Week 21: Business Decision Models, Operations Management, Marketing Fundamental, Finance Fundamentals (Module 5 con't)

Week 21 is ending. There is just one more week to go until we get a break for a few days. Also, fall has "officially" arrived. In addition the mornings and evenings have started to get a bit "chilly" and some of the leaves have begun to change. Nothing like a brilliant red maple leaf to remind you that you are in Canada and that winter is coming.

Monday through Wednesday I was attending various information sessions in the evenings for oil and gas companies that came to campus. It seems like most of them were willing consider my prior experience and education. The companies I went to were Shell, Nexen, Imperial Oil and Total. Imperial is coming back Wednesday of next week to give a MBA specific session.

Classes have been busy. Lots of late nights reviewing various team term projects. Lots of very early mornings to get in just one more rehearsal/practice before a presentation to the class. All teams had to give presentations for Operations Management, Marketing Fundamentals and Business Decision Models.

Operations Management presentations were on our final reports for the projects we did analyzing the locations we did our field trips too. Ours was on Amey's Taxi here in Kingston. Other groups did them on: Cancoil Thermal Corp., Dofasco, The County Cider Company, Hotel Dieu Hospital and many others. With the completion of this report and presentation we are pretty much done this course since there is no final exam.

Marketing Fundamentals presentations were on each teams product re-launch. Our team did the zeppelin and proposed launching a small fleet of these giant floating hotels to offer luxurious cruises to the very wealthy. Other teams chose: Clear Pepsi, Dodge LeFemme, Britney Spears, Concorde, iCam, Kindel, Electric Sports Car by GM, Segway and many others. In addition we had to submit a very substancial report.

Business Decision Models presentations were of each teams choosing, but a lot of teams decided take advantage of their field trip in Operations Management and modelled the business they visited. Our team modelled the call center and taxi allocation of Amey's Taxi. Other teams did: Cancoil Termal Corp, Dofasco, "Match Maker" for the class based on surveys the class filled out (by far the funniest, hopefully other classes do this as well to "maximize" happiness), Personal Interactive Meal Planner (Pimp...lol), eBar (this optimized our MBA student lounge snack offerings), class seating arrangement (this "broke" solver as it was too complex), Cell Phone Plan Optimizer, NHL team chooser to beat the Maple Leafs, Traffic Light and a few others.

Homecoming is also this week. There is a big football game that everyone is going to and there will definitely be some social gatherings. The police banned the sale of kegs earlier this week in an attempt to try to curb the over enthusiasm expressed by some of the undergraduates, but I think they will just succeed in covering the roads with broken bottles since undergrads will be undergrads. The class has created some interesting t-shirts we hope to sell at the game to make a profit! (Note: Turns out this went very well. We broke even and made quite a health profit to contribute towards the class' trip to MBA Games. The party was something else...)

I also had an appointment with Julia Blackstock. She is definitely one of the better business career center people available to the students. Very knowledgeable, to the point and friendly.

David Edwards from the business career center gave a lecture on salary negotiation. A lot of people have been getting calls to interview for positions with the companies that they applied for on the Career Services Network, so the timing is about right. Although I am familiar with a lot of what David presented, it was good just to be re-familiarized with it so I have a clear understanding of this topic. After all, I'm hoping I will be in a situation where I need to do this sometime in the near future.

Case competition teams are beginning their practice sessions where they can find time. We need to have a series of internal competitions to see who is going to represent Queen's MBA at the various case competitions before Christmas.

All the sports teams are now in full swing. The hockey team is playing on Monday! Point fours are still going strong! Everyone is tired, but I still see a lot of smiling faces. This post has been somewhat random and poorly written, but that only reflects the tired and fatigued state I'm in. One more week...