Music Appreciation 101: The Ramones

"The Ramones have a lot of 'I want' & 'I don't want'...

I don't wanna grow up, I don't wanna go down to the basement, I wanna be your boyfriend, I don't wanna walk around with you, I don't want you, I wanna live, I wanna be well, I wanna be sedated..."

-MSK

Right. I'll skip the lyrics and stick with "music to code to" Tag's Trip on SomaFM...

Game Changers #Cyberposium

HBS out did itself this year. Notable quotes by searching twitter against #Cyberposium. What words are verboten for RIM CEO Jim Balsillie? What does YouTube CEO Chris Hurley do with his 20% time?

The highlight of my day was obviously the gaming panel.

Below with a few paraphrased takeaways. Apologies for misattribution (panel format, so a few panelists agreed with most of these statements)

• Dan Scherlis (former CEO of Turbine): "My definition of 'Genre' is a hit game and its imitators... Over the years we've only seen a dozen or so successful genres." Notes the budget, time and success rate to construct a MMO are driving a lot of the industry veterans into more casual gaming options.
• Dan Kim (Nexon America): game life cycles are a critical part of strategy. An overnight "hit" with poor retention has a different ROI than a smaller install base and retention times measured in years.
• Chris Weaver (MIT & Bethesda softworks): Social games are a way to close the divide between social groups who have been geographically separated by greater mobility. Conversely social games can facilitate making new friends (i.e. MMOs). He hints at a depth of knowledge about game company leadership, funding sources, conspiracies, and conflicts of interest.
• Rich Roberts (PlayFirst): Assures us there is a place at the table for women in gaming. Warns that social platforms structured to make money their first priority are prone to make short-sighted monetization decisions (i.e. Offerpal). There is a limit to how much one can be incented to spam one's friends. Conversely, he notes that the writing is on the wall for retail distribution.
• Rob Nashak (Bringit.com): "Zynga's business is really a glorified poke." We are still finding creative ways to monetize games, like p2p wager platforms. Nashak also blew me away moderating the panel "Trends on Digital Media and Online Entertainment."

3 cheers for Leland!

Cambridge Politics: Grad Student Wins Triple Firsts

"He is set to become the first university student, first Asian-American, and the youngest current member of the Cambridge City Council, after winning the Nov. 3 election. In January, Cheung will be sworn in for a two-year term. He says his priorities are job creation, education, affordable housing, university/community relations, and transparent government"

SIP: Kidnapping Training

We had a surprising number of personal experiences with kidnapping shared in Rigobon's "Corruption" discussion this morning. These ranged from a Sloan Fellow's sister held hostage for 2 years in Caracas to an undergrad who'd been kidnapped in the midst of a MIT project on the India-Tibet border and carted into China by the military and held for several days.

I'd throw bid points behind the "Kidnapping Training" SIP class Beatka started as a joke but became increasingly compelling with discussion. Until then, oh intrepid G-Labbers and other globe trotters:

• Don't travel in a suit
• Don't frequent red carpet/admirals/etc. clubs
• Don't enter or leave the plane first (pegs you as a "business class" high net worth droog)
• Don't carry status symbols (elite credit cards, business cards with your title)
• Don't carry checks (they can hack you and your family's holdings across all accounts from this info)
• Don't lie (your kidnappers have more info about you than they let on to)
• Don't make eye contact (if you can ID them, you're dead... makes encountering them again at the village Carnavale more awkward)
• Familiarize yourself with MIT's International SOS service

Death of Salesmen?

How do you see the sales function changing in the coming years?

Bill Aulet made an interesting point in class-- ask the vendor if they've implemented the product they're trying to sell you in-house.

Not that I advocate diy drug testing, but my money would be on a lot of sales talent devoted to a viral arms race and an increase in goods whose value appreciates with network effects. We didn't stop at Girl Scout cookies, MaryKay cosmetics, and Tupperware parties. Now I'm buying iPhone apps because of my friend's demos. I'm renting Zipcars after hitching a ride in a friend's.

When your sales force doesn't receive a commission or own a quota, how do you configure the product to make the "ask" worth their while? Was the distinction between sales person and customer an artificial one? Are customer feedback ratings the first step in a new age of sales strategies?

Recession Cooking

Stumbled upon Clara while trying to figure out what to do with a potato slowly sprouting into a tuberous bonsai. Interesting angle. 93 year old great grandmother shares recipes her family relied on during the depression.

• Cheap: less than $0.50/serving, though Clara wasn't shopping at Whole Foods
• Modifiable: Learn what they substituted/subtracted to get this version
• Vegetarian friendly: Meat was expensive
• Easy: few ingredients and a lot of eyeballing it
• History in soundbites: How did people manage without freezers? How did bootleggers distill so much whiskey without having factories built?

Rigobon: What to do when you suck @ everything

Do the thing where you suck relatively less than your peers.

Yesterday, Rigobon outlined competitive advantage under autarky and trade conditions. Rigobon likened free trade to the "value creation" stage of a Curhan-styled negotiation. The problem arises when "value claiming" ensues (fair trade is one of many ways to allocate the surplus).

At this point, a dominant country is inclined to claim most of the value created because:

1. they have more power/stronger BATNA

2. it "looks" like they're doing all the work and their trade partners suck (the productivity gains associated with outsourcing grunt work are easy to lose in the wash)

This is why countries which are best in the world at commodity industries (i.e. agriculture) tax their strengths to subsidize their weaknesses in higher margin products (i.e. healthcare). Rigobon would tell you this approach only makes sense if the subsidy is driving development in an area the world sucks at and your particular country sucks at everything.

Zipcars

Get the MIT discount while you can!

AF & I took a yellow mini cooper named Mushpot for a day trip to Funspot Arcade in Laconia.

Super easy logistics. It lived in an alley close to the green line (if we hadn't wanted one last min for the entire day, there were plenty in Beaconhill). Had its own EZ Pass. There's a gas card under the sun visor.

There's an iPhone app out there that lets you lock/unlock/honk remotely.

BYONavigation device!