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!!
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