Conference Saturday which I registered a month ago, a Schumann concert, crazy classmate pub crawl and chinese hot pot festival(the end of celebration of Chinese New Year.) You may ask if that is worth it, well, I need to prioritize and be accountable for the task I was assigned, before I could go for fun or learn other additional knowledge. As you can imagine, my Sunday afternoon was my completely wondering time, which I just need to be away from campus, sort of drifting around Boston common, totally mindless.
Friends are great, who are there for you through your happy time, also be there for you when you are in need. After a very rich conversation, I was heading back to my apt. Meanwhile, there is a Flamenco music dinner SDMer organized. Hey, I have not eaten, dinner sounds good! It was a wonderful dinner, good meal, great wine, wonderful music, singing and dancing, then went back for a good night sleep.
Girls want to be with her; Guys want to be with her; Apparently she is also MIT graduate, doing research in CS. After she overheard me mention 'Ashdown', my campus apt. housing, she surprised us telling me that she graduated from course 6 (refer to EECS, a hard core). So, she does research during the day, dance and teach Flamenco at night!
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
GE CEO Jeff Immelt
This CEO perspectives class just gets better and better. Last week, when I walked out the class after Strauss talk, I told myself that is the reason that I took risk to come here, in the middle of my professional path, taking a break to recharge. Tonight we have Jeff from GE. where should I start?? I learned GE Through my undergraduate case study, learning Jeff's leadership style after Jack Welch during my UW graduate school case study, now I sat on the front row, seeing this man, listening his talk, just marvelous!
He started with what current situations means, risk -- the same risk/crisis we faced before, reality -- deficit, slow growth.
--- Financial restructure
--- emerging growth, robust than financials, e.g. Turkey, Korea
--- need to resolve healthcare, reform between government and business
--- if you run a big firm through crisis, what do you do? calm the market, prioritize needs ---> safety first(keep large cash flow, priority, keep competition)
--- his philosophy "make hard decision fast, get complicated things away, people will eventually love you again"
--- Reset company to Renew company, which he analyzed multiple times about how to reset and how to renew, those are hand in hand, want to keep profolio supper consistent, close to the core business, and simplify profolio with 20% up for R&D in business, 80 core spaces to fill out
--- regulation tends to fix past problems, not now
--- bring technology, business model and practice to healthcare, public and private problems
--- hard to figure out nuclear business, last project(huge money lost) is in Finland (quite linked to the project I am working now)
--- he spent his time 30% on people, 30% on company growth, 30% on company's issue and 10% on governess
--- use business school study to find what you like to do, learn to be a good learner, how much you learn leads to how much you can give, "self-relective" is key!
--- you are your worst critics, learning to give yourself personal freedom. Mean to work with confident, not having fear. Do not manage career from fear, but from confidence.
--- his future successor should maintain social strong, a globalist, and good at technology
--- current students are studying past, not ready for future. The best advices he tried to give to students are: use past to learn, find the way, but not trap in the old fashion thinking(I am glad that I am at MIT, where your conventional thinkings are broken constantly.), try new thing, proactive, find out what is next, be part of next.
After class, I chatted with instructor who told me that Jeff has been so great, trying to make his schedule work out to come here. During the talk, he talked about how GE handles the political situations for the business, culture adjustment to keep global business, but he did not let this two hours become one of routine meeting, really challenge us to think hard and deep.
He started with what current situations means, risk -- the same risk/crisis we faced before, reality -- deficit, slow growth.
--- Financial restructure
--- emerging growth, robust than financials, e.g. Turkey, Korea
--- need to resolve healthcare, reform between government and business
--- if you run a big firm through crisis, what do you do? calm the market, prioritize needs ---> safety first(keep large cash flow, priority, keep competition)
--- his philosophy "make hard decision fast, get complicated things away, people will eventually love you again"
--- Reset company to Renew company, which he analyzed multiple times about how to reset and how to renew, those are hand in hand, want to keep profolio supper consistent, close to the core business, and simplify profolio with 20% up for R&D in business, 80 core spaces to fill out
--- regulation tends to fix past problems, not now
--- bring technology, business model and practice to healthcare, public and private problems
--- hard to figure out nuclear business, last project(huge money lost) is in Finland (quite linked to the project I am working now)
--- he spent his time 30% on people, 30% on company growth, 30% on company's issue and 10% on governess
--- use business school study to find what you like to do, learn to be a good learner, how much you learn leads to how much you can give, "self-relective" is key!
--- you are your worst critics, learning to give yourself personal freedom. Mean to work with confident, not having fear. Do not manage career from fear, but from confidence.
--- his future successor should maintain social strong, a globalist, and good at technology
--- current students are studying past, not ready for future. The best advices he tried to give to students are: use past to learn, find the way, but not trap in the old fashion thinking(I am glad that I am at MIT, where your conventional thinkings are broken constantly.), try new thing, proactive, find out what is next, be part of next.
After class, I chatted with instructor who told me that Jeff has been so great, trying to make his schedule work out to come here. During the talk, he talked about how GE handles the political situations for the business, culture adjustment to keep global business, but he did not let this two hours become one of routine meeting, really challenge us to think hard and deep.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Meeting with Finland Ambassador at Harvard Kennedy School
Feb. 18, Harvard Kennedy school host a breakfast meeting with Finland Ambassador Pakka Lintu. MIT Sloan got 4 spots. I am very fortunate to attend.
Mr. Ambassador talked about Finland's culture, economic development and future focus, mainly about environmental policy, energy and technology. I asked him about Finland's global development focus and their education system impact. Finland has focus on translatic trade, though not the member of NATO; also its education system has been world leading system, I bet every scholar interested to know how they can successful running their educational system consistently well. Finland has did a lot in renewable energy, and focus on use nuclear energy by 2020. It is quite sad to see U.S. behind the game. During Clinton time, U.S. has a lot very supportive green energy initiatives from governments. By Bush time, those were stopped. Now some of those got started again, but U.S. are somewhat behind Europe which once followed U.S. in renewable energy.
What I took back most is his diplomatic speaking. Both Harvard and MIT students have asked a few sensitive and challenging questions, like how he responded Finland's stand regarding to lately climate talk. When most students dislike his diplomatic response (after meeting), I found it very refreshing and fascinating. If you look at country as a family, Mr. Ambassador is the guard to keep communication despite of argument and conflict with neighbor. At my power and negotiation class, prof. specifically recommended us to learn the art of diplomat.
Me, with Mr. Ambassador
Mr. Ambassador talked about Finland's culture, economic development and future focus, mainly about environmental policy, energy and technology. I asked him about Finland's global development focus and their education system impact. Finland has focus on translatic trade, though not the member of NATO; also its education system has been world leading system, I bet every scholar interested to know how they can successful running their educational system consistently well. Finland has did a lot in renewable energy, and focus on use nuclear energy by 2020. It is quite sad to see U.S. behind the game. During Clinton time, U.S. has a lot very supportive green energy initiatives from governments. By Bush time, those were stopped. Now some of those got started again, but U.S. are somewhat behind Europe which once followed U.S. in renewable energy.
What I took back most is his diplomatic speaking. Both Harvard and MIT students have asked a few sensitive and challenging questions, like how he responded Finland's stand regarding to lately climate talk. When most students dislike his diplomatic response (after meeting), I found it very refreshing and fascinating. If you look at country as a family, Mr. Ambassador is the guard to keep communication despite of argument and conflict with neighbor. At my power and negotiation class, prof. specifically recommended us to learn the art of diplomat.
Me, with Mr. Ambassador
Magician in the class
Tonight class(Feb. 15) Speaker is Yet-Ming Chiang, founder of A123, what an interesting name for a company! He is a MIT graduate from undergraduate all the way to Ph.D. and is a faculty here. He and his VC Jeff shared with us about the journey of founding A123. Is that name quite fun? someone from Harvard approached them about creating a new name when their business gets serious. Now A123 is quite a leading company, glad that they still keep the same name.
What I took in:
-- this was not a easy journey. at the beginning, VC did not feel the click, until Yet convince them.
-- Yet brought in a lot of research experience. He has brought a lot of government grants and loan. no wonder, as a research professor, he constantly writes the proposal.
-- Yet explained the entrepreneur trends in last 20 years, shifting from industry to academic field.
-- 3 things to look: people, technology and market; among all three, people is the most important. (I really enjoy how he, a leading researcher, a hard core engineer mind, believes in people as sometimes engineer could get too hung-up with the technology and forget the people part.)
-- government fund is great for start up project
-- from VC point of view, 20 win, 60 ok and 20 failed among their money investment
-- always invest the best people in the field
-- always do du-diligence in business, not same in Technical.
The second half of class was completely surprise. Jason Randal came to present his specialty: magic. At the dinner table, Ken passed around the background about Jason, goodness, have I ever seen someone's experience range like this?? He did an amazing magic show. The whole time, I tried to link what he did with what I try to learn from the class. MIT courses have been constantly break my conventional thinking, so this time, I chose not to make my judgement too early, just observe. Jason mentioned that he just spoke at Harvard Business school this morning, trying to show students what innovation means in different industry. For a magician, he was asked to be creative, using company's new product in his show, within the limited time, he has to come up with a good idea. I like the show, since I sat at the first row, watching closely, I have no clue how he did the magic.
After class, I, along with other classmates shared the our wonders/confusion with instructor.
Here is his reply later, very interesting and totally challenge us to think differently.
"In reviewing your surveys, I noted a common theme in a few responses to the Jason Randal magic performance. While everybody enjoyed Jason and many of you wrote insightful parallels between his work and entrepreneurship, a few of you said you weren’t sure of the connection between his performance and the class subject matter. I have two thoughts:
1. That may be true for you. If you don’t see a meaningful connection, then we’ll chalk this up to an experiment that didn’t work. Not all of them work. I often operate in the same mode as the entrepreneurs we discussed: I try mixing together the ingredients I have in front of me and see what comes out. Jason was in town, I like him, I think there’s something useful there, I gave it a shot.
2. In thinking about how entrepreneurs create value in the world, it’s useful to think of value creation in one of two ways (there are, of course, more than two, so this is an oversimplification… but bear with me). You can change the world so that it is better, or you can change people’s perception so that they experience more value out of the world without you having to change the world. Which do magicians do? Is the latter mode mere trickery? For a fun analysis of this topic, check out a video segment from Rory Sutherland, vice Chairman of the advertising powerhouse Olgivy Group. This clip is from a talk he gave at TED, and is about four and a half minutes long. http://founders.mit.edu/files/rory.mov . I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts."
What I took in:
-- this was not a easy journey. at the beginning, VC did not feel the click, until Yet convince them.
-- Yet brought in a lot of research experience. He has brought a lot of government grants and loan. no wonder, as a research professor, he constantly writes the proposal.
-- Yet explained the entrepreneur trends in last 20 years, shifting from industry to academic field.
-- 3 things to look: people, technology and market; among all three, people is the most important. (I really enjoy how he, a leading researcher, a hard core engineer mind, believes in people as sometimes engineer could get too hung-up with the technology and forget the people part.)
-- government fund is great for start up project
-- from VC point of view, 20 win, 60 ok and 20 failed among their money investment
-- always invest the best people in the field
-- always do du-diligence in business, not same in Technical.
The second half of class was completely surprise. Jason Randal came to present his specialty: magic. At the dinner table, Ken passed around the background about Jason, goodness, have I ever seen someone's experience range like this?? He did an amazing magic show. The whole time, I tried to link what he did with what I try to learn from the class. MIT courses have been constantly break my conventional thinking, so this time, I chose not to make my judgement too early, just observe. Jason mentioned that he just spoke at Harvard Business school this morning, trying to show students what innovation means in different industry. For a magician, he was asked to be creative, using company's new product in his show, within the limited time, he has to come up with a good idea. I like the show, since I sat at the first row, watching closely, I have no clue how he did the magic.
After class, I, along with other classmates shared the our wonders/confusion with instructor.
Here is his reply later, very interesting and totally challenge us to think differently.
"In reviewing your surveys, I noted a common theme in a few responses to the Jason Randal magic performance. While everybody enjoyed Jason and many of you wrote insightful parallels between his work and entrepreneurship, a few of you said you weren’t sure of the connection between his performance and the class subject matter. I have two thoughts:
1. That may be true for you. If you don’t see a meaningful connection, then we’ll chalk this up to an experiment that didn’t work. Not all of them work. I often operate in the same mode as the entrepreneurs we discussed: I try mixing together the ingredients I have in front of me and see what comes out. Jason was in town, I like him, I think there’s something useful there, I gave it a shot.
2. In thinking about how entrepreneurs create value in the world, it’s useful to think of value creation in one of two ways (there are, of course, more than two, so this is an oversimplification… but bear with me). You can change the world so that it is better, or you can change people’s perception so that they experience more value out of the world without you having to change the world. Which do magicians do? Is the latter mode mere trickery? For a fun analysis of this topic, check out a video segment from Rory Sutherland, vice Chairman of the advertising powerhouse Olgivy Group. This clip is from a talk he gave at TED, and is about four and a half minutes long. http://founders.mit.edu/files/rory.mov . I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts."
Monday, February 15, 2010
Lectures crasher
Couple years ago I watched the movie of wedding crasher with my parents, who still do not understand why persons put so much efforts to crash wedding. I joked that they want the free food. same for party crasher, free party, free food, always fun! some MIT students even organized the Red Line(MTBA in Boston, one of main Subway line by MIT and Harvard) Pub Crawl to crash 6-7 pubs. 'Free food' certainly plays a big role.
Lately I go to every MIT Sloan lunch lectures(some are series, and some are not). So many amazing lectures, here is a glimpse what I went this week.
Monday: Consulting, by Christoph Pestinger, Associate Partner at DPDHL Inhouse Consulting
Tuesday: Entrepreneurship, by Frank Altman - CEO of Community Reinvestment Fund(which I have to skip another lecture from HubSpot presentation, one of MIT SDM & Sloan graduate funded company.)
Wednesday: E&E and Net Impact Lunch Speaker - Andrew Jay from Siemens Venture Capital
Thursday: “Design for Mobile Computing” by Nick Oakley from Intel Lead Industrial Designer PC Client Platforms (discuss mobile platform design, concepts and thinking) (Again, I choose this over another also very good lecture)
Friday: Women in Technology
Yes, all lunches are included and I went to all. Really until my last conversation with my parents, who said that I looked like guys in wedding crasher, instead that I crash lectures, wow! I never thought about that phrase! In that way, so far, the happiness to be a lecture crasher is great.
only one small drawback, here in MIT, the class finishes 5 mins early and starts 5 mins later to allow students cross campus, as all classes are scheduled without breaks in between. When I leave whichever the lecture place by 12:55p.m. and made to Class by 1:05p.m., sometimes can be challenging, esp. in lately Boston's weather.
Lately I go to every MIT Sloan lunch lectures(some are series, and some are not). So many amazing lectures, here is a glimpse what I went this week.
Monday: Consulting, by Christoph Pestinger, Associate Partner at DPDHL Inhouse Consulting
Tuesday: Entrepreneurship, by Frank Altman - CEO of Community Reinvestment Fund(which I have to skip another lecture from HubSpot presentation, one of MIT SDM & Sloan graduate funded company.)
Wednesday: E&E and Net Impact Lunch Speaker - Andrew Jay from Siemens Venture Capital
Thursday: “Design for Mobile Computing” by Nick Oakley from Intel Lead Industrial Designer PC Client Platforms (discuss mobile platform design, concepts and thinking) (Again, I choose this over another also very good lecture)
Friday: Women in Technology
Yes, all lunches are included and I went to all. Really until my last conversation with my parents, who said that I looked like guys in wedding crasher, instead that I crash lectures, wow! I never thought about that phrase! In that way, so far, the happiness to be a lecture crasher is great.
only one small drawback, here in MIT, the class finishes 5 mins early and starts 5 mins later to allow students cross campus, as all classes are scheduled without breaks in between. When I leave whichever the lecture place by 12:55p.m. and made to Class by 1:05p.m., sometimes can be challenging, esp. in lately Boston's weather.
Chinese New Year
This is the year of Tiger! My biggest surprise is that Zhiyong came to visit me and spend Chinese New year with me here. I know that we talked about the possibility, but not sure if that could happen despite of schedule.
He flew in on 9th, which my married friends seem so understanding, letting me skip the project meeting to go to airport. They share with me their way of how to keep relationships during this crazy school schedule and suggest me to take some breaks when he is here. What a sweet group!
It is wonderful to see Zhiyong at airport! He came to several of my classes, getting a better understanding of my schedule and meeting with my friends at MIT. wednesday afternoon I sent him to sightseeing in Boston while I am in meeting. Halfway in, someone asked me where zhiyong is, I said he was by another side of Charles river. they asked if I have seen outside, what?? I have not left this building for hours, when I walked to the window, it was heavy snow! ouch, I forgot how bad Boston's weather can be :(
By Friday, my Olympia friend Guorong Liu's daughter Kate Wang invited us to go to her Chinese New Year party. She is totally like her mother, a great cook and wonderful host.
It will be a wonderful year, which I am so looking forward to.
He flew in on 9th, which my married friends seem so understanding, letting me skip the project meeting to go to airport. They share with me their way of how to keep relationships during this crazy school schedule and suggest me to take some breaks when he is here. What a sweet group!
It is wonderful to see Zhiyong at airport! He came to several of my classes, getting a better understanding of my schedule and meeting with my friends at MIT. wednesday afternoon I sent him to sightseeing in Boston while I am in meeting. Halfway in, someone asked me where zhiyong is, I said he was by another side of Charles river. they asked if I have seen outside, what?? I have not left this building for hours, when I walked to the window, it was heavy snow! ouch, I forgot how bad Boston's weather can be :(
By Friday, my Olympia friend Guorong Liu's daughter Kate Wang invited us to go to her Chinese New Year party. She is totally like her mother, a great cook and wonderful host.
It will be a wonderful year, which I am so looking forward to.
CEO Perspectives -- Dan Mudd
This Wednesday our speaker is Dan Mudd. During preparation of this class, I read a few documents/interviews about Dan, wondering how he could have guts to come here, based on his last records in Fannie Mae. Even through the entire evening with what he presented, talked and was questioned by sloaners. I do not know how to position my view, but certainly know little bit better about how complex role he was in and got himself into. no matter what, I view this as a learning way. At one moment, Dan was caught in such unpleasant questioning, how he handled was quite well. One thing strucked to me was that, he responded that he does not regret any of his decision as he tried his best with the knowledge and data he received to make the best decisions at that moment. Sure, that is much easy for us to question the history, pinpoint the stupidity/fortunate of certain decisions. The question for me to ask is, if you were CEO in that position, with congress and market pressures, what decisions will you make(important, pretend that you do not know what happened in the market in 2008.) in fact, we could never pretend the things/decisions which we do not have a chance to do, only remind us that we should do our best, not leave any room for us to regret.
Back to the class, a few what Dan said I agreed, some disagreed. He, now is CEO for Fortress Investment Group.
-- His model of being a CEO: leaders who lead, keep healhty culture (accept bad news and being lion tamer), keep principle -- Focused Disc., and relentless deadlines
-- mentioned a book
-- explain how Fannie Mae is created, the relationship between congress and market (I have never knew this part of history, quite eye-opening)
-- Everyone should be fired once through his career.
Back to the class, a few what Dan said I agreed, some disagreed. He, now is CEO for Fortress Investment Group.
-- His model of being a CEO: leaders who lead, keep healhty culture (accept bad news and being lion tamer), keep principle -- Focused Disc., and relentless deadlines
-- mentioned a book
-- explain how Fannie Mae is created, the relationship between congress and market (I have never knew this part of history, quite eye-opening)
-- Everyone should be fired once through his career.
White Mountains
My classmate Karl invited Zhiyong and I to join him and his wife Kathy to go to his NH ski lodge this weekend for hiking/snowshoeing. Zhiyong and I just talked about how we want to celebrate Chinese New Year, also where I hope to show him around in his trip, so far, thinking about NYC. When the invitation in to go to NH, we happily took this over NYC, which turned out to be an excellent decisions. Zhiyong really enjoyed the time with my friends here, getting to know American cultures. Sometimes the questions he asked me, totally remind me of the time when I first came to U.S. Nowadays, I am too Americanized and start forgetting those transition moments. His questions made me more appreciate this journey to the West.
Have not drive for a while, I had a little bit hard time to navigate around, not sure if that is because I am in Boston or my driving skills got dull.
New Hampshire's White mountain is so famous. We head to Welch's peak. So amazed how much well-prepared gears Karl has and took along, without those poles and yak-track, we will have trouble to cross some icy patch.
without too much efforts, around one hour, we have reached Welch's peak, which you could see the entire valley. Karl told us that spring time, here will be so crowded and we were quite lucky to have all the views by us.
Here are Zhiyong and Karl.
On the way back, Karl asked us if we would like to go sliding. I looked at him wondering where. Soon he took us to the place which has quite steep hit with ice and snow around. I tried to think when my last time went sliding, almost back to college time. We are so glad that Karl suggested it. On the sliding path, there was a snow bump, when you hit it, you will fly into the air. have to say, Karl did the best, and I did the worst, Zhiyong sort of slide in a curve line. just so much fun, we were having a blast, though I have landed both in the funny way causing some aching. Later, I told Karl that I was so happy that he is not those kind of serious no fun person! They are definitely on my fun group buddy list.
Saturday night, Zhiyong cooked several tasty chinese dishes. We played a chopstick game. Both Karl and Kathy surprised us with the skills of using chopsticks. You will pick up a choice of which shape/color of items you will need to use chopsticks to pick up out of a bowl. The competition was on...
Sunday all of us went to RattleSnake(both east and west)trails by Squam lake. The views are great, part of these remind me of Northwest.
Have not drive for a while, I had a little bit hard time to navigate around, not sure if that is because I am in Boston or my driving skills got dull.
New Hampshire's White mountain is so famous. We head to Welch's peak. So amazed how much well-prepared gears Karl has and took along, without those poles and yak-track, we will have trouble to cross some icy patch.
without too much efforts, around one hour, we have reached Welch's peak, which you could see the entire valley. Karl told us that spring time, here will be so crowded and we were quite lucky to have all the views by us.
Here are Zhiyong and Karl.
On the way back, Karl asked us if we would like to go sliding. I looked at him wondering where. Soon he took us to the place which has quite steep hit with ice and snow around. I tried to think when my last time went sliding, almost back to college time. We are so glad that Karl suggested it. On the sliding path, there was a snow bump, when you hit it, you will fly into the air. have to say, Karl did the best, and I did the worst, Zhiyong sort of slide in a curve line. just so much fun, we were having a blast, though I have landed both in the funny way causing some aching. Later, I told Karl that I was so happy that he is not those kind of serious no fun person! They are definitely on my fun group buddy list.
Saturday night, Zhiyong cooked several tasty chinese dishes. We played a chopstick game. Both Karl and Kathy surprised us with the skills of using chopsticks. You will pick up a choice of which shape/color of items you will need to use chopsticks to pick up out of a bowl. The competition was on...
Sunday all of us went to RattleSnake(both east and west)trails by Squam lake. The views are great, part of these remind me of Northwest.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
be yourself, be true to yourself
Saturday I attended 19th Dynamic Women in Business Conference at Harvard. It was very refreshing and recharging.
All the simple but meaningful advice cross the whole day conversation.
Ann Simonds (General mills)
-- not specialist, but generalist
-- moments matter
-- start holistically, for who you are
-- Must Deliver
-- need mentor (I am very thankful for all the mentors in my life.)
-- need critics, need tough medicine, do not always expect applause
-- must own your career, make your choice happen
-- you can not have to do all by yourself
-- give time and patience at hard moment
-- the life you learn with and the life you lead with after that
During the penal sections, you will find the similar interests women to talk with, the successful women in that field sharing their inputs. Regarding to women at male dominate work place, I really enjoy Deloitt senior manager's comments -- do not always push everything link to gender discrimination, without men, this kind of topic won't exist, the efforts should use on how to collaborate and let them aware of difference, and figure out how to work through together, instead of creating many women initiatives and not able to execute.
Consistently, women leaders refers to be yourself, let your passion drive your career instead of money, when you are true to yourself, your individual thinking, opinions and plan will work for you, not one for all.
All the simple but meaningful advice cross the whole day conversation.
Ann Simonds (General mills)
-- not specialist, but generalist
-- moments matter
-- start holistically, for who you are
-- Must Deliver
-- need mentor (I am very thankful for all the mentors in my life.)
-- need critics, need tough medicine, do not always expect applause
-- must own your career, make your choice happen
-- you can not have to do all by yourself
-- give time and patience at hard moment
-- the life you learn with and the life you lead with after that
During the penal sections, you will find the similar interests women to talk with, the successful women in that field sharing their inputs. Regarding to women at male dominate work place, I really enjoy Deloitt senior manager's comments -- do not always push everything link to gender discrimination, without men, this kind of topic won't exist, the efforts should use on how to collaborate and let them aware of difference, and figure out how to work through together, instead of creating many women initiatives and not able to execute.
Consistently, women leaders refers to be yourself, let your passion drive your career instead of money, when you are true to yourself, your individual thinking, opinions and plan will work for you, not one for all.
Seminars
In Human Supervisory Control, we began to analyze human error involved system. I pick up the flight accident last Feb. in Buffalo, NY, NTSB report detailed list the entire investigation, including the redone video of cockpit last minute before crash. How did pilots lost situational awareness? It took me quite a while to detach the emotional feelings. Professor Cummings constantly reminds us to look beyond the accident, what display or automation can we do to better position the situation and help pilots to avoid the accident? even in your own life, will you let yourself adjust situation or alter the situation? A lot of time, adapting is easy and much simple way to go. What about reverse this?
Thursday night I tried out the course "Power and Negotiation", one of several courses not in IT(like energy, aerospace, psychology...). Different from undergraduate study, I found that I have more interests to know and learn these, interestingly, they are all interlink with each other, no field boundary.
at user innovation seminar, one of TA is a hacker and totally looks like a hacker. one of his projects was photography. with little bit script, he and other hackers can let $100 canon camera do the same thing what $2200+ canon camera does, just check out CHDK site. It is legal, a total open-source site, which Canon even watch closely, taking some new innovation into its new product without credit the creator. Hacker does not care, who let us know why they spend so much time on those things.
By the end of Friday, Paul Krugman will give a talk at MIT. This is how energetic this place can be. So many things going on, you have a constant battle to figure out which to choose over many great things. A group of world renown economists and your favorite professors will be just like you, standing in the crowd, hoping for a seat!
Thursday night I tried out the course "Power and Negotiation", one of several courses not in IT(like energy, aerospace, psychology...). Different from undergraduate study, I found that I have more interests to know and learn these, interestingly, they are all interlink with each other, no field boundary.
at user innovation seminar, one of TA is a hacker and totally looks like a hacker. one of his projects was photography. with little bit script, he and other hackers can let $100 canon camera do the same thing what $2200+ canon camera does, just check out CHDK site. It is legal, a total open-source site, which Canon even watch closely, taking some new innovation into its new product without credit the creator. Hacker does not care, who let us know why they spend so much time on those things.
By the end of Friday, Paul Krugman will give a talk at MIT. This is how energetic this place can be. So many things going on, you have a constant battle to figure out which to choose over many great things. A group of world renown economists and your favorite professors will be just like you, standing in the crowd, hoping for a seat!
CEO Perspectives
The first week of Spring semester became the "classes hunting". As there are so many good classes offering here, how could you choose one over another? you go to attend(sort of like shop around). This is a quite new experience for me, to hunt and bid for classes.
So far, I am quite happy that I got in the Wednesday class -- Corporations at the Crossroads: The CEO Perspective. This is such a demanding class, 120 students got in and 81 more on the waiting list. Here is the list of speakers:
Feb 3 Jim Sinegal President & CEO, Costco
Feb 10 Dan Mudd CEO, Fortress Investment Group
Feb 17 Strauss Zelnick Founder and Partner, Zelnick Media
Feb 24 Jeff Immelt Chairman and CEO, GE
March 3 Ray Elliott CEO, Boston Scientific
March 10 Nigel Travis CEO, Dunkin’ Brands
March 31 Dan Hesse CEO, Sprint Nextel
April 7 Wyc Grousbeck Managing Partner & Governor, Boston Celtics
April 14 Jeff Zucker CEO, NBC Universal
April 21* Jim McNerney Chairman and CEO, Boeing
April 28 Bill Ford Chairman, Ford Motor Company
May 5 Mark Templeton CEO, Citrix
May 12 Leo Apotheker CEO, SAP
There will be pre-required reading and 3 executive memos. To have them face to face with you discuss their decisions, esp. during critical times. When we look back history, we could objectively say which is right/wrong decision. But for them, how did they make those decisions at that time, what information they depend on or choose to analyze?
To give you a crazy picture of what Wednesday night class looked like, I came way early with my dinner in hand to secure my seat. Before Mr. Sinegal presents, the room was so full, totally break the fire drill policy, each stair was squeezed 2-3 persons.
Costco, the company built in Washington. I am one of Costco customers, always wondering why they only keep the limited choices, but periodically have some surprise products. Mr. Sinegal presents the history, growth plan domestically and globally. He promotes Costco through his every slides and words, but he does not advertise Costco since he believes the word of mouth and fact of long line of Costco gas station advertise well without paying. During Q&A time, being a Washington LCB employee, how could I miss the opportunity to ask him about Costco lawsuits, which my team has provide a lot of data for AG on those cases. After I describes the lawsuits and background info, he asked me if I ever dealt with Government or work for Government. He is such a brilliant person, still believe that the second case will be like the first one, won over Government.
1. Reward shareholders by doing 4 things: obey the law, take care of our customers, take care of our employees(huge admiration to him on providing good healthcare plan for employees despite what wall street says), respect suppliers
2. think like a small company
3. succession plan: promote people inside, who knows business well
4. merchandising: senior management should understand merchandising, and have right people skills, the rest of knowledge and skills can be trained later
5. carry everything to save money for customer
6. never have an exit strategy
7. constantly figure out how to keep price low
8. good luck & good people (go back to price club relationship)
9. self-service got good satisfaction
10. never keep old generation products(let 45% TV stock sell for only 4% value, in order to clear the stock)
11. no advertise
12. supplier can not determine the price. (this is critical in order to run the low price)
13. do not put corp. money to political party
14. believe every employee should have health care
15. Japan, Korea & Taiwan take 1/3 Costco sales
16. learn tricks how to use existing data(only 20% make sense, this is a hard decision for managers)
So far, I am quite happy that I got in the Wednesday class -- Corporations at the Crossroads: The CEO Perspective. This is such a demanding class, 120 students got in and 81 more on the waiting list. Here is the list of speakers:
Feb 3 Jim Sinegal President & CEO, Costco
Feb 10 Dan Mudd CEO, Fortress Investment Group
Feb 17 Strauss Zelnick Founder and Partner, Zelnick Media
Feb 24 Jeff Immelt Chairman and CEO, GE
March 3 Ray Elliott CEO, Boston Scientific
March 10 Nigel Travis CEO, Dunkin’ Brands
March 31 Dan Hesse CEO, Sprint Nextel
April 7 Wyc Grousbeck Managing Partner & Governor, Boston Celtics
April 14 Jeff Zucker CEO, NBC Universal
April 21* Jim McNerney Chairman and CEO, Boeing
April 28 Bill Ford Chairman, Ford Motor Company
May 5 Mark Templeton CEO, Citrix
May 12 Leo Apotheker CEO, SAP
There will be pre-required reading and 3 executive memos. To have them face to face with you discuss their decisions, esp. during critical times. When we look back history, we could objectively say which is right/wrong decision. But for them, how did they make those decisions at that time, what information they depend on or choose to analyze?
To give you a crazy picture of what Wednesday night class looked like, I came way early with my dinner in hand to secure my seat. Before Mr. Sinegal presents, the room was so full, totally break the fire drill policy, each stair was squeezed 2-3 persons.
Costco, the company built in Washington. I am one of Costco customers, always wondering why they only keep the limited choices, but periodically have some surprise products. Mr. Sinegal presents the history, growth plan domestically and globally. He promotes Costco through his every slides and words, but he does not advertise Costco since he believes the word of mouth and fact of long line of Costco gas station advertise well without paying. During Q&A time, being a Washington LCB employee, how could I miss the opportunity to ask him about Costco lawsuits, which my team has provide a lot of data for AG on those cases. After I describes the lawsuits and background info, he asked me if I ever dealt with Government or work for Government. He is such a brilliant person, still believe that the second case will be like the first one, won over Government.
1. Reward shareholders by doing 4 things: obey the law, take care of our customers, take care of our employees(huge admiration to him on providing good healthcare plan for employees despite what wall street says), respect suppliers
2. think like a small company
3. succession plan: promote people inside, who knows business well
4. merchandising: senior management should understand merchandising, and have right people skills, the rest of knowledge and skills can be trained later
5. carry everything to save money for customer
6. never have an exit strategy
7. constantly figure out how to keep price low
8. good luck & good people (go back to price club relationship)
9. self-service got good satisfaction
10. never keep old generation products(let 45% TV stock sell for only 4% value, in order to clear the stock)
11. no advertise
12. supplier can not determine the price. (this is critical in order to run the low price)
13. do not put corp. money to political party
14. believe every employee should have health care
15. Japan, Korea & Taiwan take 1/3 Costco sales
16. learn tricks how to use existing data(only 20% make sense, this is a hard decision for managers)
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Sounds cool Vs. Dangerous
Today is the beginning of Spring Semester in 2010. My first class is ESD 744: Human Supervisory Control, one of courses that I take a huge step away from my core courses, stretching the area I could learn. Interestedly, knowledge is quite universal. A lot of thinking here are quite supporting with management decision and reshape my mind on design and system thinking!
From 40s plane to nowadays cool design airplane, you will find a lot changes in cockpit for pilot. from totally manual to glass screen automation, the change is supposed to get better and easy for pilot to make quick decision during emergency, but getting better sometimes in design will become to take in some "sounds cool" ideas, which are potential problems for real time flight. From when we allow our life to fill with cool things, some actually purely pleasure without proving functionality. For pleasure, that is fun, but for airplane, what you will put in front of pilot, will you recommend those cool thing?
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been quite demanded. Imagine that there will be fed-ex airplanes without pilot, for sure our shipping fee is low. But when I learned why company so expects unmanned aerial plane, apparently, the pension for pilot has been considered a quite budget on their yearly financial spending. So, will the trend be less pilot, but more ground support? I wonder. "Training" has not been quite friendly considered in flight industry, as how you can define your training manual in the threatening situation of pilot safety. The computer's calculation is a conditional result, how can we avoid the error by introducing training steps, blocking human decision at critical situations? As I ask myself many questions, the new perspectives to system, safety, human fact errors are changing.
What could be sounds cool but also make sense changes?? I really like the unmanned coal mined vehicle, reduced the possibilities of loosing innocent lives. "Dead-man switch" at train, makes you consider how much automation we would like the drivers to do. For sure, the automobile with sensor(night vision) screen at dashboard will not be my choice, as it draw your focus and lead you ignore the surrounding with your usual common sense.
Sheridan’s Span of Control is from manual control, to supervisory control to automated control. Where should we draw the lines among these? Will you let astronaut rest with one red button having full automation control, or will you let them busy work through everything in the space having manual control? too bad, two days ago, the funding for going to Mars plan got canceled, significant group of MIT studies have to seek other opinions. Not too long ago, they were still discussing those controls...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5IziyOcAg&feature=player_embedded#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77-7EM38MSw
From 40s plane to nowadays cool design airplane, you will find a lot changes in cockpit for pilot. from totally manual to glass screen automation, the change is supposed to get better and easy for pilot to make quick decision during emergency, but getting better sometimes in design will become to take in some "sounds cool" ideas, which are potential problems for real time flight. From when we allow our life to fill with cool things, some actually purely pleasure without proving functionality. For pleasure, that is fun, but for airplane, what you will put in front of pilot, will you recommend those cool thing?
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been quite demanded. Imagine that there will be fed-ex airplanes without pilot, for sure our shipping fee is low. But when I learned why company so expects unmanned aerial plane, apparently, the pension for pilot has been considered a quite budget on their yearly financial spending. So, will the trend be less pilot, but more ground support? I wonder. "Training" has not been quite friendly considered in flight industry, as how you can define your training manual in the threatening situation of pilot safety. The computer's calculation is a conditional result, how can we avoid the error by introducing training steps, blocking human decision at critical situations? As I ask myself many questions, the new perspectives to system, safety, human fact errors are changing.
What could be sounds cool but also make sense changes?? I really like the unmanned coal mined vehicle, reduced the possibilities of loosing innocent lives. "Dead-man switch" at train, makes you consider how much automation we would like the drivers to do. For sure, the automobile with sensor(night vision) screen at dashboard will not be my choice, as it draw your focus and lead you ignore the surrounding with your usual common sense.
Sheridan’s Span of Control is from manual control, to supervisory control to automated control. Where should we draw the lines among these? Will you let astronaut rest with one red button having full automation control, or will you let them busy work through everything in the space having manual control? too bad, two days ago, the funding for going to Mars plan got canceled, significant group of MIT studies have to seek other opinions. Not too long ago, they were still discussing those controls...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5IziyOcAg&feature=player_embedded#
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77-7EM38MSw
Saturday --- Finish Freedom trail
Finally, two weeks later, we completely finished the freedom trail. Have to admit, if U.S. went for independent like the speed we finished freedom trail, we would have waited long time for the moment.
It was a cold day to walk outside, which we walked for several hours in the cold wind, visiting all these Boston historical sites, finally Freedom Trail lead us to U.S. Constitution ship. Listening the navy lady explaining the history of Constitution, I am amazed to stand here looking away the road I walked, wondering what it was like 200 + years ago.
start at Fenny hall
By Sunday, I completely moved out of Sidney Pacific Housing, my sublet place. On Feb. 4 I will move to Ashdown on-campus housing, which is the newest housing building at MIT. Meanwhile, I am 'floating', a very good floating, staying at a friend's place at Harvard Square, who I knew since 2001 in Olympia, what an amazing connection! She cooks such good Chinese food, oh, I got spoiled here.
Monday is MIT registration day, which we do not have class but still trying to see what courses should take on. Again, this is the biggest struggle for many of us, there are just so many good classes on campus, not like priority one over another, but both top priorities, so hard to choose :( I have to let several my favorite classes go.
It was a cold day to walk outside, which we walked for several hours in the cold wind, visiting all these Boston historical sites, finally Freedom Trail lead us to U.S. Constitution ship. Listening the navy lady explaining the history of Constitution, I am amazed to stand here looking away the road I walked, wondering what it was like 200 + years ago.
start at Fenny hall
By Sunday, I completely moved out of Sidney Pacific Housing, my sublet place. On Feb. 4 I will move to Ashdown on-campus housing, which is the newest housing building at MIT. Meanwhile, I am 'floating', a very good floating, staying at a friend's place at Harvard Square, who I knew since 2001 in Olympia, what an amazing connection! She cooks such good Chinese food, oh, I got spoiled here.
Monday is MIT registration day, which we do not have class but still trying to see what courses should take on. Again, this is the biggest struggle for many of us, there are just so many good classes on campus, not like priority one over another, but both top priorities, so hard to choose :( I have to let several my favorite classes go.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
RA
By Friday, after couple meetings, I have received a RA position, which I will work on projects interested me very much. I am quite happy and thankful for this opportunity. Meanwhile, I need to drop several classes as there is a rule, being RA, you can not take more than 36 credits. The meeting with Prof. reminds me of the time I did research at ISU, quite a learning and catch up to understand the project and figure out the way how to approach. I really like my Professor Cumming, who was the first woman pilot at air force, flying to so many places with so much system analyzing experience. Most of all, I truly enjoy her forthcoming, energetic working attitude, "there is always a better way, can we think more?"
DC 4 -- getting help from friends
Finally got some sleep Wednesday evening, I realized that I need to be at ESD, getting some clarification on my registered courses. Seriously, I registered too many classes, which I have to decide which to drop, and, this is really a hard decision.
The weather got so bad, snowing and burrrrr cold wind. I feel that this is colder than the time I was at Iowa, or at least I felt that way.
I got a sublet at Sidney Pacific for Jan. but need to move out this weekend. I need to move to Ashdown, unfortunately, the move in date is Feb. 4, which means I will need to flow around for 4 days. Couple of my classmates: Donny and Felipe came to help me to move my stuff away. Originally to put in some classmates rooms. Since we all have small places, I hope to put one bag in one place. Donny has a car and allows me to put all my stuff in his car, so, this becomes our "DC4" project :)
Here are the team of DC4.
This evening there is Jazzlink on campus, free food! have to admit, MIT has free food all the time with various events/activities, for sure, you won't go hungery on campus.
The best Argentina dinner at 'Tangos'.
The weather got so bad, snowing and burrrrr cold wind. I feel that this is colder than the time I was at Iowa, or at least I felt that way.
I got a sublet at Sidney Pacific for Jan. but need to move out this weekend. I need to move to Ashdown, unfortunately, the move in date is Feb. 4, which means I will need to flow around for 4 days. Couple of my classmates: Donny and Felipe came to help me to move my stuff away. Originally to put in some classmates rooms. Since we all have small places, I hope to put one bag in one place. Donny has a car and allows me to put all my stuff in his car, so, this becomes our "DC4" project :)
Here are the team of DC4.
This evening there is Jazzlink on campus, free food! have to admit, MIT has free food all the time with various events/activities, for sure, you won't go hungery on campus.
The best Argentina dinner at 'Tangos'.
DC 3 -- Social Science Competition and scavenger hunt
After Monday DC2 completion, we got a new assignment for DC3, which includes two parts -- Social Science and scavenger hunt. There are three topics: Disaster relief, higher education and economic development, each team has to use scavenger hunt points won by monday evening to bid for the topic they would like to work on. The winner of each topic will receive $500 to donate to the charity we choose for the presentation. After quick brain storming, my new team(each design challenge, we were formed into different team in order to work with each other.) head on the road. Sadly, the cold snowy Boston suddenly changed into very windy and heavy rainy place, have to say, the rain here has not similarity with Seattle one. The wind was wild, and rainning hard, not like Seattle mild drizzling. My new SDM umbrella has not working well at all, totally got upside down multiple times, completely miss the function of preventing me from the rain. After a few stops, we went underground(apparently, the underground is way more complex than infinite corridor, at least in my eyes), where became the place we got lost, after circling around many turns, we could not figure the direction of building we need to go, and trying to get out. When we saw the elevator, we got in, then stuck with which button to push, 'P' or 'B', what does that mean?? ok, try 'P', raise up and reach the level, no door open, then we went back, stepping out the elevator, find the exit door to stairs, that is how we got out. When I turned around looking at this place again, I told myself that I'd rather confused with direction on the ground than going under.
After part of scavenger hunt, we all met at Characters for a celebration of completion of DC2. Yes, we all need this pause moment. By now, we have know each other pretty well, esp. with DC1 and DC2 team mates, we can comfortably joke around, expressing our opinions and sharing thoughts. Somehow the celebration always involves drinks. As we ordered different drinks, I told the waiter that I need something sweet. He came back with a "Happy Howaii". What I asked what is in it? couple classmates joked me not qualified for working for Liquor Control Board, since I do not know all the drinks!! Maybe I should suggest to my LCB Director to add this piece of information as new employee orientation requirement :)
Tuesday (26th) I could not join my team in the morning right away as I have registered one course at Harvard Business School. Apparently there is no easy way to get there, walking, then subway, then bus, then walking. The course is very informational and interesting. At HBS, I feel that I walk into a bank, at MIT, I feel that I am living in a creation of history. All great, but in a totally different way. At Harvard, it is taught by case-study. Your classmates will feed you with you various opinions, Prof. is like a captain, guiding your thoughts, pulling you back if you went too far. Meanwhile, my teammates went for scavenger hunt, exploring MIT and Boston. Later we suggested the program to have this done at DC1 while we were full of energy at the beginning of program and felt excited to explore.
After class, I raced back MIT, working with my team on disaster relief, our charity is a furniture donation organization. We use the mindmap which we used it as tool from System architecture class, to analyze the system for pre-disaster, disaster and post-disaster. Align with what is going on in Haiti, this research and study showed us how things could easily go wrong inside of system. It is easy to shrug the shoulder criticizing how things went wrong in Haiti rescue system, but it is so complex when we drilled into each step, which interconnect with so many things. Plus, even though many counties & people are willing to help and donate, the coordination job is humongous to take on.
By Wendesday morning, we started to see the draft of picture how we want to present. This DC is short one, several students will fly out right after DC3 presentation.
As I have a meeting in the afternoon(the same time to present DC3), I could not present, so, I was in charge of creating presentation and putting everything together. now, I have to mention, by this moment, we have been so tired, hate to use this word since it really sounds negative. We are having a good time, but we are in deed tired, some people getting sick(including my periodically 'duck voice'), I have starting forgetting things around or loosing the careful working part of me. One mistake I feel bad was to write down a wrong teammate name on the final presentation slide, terrible :( I could not use my tiredness as an excuse to explain why this happened. One of my classmates said something which I will always remember and remind myself of this incident that "when you present business plan to CEO, any tiny mistake could abort the plan, no matter how much time and efforts you put in."
Studying at MIT, I feel that you will study with the master of that field, the creator of known concepts/theories, the leading founder in this research area... I remind myself that I need to soon get over this excitement of new student(every time, we 'wow' to show how cool this is) and focus on the content in order to ask questions with those masters. I had a meeting with Prof. Jackson, who is such a down to earth, easy to talk with person! during the conversation, I told him that I applied Jackson system development steps in couple of system implementations I lead and shared my experience and opinions on that. I asked him if he plans to make any updates. He looked at me, saying "I am sorry that I am not the person who created this, you put the wrong name!", I looked at him, wondering how I could miss this, then he said "I will certainly let the creator know that you appreciate, he is my father who created this diagram and steps to implement system." oh my!
The meeting was at building of Ray and Maria Stata Center. It is quite unique building. Again, this is my one more time lost myself at MIT building, I just kept circling, could not find the office I was supposed to be. If you come to visit MIT, you should visit that building and a tour inside, which contains many famous MIT students' reactivities.
You have to be amazed by every team how they choose the charity, and what they presented, one team got the whole class involved to do a online test, to show how we can help the elementary education in science, very clever and creative!
As the close curtain of DC3, we also completed Jan. IAP. Bunch of us went to the famous Boston Beer House to celebrate. We found out as long as you have a local Bostonian around, you will find all kinds of fun place. Please do not take my post in a wrong way, we celebrate with alcohol, but we do not get drunk!
After part of scavenger hunt, we all met at Characters for a celebration of completion of DC2. Yes, we all need this pause moment. By now, we have know each other pretty well, esp. with DC1 and DC2 team mates, we can comfortably joke around, expressing our opinions and sharing thoughts. Somehow the celebration always involves drinks. As we ordered different drinks, I told the waiter that I need something sweet. He came back with a "Happy Howaii". What I asked what is in it? couple classmates joked me not qualified for working for Liquor Control Board, since I do not know all the drinks!! Maybe I should suggest to my LCB Director to add this piece of information as new employee orientation requirement :)
Tuesday (26th) I could not join my team in the morning right away as I have registered one course at Harvard Business School. Apparently there is no easy way to get there, walking, then subway, then bus, then walking. The course is very informational and interesting. At HBS, I feel that I walk into a bank, at MIT, I feel that I am living in a creation of history. All great, but in a totally different way. At Harvard, it is taught by case-study. Your classmates will feed you with you various opinions, Prof. is like a captain, guiding your thoughts, pulling you back if you went too far. Meanwhile, my teammates went for scavenger hunt, exploring MIT and Boston. Later we suggested the program to have this done at DC1 while we were full of energy at the beginning of program and felt excited to explore.
After class, I raced back MIT, working with my team on disaster relief, our charity is a furniture donation organization. We use the mindmap which we used it as tool from System architecture class, to analyze the system for pre-disaster, disaster and post-disaster. Align with what is going on in Haiti, this research and study showed us how things could easily go wrong inside of system. It is easy to shrug the shoulder criticizing how things went wrong in Haiti rescue system, but it is so complex when we drilled into each step, which interconnect with so many things. Plus, even though many counties & people are willing to help and donate, the coordination job is humongous to take on.
By Wendesday morning, we started to see the draft of picture how we want to present. This DC is short one, several students will fly out right after DC3 presentation.
As I have a meeting in the afternoon(the same time to present DC3), I could not present, so, I was in charge of creating presentation and putting everything together. now, I have to mention, by this moment, we have been so tired, hate to use this word since it really sounds negative. We are having a good time, but we are in deed tired, some people getting sick(including my periodically 'duck voice'), I have starting forgetting things around or loosing the careful working part of me. One mistake I feel bad was to write down a wrong teammate name on the final presentation slide, terrible :( I could not use my tiredness as an excuse to explain why this happened. One of my classmates said something which I will always remember and remind myself of this incident that "when you present business plan to CEO, any tiny mistake could abort the plan, no matter how much time and efforts you put in."
Studying at MIT, I feel that you will study with the master of that field, the creator of known concepts/theories, the leading founder in this research area... I remind myself that I need to soon get over this excitement of new student(every time, we 'wow' to show how cool this is) and focus on the content in order to ask questions with those masters. I had a meeting with Prof. Jackson, who is such a down to earth, easy to talk with person! during the conversation, I told him that I applied Jackson system development steps in couple of system implementations I lead and shared my experience and opinions on that. I asked him if he plans to make any updates. He looked at me, saying "I am sorry that I am not the person who created this, you put the wrong name!", I looked at him, wondering how I could miss this, then he said "I will certainly let the creator know that you appreciate, he is my father who created this diagram and steps to implement system." oh my!
The meeting was at building of Ray and Maria Stata Center. It is quite unique building. Again, this is my one more time lost myself at MIT building, I just kept circling, could not find the office I was supposed to be. If you come to visit MIT, you should visit that building and a tour inside, which contains many famous MIT students' reactivities.
You have to be amazed by every team how they choose the charity, and what they presented, one team got the whole class involved to do a online test, to show how we can help the elementary education in science, very clever and creative!
As the close curtain of DC3, we also completed Jan. IAP. Bunch of us went to the famous Boston Beer House to celebrate. We found out as long as you have a local Bostonian around, you will find all kinds of fun place. Please do not take my post in a wrong way, we celebrate with alcohol, but we do not get drunk!
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Events analysis and blah blah...
From Prof. Crewley taught us to think big, every class, before it starts, he usually comes in 10-15 mins early, start global events analysis. "What happens today in the wold?" from last couple weeks MA political attention to Google announcement to leave China, Professor constantly reminds us that nothing is accidental but have internal connection, only by training yourself systematically, you will seek the underneath link. It is part of learning ability and train yourself to be a good 'observer'. Any predictions are based on the data and evidence, sometimes the random events seem like random but are planned ahead of time. I have watched closely about lately China and U.S. political relationship changes. If you look back the last century, how much involvement these two countries have been. Here in Boston, the course about 'How to do business in China!" at Harvard Business School is totally full with more registered student, so did Harvard Kennedy School, whose "political economy transition in China" class, not many Chinese student there but full of students from different countries. I asked myself if I have followed Chinese news, economic and political development like this close? you really need to catch up, Charlotte!
you think globally, you act globally.
Sitting in the classroom, break time classmates will update you with many gadgets in the new market. This morning classmates have talking a lot about iSlate, iTablet, making you can not wait to see the real product and test it. One of classmate teaches a design class for MIT undergraduate, seriously, if you ask what computer to buy, he does a better job than Apple sales person to tell you everything about Mac. Some of us got sort of interested to check out his class.
I do not know how many Apple products I will continually buy. The new Lenovo T400 I got in Jan. for school has giving me more problems than I could expect, constant memory freeze have not help my study but delay. I guess I soon will convert myself totally from PC to MAC.
you think globally, you act globally.
Sitting in the classroom, break time classmates will update you with many gadgets in the new market. This morning classmates have talking a lot about iSlate, iTablet, making you can not wait to see the real product and test it. One of classmate teaches a design class for MIT undergraduate, seriously, if you ask what computer to buy, he does a better job than Apple sales person to tell you everything about Mac. Some of us got sort of interested to check out his class.
I do not know how many Apple products I will continually buy. The new Lenovo T400 I got in Jan. for school has giving me more problems than I could expect, constant memory freeze have not help my study but delay. I guess I soon will convert myself totally from PC to MAC.
Monday, January 25, 2010
DC 2 -- We won the 2nd Design Challenge competition!
After two weeks working each selected projects, we reach the moment of presentation day. For days, we wonder why there are weird scary masks showing up at study rooms, why guys came in with wet shoes/lower pants(the famous men's bathroom flooding, unfortunately, I am not able to check out:), the deliver table... and a lot of cleaning products(e.g. sponge). We have total 8 teams, working for mexico major companies. Some of business people came all the way from Mexico to hear our presentations.
Which one should I pick, so many great ideas breaking through the existing market, they did not just work on their own, but heavily involved with customers, users and clients, constantly get feedback and upgrade. That is the major gap we learn how to close, not missing any market request/need.
One furniture update team starts their presentation with a fun 3D video to show the crowded cubicle life. After working for 9 years, I totally understand the frustration of sitting in the traditional cubicle settings, which separate each other, less communication and more isolation. The suggestion they have is to well use the angle of combine even number of joint cubes and lower the cubicle wall to maximize the cubes(traditional cubes 40 will be increase to 51-53 cubes in the same space) and maintain individual space. I like the new layout and wonder what new users/employees think about the settings.
The delivery table comes with patient dashboard, like a tablet PC, reflect the time, next contraction, and doctor return time(apparently, everyone wants that), health data, messages, pictures, video, webcam, music, etc. It looks like that you are having a business class for the ride of delivering baby. Since there are several classmates, whose wives are expecting this year. The questions from class are quite fun to listen, esp. looking the chair animation. This chair is really cool, at least is way simple, user-friendly than the one I saw when I visited a girlfriend in hospital during her labor.
Our presentation is Somaki Fregon Sponge redesign and development. The original sponge is not a real sponge as it does not absorb liquid, sort of like scrubber. The food easily stuck on the fiber and not easy to clean. Due to copying, in local Mexico market, there are similar products with very cheap prices, cause Somaki loosing price and brand identify. We did 14 interviews from 4 continents for market research, later we did 2nd survey to get feedback finding out if they are happy with our new designed product. The Fregon Sponge does not absorb the liquid, actually it is a scrubber, so instead of designing a new sponge, we focus to design scrubber. I personally quite happy with the solution, ergonomic handling, suitable for women's hands(somehow, the cleaning jobs are done by women, come on, guys!), able to target low end as well as high end, kit allows various surface cleaning. From financial analysis, we removed the costy 70% foam with the special designed handle support. So, users can replace fiber often and clean the fiber by either microwave or dishwasher. The whole experience allows me to explore the marketing and sales strategy, which I have not spend much time on those field. It really lets me engage with customers and clients. Often engineers receive the business requirements, heavily depends the client company's request, but this experience, we are able to work with client as well as practical users, helping us to see the perspectives from manufacture and buyer point of views. As engineer, we usually underestimate the benefits from marketing and sales strategy in our early design. This is a quite fun learning curve and let me see the importance to engage every side of experts. When you spend much time on product design, one failed function could cause the failure of entire product. Simple design brings function directly to user. This is very basic concept, but when we work on the product design, we overestimate and complicate the whole process.
So many highlights during presentations, also some models refuse to cooperate, like the Halloween LED Masks and body model, not moving as the way it designed.
By using survey feedback rating, the final competition result is: Team 4 won with their world best scrubber design!! I am so proud of my team :) Blade and I did the presentation, but we can not forget the dedicated team members: Vishal, Rafaral, ChangBae, and Jose. They are awesome!! It really pays off all these very late nights, many discussions and update. We even took the highest cost management, customer needs, profitability overall. From the whole class feedback, we are able to see the first impressions from each classmates, every good to know how we can do better.
Oh, we say goodbye wrapping up DC2, and say hello to welcome DC3, which is the last competition in our Jan. IAP. Most of us have already began to plan the mini vacation to get away this weekend, getting some break before next week Spring semester start.
Which one should I pick, so many great ideas breaking through the existing market, they did not just work on their own, but heavily involved with customers, users and clients, constantly get feedback and upgrade. That is the major gap we learn how to close, not missing any market request/need.
One furniture update team starts their presentation with a fun 3D video to show the crowded cubicle life. After working for 9 years, I totally understand the frustration of sitting in the traditional cubicle settings, which separate each other, less communication and more isolation. The suggestion they have is to well use the angle of combine even number of joint cubes and lower the cubicle wall to maximize the cubes(traditional cubes 40 will be increase to 51-53 cubes in the same space) and maintain individual space. I like the new layout and wonder what new users/employees think about the settings.
The delivery table comes with patient dashboard, like a tablet PC, reflect the time, next contraction, and doctor return time(apparently, everyone wants that), health data, messages, pictures, video, webcam, music, etc. It looks like that you are having a business class for the ride of delivering baby. Since there are several classmates, whose wives are expecting this year. The questions from class are quite fun to listen, esp. looking the chair animation. This chair is really cool, at least is way simple, user-friendly than the one I saw when I visited a girlfriend in hospital during her labor.
Our presentation is Somaki Fregon Sponge redesign and development. The original sponge is not a real sponge as it does not absorb liquid, sort of like scrubber. The food easily stuck on the fiber and not easy to clean. Due to copying, in local Mexico market, there are similar products with very cheap prices, cause Somaki loosing price and brand identify. We did 14 interviews from 4 continents for market research, later we did 2nd survey to get feedback finding out if they are happy with our new designed product. The Fregon Sponge does not absorb the liquid, actually it is a scrubber, so instead of designing a new sponge, we focus to design scrubber. I personally quite happy with the solution, ergonomic handling, suitable for women's hands(somehow, the cleaning jobs are done by women, come on, guys!), able to target low end as well as high end, kit allows various surface cleaning. From financial analysis, we removed the costy 70% foam with the special designed handle support. So, users can replace fiber often and clean the fiber by either microwave or dishwasher. The whole experience allows me to explore the marketing and sales strategy, which I have not spend much time on those field. It really lets me engage with customers and clients. Often engineers receive the business requirements, heavily depends the client company's request, but this experience, we are able to work with client as well as practical users, helping us to see the perspectives from manufacture and buyer point of views. As engineer, we usually underestimate the benefits from marketing and sales strategy in our early design. This is a quite fun learning curve and let me see the importance to engage every side of experts. When you spend much time on product design, one failed function could cause the failure of entire product. Simple design brings function directly to user. This is very basic concept, but when we work on the product design, we overestimate and complicate the whole process.
So many highlights during presentations, also some models refuse to cooperate, like the Halloween LED Masks and body model, not moving as the way it designed.
By using survey feedback rating, the final competition result is: Team 4 won with their world best scrubber design!! I am so proud of my team :) Blade and I did the presentation, but we can not forget the dedicated team members: Vishal, Rafaral, ChangBae, and Jose. They are awesome!! It really pays off all these very late nights, many discussions and update. We even took the highest cost management, customer needs, profitability overall. From the whole class feedback, we are able to see the first impressions from each classmates, every good to know how we can do better.
Oh, we say goodbye wrapping up DC2, and say hello to welcome DC3, which is the last competition in our Jan. IAP. Most of us have already began to plan the mini vacation to get away this weekend, getting some break before next week Spring semester start.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Chomsky
This has been a long week. Once a while, when you missed a good night sleep, you could easily catch up, but when you have had short of sleep for so long, get up in the morning is a such drag. Not complaining but a fact! Morning time we all search the place of coffee provider, so important.
Today's system architecture touched the topic of Ambiguity. How many examples we could find out we take same word/phrase into different meanings, which cause many problems. It is very critical to define the word/phrase in the agreed setting. Prof. Crowley passed on the envelopes with a number on top, with some sort of coin inside, after we discovered what is inside, we understand that we should not assume that every coin has head or tail, some even does not have coin. most of all, he wants us to review the fact of what ambiguity could cause us.
By noon, I nodded my head constantly sitting inside classroom, need a nap, definitely. When I wake up, I saw a note at MIT website about Chomsky concert. I watched closely again, making sure that I was reading what I thought was. It was a honoring concert to Noam Chomsky, with his talk prior to the concert. oh, my, I was thrilled. When I first learned Linguistics in China, his theory was all-over my textbooks. That was a huge break through in linguistics field. For me, to learn a foreign language, how he defined normal grammar has impacted so many language learners. Later Chomsky's Hierarchy, has influenced so many fields, including computer science. I know that I will go. What a surprising finding after a needed nap!
The concert is at MIT auditorium. This concert is delicated to scientists from musical tributes. MIT and Harvard head of Linguistics gave their stories about knowing Chomsky, they even did a few liguistics exercises with audience, which totally reminded me of the time when I first learned English, the grammar and how to think about English structure.
After Concert, I went up to Prof. Chomsky, thanking him for his findings which impact my language and computer science studies. I just could not believe that this is the man that I have learned so much from his research.
Today's system architecture touched the topic of Ambiguity. How many examples we could find out we take same word/phrase into different meanings, which cause many problems. It is very critical to define the word/phrase in the agreed setting. Prof. Crowley passed on the envelopes with a number on top, with some sort of coin inside, after we discovered what is inside, we understand that we should not assume that every coin has head or tail, some even does not have coin. most of all, he wants us to review the fact of what ambiguity could cause us.
By noon, I nodded my head constantly sitting inside classroom, need a nap, definitely. When I wake up, I saw a note at MIT website about Chomsky concert. I watched closely again, making sure that I was reading what I thought was. It was a honoring concert to Noam Chomsky, with his talk prior to the concert. oh, my, I was thrilled. When I first learned Linguistics in China, his theory was all-over my textbooks. That was a huge break through in linguistics field. For me, to learn a foreign language, how he defined normal grammar has impacted so many language learners. Later Chomsky's Hierarchy, has influenced so many fields, including computer science. I know that I will go. What a surprising finding after a needed nap!
The concert is at MIT auditorium. This concert is delicated to scientists from musical tributes. MIT and Harvard head of Linguistics gave their stories about knowing Chomsky, they even did a few liguistics exercises with audience, which totally reminded me of the time when I first learned English, the grammar and how to think about English structure.
After Concert, I went up to Prof. Chomsky, thanking him for his findings which impact my language and computer science studies. I just could not believe that this is the man that I have learned so much from his research.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Challenger
This week we spend couple days in our Human side of Technology, understanding how and why people behave certain way at the critical moments(which you could not define critical until later). The Professor tried to get us understand that making a decision involves full understanding, before drawing conclusion as you will live in the consequences. Two videos he showed us. One is Challenger -- Space Shuttle. Another one is British Steel.
The video of Challenger is to recreate the pre-launching plan, discussion, esp. when engineers identify the Orin issues, how manager/NASA took on the information. Despite of knowing the final result, if you could just pretend not knowing what will happen, watch the movie, truly is going through some frustration. Seeing engineers trying to present the case, seeing how manager spoke and word certain uncertainty. Prof. wants us to see when you deal with uncertainties, what you want your mind go through first. The video is so powerful, as we know, there are always some engineering issues when launching a new product, at what point, you will call the stop and roll off the product. How can a good engineering manager know which technical issues he can drop, which he needs immediate attention, when there are several in front of you. Since we have two Chilean air force men, two U.S. air force men(one retired already), the whole discussion, with their experience, and the video information are incredible. for me, I thought every airplane is safe, but even in Boeing, there is margin of failing probability analysis. How can you, as a manager, be responsible to make the right call? (side note, I learned that if flight suddenly has to drop down, put your oxygen mask first, as in 5-6 second you will faint, so there is no way you can help your family put on mask first, then you, I guess air attendent just does not want to announce this at the beginning of flight.) Most of all, how can we live the decision we made? esp. certain consequences! some of managers involves in Challenger are still working in the same company. The mental reminder of the decision to let shuttle launch in such cold temperature will carry them long time. I still remember in 80s when this happened,my dad had quite a few conversations with me teaching me the history and U.S. aerospace plan competing with Soviet Union. By then, it was an accident from a foreign country. But now, watching this, all of classmates could identify that our work has similar discussions/struggles like movie's scenes when they does not know how they should deal with Orin issues. Prof. said every time when he showed this video to his consulted company, the customers felt chilled by how much similar they have in their work place. What odd response! Over 20 years Challenger's launch shocked us emotionally and intellectually. Can we pretend it happen in any fields, like IT, Health care?
Another movie is British Steel. Did CEO have vision, yes, but the whole business deal of buying one plant or two or more have been quite a manipulated process. Prof. reminds me of paying attention at people's body gesture, which let me think about show. That is the only show I see online if I have time. One thing from this movie is if you go for a very important and hard meeting, remember to bring your ally along otherwise you won't get all your ideas/suggestions go through. This is over 20 years old movie, but what it presents not just represent the time of those periods, but completely typical for nowadays business. The CEO's plan was brilliant, but failed terribly. His vision was so right but too early. Now British Steel does the same plan in Europe, and totally a leading technology.
The video of Challenger is to recreate the pre-launching plan, discussion, esp. when engineers identify the Orin issues, how manager/NASA took on the information. Despite of knowing the final result, if you could just pretend not knowing what will happen, watch the movie, truly is going through some frustration. Seeing engineers trying to present the case, seeing how manager spoke and word certain uncertainty. Prof. wants us to see when you deal with uncertainties, what you want your mind go through first. The video is so powerful, as we know, there are always some engineering issues when launching a new product, at what point, you will call the stop and roll off the product. How can a good engineering manager know which technical issues he can drop, which he needs immediate attention, when there are several in front of you. Since we have two Chilean air force men, two U.S. air force men(one retired already), the whole discussion, with their experience, and the video information are incredible. for me, I thought every airplane is safe, but even in Boeing, there is margin of failing probability analysis. How can you, as a manager, be responsible to make the right call? (side note, I learned that if flight suddenly has to drop down, put your oxygen mask first, as in 5-6 second you will faint, so there is no way you can help your family put on mask first, then you, I guess air attendent just does not want to announce this at the beginning of flight.) Most of all, how can we live the decision we made? esp. certain consequences! some of managers involves in Challenger are still working in the same company. The mental reminder of the decision to let shuttle launch in such cold temperature will carry them long time. I still remember in 80s when this happened,my dad had quite a few conversations with me teaching me the history and U.S. aerospace plan competing with Soviet Union. By then, it was an accident from a foreign country. But now, watching this, all of classmates could identify that our work has similar discussions/struggles like movie's scenes when they does not know how they should deal with Orin issues. Prof. said every time when he showed this video to his consulted company, the customers felt chilled by how much similar they have in their work place. What odd response! Over 20 years Challenger's launch shocked us emotionally and intellectually. Can we pretend it happen in any fields, like IT, Health care?
Another movie is British Steel. Did CEO have vision, yes, but the whole business deal of buying one plant or two or more have been quite a manipulated process. Prof. reminds me of paying attention at people's body gesture, which let me think about
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