Last night's TDS was filled with satirical jabs on the former FEMA director, Michael Brown, for his mismanagement of the Kartina disaster relief efforts. This is the best piece:

"The chart below shows the cycle of disaster as presented by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Yes, it is really from their site and you should probably check that link soon. I have a feeling it will be gone within a day or two.

Let’s see…we start with a disaster, of course, then we go the response, recovery, and mitigation. All very good. Then we have risk reduction, prevention, fantastic, and then we go into preparedness. Excellent, I have a very good feeling about this.  This, then, leads right back to…disaster?

I guess we’ve had it wrong all along! Judging by this criteria, Michael Brown shouldn’t be fired, he should be given a raise!"

9/30/2005 12:24:29 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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The Daily Show

As part of the TPP Leadership Development Leadership Lunch series, Prof. Newman had arranged a discussion-led lunch session with Partha Ghosh with the students last Monday. I have heard of Partha Ghosh before and was keen on hearing his view on leadership. But due to a time conflict, I wasn't able to attend that session. Fortunately, he has graciously agreed to another session that was held on Tuesday.

I am usually dubious about people teaching leadership in school, but I was struck by Ghosh's definition of leadership, to which he relates leadership as a personal journey that is fueled by one's conviction and faith in self. He also stressed that today's problems are getting more interconnected, complex, and uncertain. Being a leader today is more important than ever before. But to be an effective leader, one has to be multidisciplinary so that he/she can connect with others better. I also had a nice short chat with Partha at the end of the session. I found him to be wise, humble, and accessible. Being a big fan of MIT ESD, he said that he would like to get more engaged with the students in ESD. He said that he will return to lead a few more sessions on leading organization and creative solving. Finally, he revealed that was slated to participate in the SDM orientation program next January where he will give a lecture/talk on leadership.

9/29/2005 12:38:09 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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School

I had the worst presentation ever in last night's Innovation Teams (i-Teams) class. I was nervous and couldn't articulate my thoughts clearly at the presentation. This was a far cry from a presentation on digital encryption that I presented earlier that day. Being familiar with encryption technology, I didn't even prepare for that earlier presentation and I breezed through the presentation by effectively explaining digital security to my audience.

I am still utterly disappointed with poor presentation performance last night - this has not happened since college. So what happened? In hindsight, I wasn't familiar with the powerpoint slides that I was presenting. My team prepared the slides while I presented them. I was totally out-of-sync with some of the animations on the slides. But what really made me nervous was the presentation of a subject that I don't know very well. With a high-profile audience making up of faculty members, VCs, PhD students, and other MIT students, all whom have a good understanding of technology, I was afraid that I didn't have the technical fluency to convey our team's ideas and technology effectively. It was an embarrassing moment for me. But this is no major setback as long as I learn from mistakes.

9/27/2005 8:59:54 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Personal

Last night's guest speakers in Innovation Teams were Sam "Bo" Pasternack, an IP partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart and Charles Cooney, Faculty Director of the Deshpande Center. They led a very interesting discussion on patents and other intellectual property (IP) issues.

Notes from the talk:

1. The patent does not give you the right to sell but the right to exclude others from selling or from producing. For example, if you are not awarded with a patent in Japan you can still sell in Japan as long as no one is excluding you from the marketplace
2. If there's a conflict of patent, the first inventor gets the patent not the first to file
3. In order to get a patent, the invention has to have novelty, usefulness, and non-obviousness (prior use or documentation).
4. Patents are issued for four types of inventions: machines, process, man-made products, and compositions of matter
5. In U.S., you get 20 years of patent rights from the day of filing, not the day of patent grant
6. The best approach to filing a patent is file first and then disclose
7. There's other instruments other than patent to protect and extend IP
8. Trade secret is one of them as long as the IP is kept a secret
9. Obviously, the biggest risk to trade secret is that the secret gets out. For example, some disgruntled employee decides to steal the trade secret
10. Worse, this disgruntled employee can file for a patent on the trade secret and prevent a company from using the trade secret
11. Someone in the class asked "But this case seems to violate the statute of granting patent to first person who invited the idea." Sam's response was: "The statute stands only if the inventor doesn't actively abandon and conceal the invention"

9/27/2005 8:20:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Business

At least according to Ray Stata, the founder of Analog Devices, in a recent interview with EE Times (registration required):

EETimes: Let's talk about the state of the engineer in North America.


Stata: For whatever reason, engineering as a profession has never garnered the kind of prestige [here] that it has in other parts of the world. There's a certain breed of people who get interested in math and science, but are there enough of them? Clearly, there aren't. In Massachusetts, had it not been for the in-migration of engineers from other parts of the world, the engineering population would have declined.

I don't think anybody has got it figured out. I went to my 25th reunion [at MIT], and they had a questionnaire: "Would you send your kids to MIT?" The answers predominantly came back "No." The [respondents would] say, pardon my English, "I worked my ass off when I was there. Why would I want my kids to go through that, when at the end of the day it was the lawyers and the Wall Street guys who made all the money?"

When you're studying it, you work twice as hard as anyone in any other classes, and when you get out you work day and night and you don't make that much money. So you have to do it for love, not for money.

The one place where we haven't lost it is the whole notion of entrepreneurship, creating companies and things that are new. There's a lot of excitement there.

9/26/2005 1:14:11 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Business

Yesterday, I played my first flag football ever. I am now part of the TPP flag football team who plays in the MIT intramural sports program. Since I was new to flag football, I found myself constantly adjusting to the game in the first half. By the second half of the game, I was playing not only smarter from observations and adjustments from the first half but also more aggressive due to the adrenaline surge. Despite our best efforts, we failed to tie the game and lost the game with a score of 14-6. Good game, nonetheless.

9/25/2005 12:34:19 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Sports

Perhaps one of the best blog entry from Robbie is his documentation of a recent talk by Henry Mintzberg, a professor of management at McGill University, about the limitations and over-hyping of today's MBA programs. Here are some of the highlights:

1. Can't create a manager in a classroom.
2. MBA programs don't create managers.
3. Should earn managerial stripes, not get it because you have an MBA.
4. Shareholder value is not a value.
5. We almost never consult the people who have been managed by the candidates we evaluate

Read here for more information...

9/23/2005 1:07:56 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Business

I am huge fan of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," the popular Comedy Central program that lampoons news broadcasts and politics. Since I watch it religiously every night, I thought I would start documenting Jon's quotes, which I find enlightening and insightful, on my blog. So without further ado, here are 2 quotes from last night:

Some tidbits from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" aired 9/21/2005:

"Estimates show that it'll take about $200 billion to recover from the devastation. That's about the same amount that we're spending in Iraq. (Pictures of wrecked houses in New Orleans and Iraq shown side by side). They look alarmingly alike... So which one is the one that we've already spent the money on?"

"Since 1993, there has been a change of Press Secretary about every 2 years. Why? The answer is quite simple... Because lying is hard."

9/22/2005 10:49:50 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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The Daily Show

2 weeks ago, my car broke down on I-93 while I was driving back to Cambridge. I have to had my car towed to my mechanic in Medford. I suspected that the timing belt was broken (yeah, I was due for a timing belt replacement). What worried me more was that the snapping of the timing belt may have severely damaged my car engine. A few days later, I was informed by Ken that parts of my engine, particularly the valves, timing belt gears, camshafts, and tensioner, need to be replaced. I finally picked my car up last Monday. Needless to say, the damages were not cheap. Sigh... The moral of the story is: timing belt replacement costs $200; fixing a damaged engine can cost you well over $1,000. On the bright side, new engine runs a lot smoother and is at least 25% more powerful.

9/21/2005 10:41:20 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [3]

Personal

What a relief now that I have finally completed and submitted 3 assignments today. First to be completed was a case analysis for 15.011 - Economic Analysis for Business Decisions. I resent this case study due to the fact that the solution to the case was due the day after the case study was announced. My team, which consists of Heesung, Kostas, and me, scrambled to get the case study done on time last night. We finally turned it in earlier this morning. The case study isn't tedious but it would be nice to be given more time to do the case study.

Other assignments done today include the Technology Policy assignment and the System Assignment opportunity set. Don't ask me why it is called opportunity set? I am just as baffled as you are. Apparently, from one source, System Architecture opportunity sets are opportunities for students to impress the professor.

Being out-of-town last weekend during one of the busiest period of the semester was a serious setback in my school schedule. I am really thrilled that I have finally got a chance to relax after today's submission of assignments.

9/21/2005 6:01:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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School

I finally got the chance to try out the new Apple iPod Nano while window shopping at the Apple Store in Cambridge last Thursday. My first impression of the iPod Nano is that it is similar to the iPod Mini with the following distinctive differences:

1. Size wise, both the iPod Mini and Nano have the same height and width, but the iPod Nano is much thinner than the Mini version.
2. The iPod Nano has a color screen while the iPod Mini only has a B/W screen.
3. The iPod Nano has a bigger screen than that of iPod Mini.
4. Because of the bigger color screen, the iPod Nano can be used for viewing photos.

I thought that the iPod Mini was great, but I have to admit that I now drooling over iPod Nano.

9/19/2005 10:57:56 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [2]

Mac

Immediately after the Thompson Island Outward Bound trip, I flew to Detroit to attend Joanna and Zac's wedding. It has been 8 years since I last stepped foot on in Michigan. The last time I was in Michigan was the attendance of my commencement at Kettering University in 1997. I instantly felt the nostalgic memories of my undergrad days as soon as I arrived in Detroit airport. Siobhan, Steve, and Milt, who were still hung over from the previous night's party that they hosted in their hotel room came to the airport to pick me up. Once I got into the car, I was immediately updated with anecdotes from last night's social activity, which was apparently raved by many wedding guests to be a hugely successful occasion. Determined to maintain our good reputation as the wedding's most prolific party organizers, we stocked up on booze on our way back to the hotel to prepare for another great night of partying in our room.

Joanna and Zac's wedding was held in the beautiful Cranbrook House in Bloomfield Hills, MI. The matrimony was charming with a few moments of witty humor and wisdom from the rabbi. It was also fun meeting new people at the wedding, especially the ones that I have heard so much about from Joanna but have never met in person. Perhaps I was exhausted from the Thompson Island trip and the new school schedule, I was a little less than my usual energetic, genial self.

In any case, the post wedding party in our hotel room was a hit with a good showing of new wedding guests and the usual suspects from the night before. All in all, I had a fantastic time. As I reflect on the wedding while writing this blog, I think I have now achieved considerable "zen" from attending the wedding and partying with my partners-in-crime, Siobhan, Steve, and Milt. This is good. So, to my partners-in-crime, thanks for good times. We have to do this again - soon. Of course, to Joanna and Zac, thanks for having me at the wedding. Again, best wishes to the both of you.

9/19/2005 12:21:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Personal

As part of the team building and leadership development in the TPP program, all incoming TPP students are required to register for the Leadership Seminar that is taught by Prof. Dava Newman - the director for the TPP program. The highlight of this Leadership Seminar includes a trip to Outward Bound on Thompson Island. There, I was assigned to a 10 member team, which consist of Jen, Jasmine, Liz, Yoko, Yoshi, Matt, Loic, Bob, Richard, and me. Being in the military, scouts, and Outward Bound in my younger days, both as a participant and instructor (more as a participant than an instructor), I am familiar with the format of the exercises that the instructors at Outward Bound Thompson Island had our team do. However, it is always still refreshing to still be participating in the team-based exercises because to do well and to reap the benefits of these exercises is to go through the problem solving as a team. To this end, our team performed really well. But importantly, we stimulated a lot of learning and developed camaraderie on the team The experience last Friday and Saturday was definitely a great way to soak up the TPP experience. .

9/18/2005 11:14:32 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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School