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!!

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 :)

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.

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?

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.

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!