Tedward!

Gen Y and being Fratty

2008-10-08T20:52:00.002-04:00

Ryan Paugh (who, since he went to Penn State, and we have a chapter there, could be a fraternity brother of mine) posted about how being a blogger is much like being in a fraternity.

As a former fraternity president, I have to agree with him on several points. First, and most generally, a good fraternity isn't nearly as homogeneous or as focused as the stereotype. You can and should have a lot of brothers (or sisters, for a sorority) involved in a wide variety of activities, from drama to sports and student government.

Secondly, Ryan makes a point about relationships, and how to work with people while still being competitive. One of the ways this comes up in a fraternity is elections - I have to admit that I didn't do as well as I might have liked keeping things together after elections. This sort of team basis is one of the things that Generation Y is supposed to be great at and is a key skill I see at work - we all want the same promotions, but can only get there by working with each other and having the company do well.

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a lot of bloggers are Greek. I think the greek/non Greek decision varies from person to person and school to school, but I think the personality of a blogger, or any community leader, is one that would go Greek at certain schools. At others, it might be something else, like running the school government or the newspaper. Either way, its the personality that wants to get everyone together because "its all about the party." It's the type of person that deals with the inter-personal relationships and to keep working with someone and motivating them even if you disagree.

Pushing Paper

2008-10-07T22:48:00.002-04:00

Looking back, there are things I did, things I wanted to do and didn't, and things that I did that I shouldn't have. In the end, it was all worth it.

Bored

2008-05-23T09:45:00.004-04:00

Bored? Want to hear real estate moguls and students speak, plus finally get to know what a thousand or so people are named? I've got just the thing for you, today at 4:00pm at the Comcast Center.

Maryland Day

2008-04-29T09:29:00.003-04:00

Now, this is how we roll down in College Park. The 10th anniversary of Maryland day meant 12,600,000 calories of rich, cakey goodness backed into 50,000 cupcakes.

http://www.slashfood.com/2008/04/26/umd-celebrates-maryland-day-with-50-000-cupcakes/

Recursion

2008-04-23T23:44:00.003-04:00

I usually post on twitter that I've posted here. Which, due to the magic of plugins, updates my IM status and my facebook status to match my last twitter post. Then, if you come here to read the post, you see the twitter post that brought you here in the list on the right. Mirrors upon mirrors I tell you.

I might not have noticed this, but the marketing/advertising blog world (yeah, I know...) has had a lot of posts about the Droste Effect recently.

I'll probably do a post about twitter and why I like it later.

Influencing the wife

2008-04-23T23:15:00.003-04:00

Two recent events prove that no matter how much she tries to avoid it, my wife gets influenced by me and my life.

First, we were watching a rerun of Futurama, as we so often do. (Debatably, the amount of cartoons she watches is in and of itself an influence.) The Popplers episode was on. During the course of the show, Fishy Joe asks Fry and Bender what they are selling poplars for (1$/doz). Joe says they'll never make money that way, that he should sell them for $2/doz in his restaurant, and that he'll even pay then $1/doz, which they excitedly accept. Gretchen immediatly said "But they'd get increased distribution, lower overhead, economies of scale and market penetration". Proof that she's spent too much time around MBAs.

Secondly, her reaction to a very good OB/GYN visit? Make a baby blog:
http://martinbabywatch.blogspot.com/

Sunrise, Sunset

2008-04-08T11:25:00.002-04:00

So I finally updated my about me here and on Linkedin. I'm not a first year MBA student anymore, in fact I'm almost not a second year anymore. I'm also no longer Executive Vice President of the MBA Association, we transitioned to the new leadership and I think my successor, Liz Rhodes, is going to do a great job. I am really glad I ran for the position, it was a great chance to get to work with all of the clubs and the administration and to really be involved with my class as a whole. Right now is an interesting time for all of us; people are starting to setup and think more about their life as graduates and are moving if they are staying near by, for instance one of my friends is moving to baltimore. Others are spending their weekends looking at houses in other states and talking to moving companies. At the same time, there is an urge to do more with people and at school before you graduate. Last thursday, about 30 people showed up after class at the golf course for some beers and food. A peculiarity of UMD is that some of the best food and drink specials can be found at the golf course. There were a lot of comments that people hadn't seen each other all semester, or really not much since first year. I think there is a great deal of intrest in continuing to meet up before the semester ends and we all go our own ways, and in figuring out how to stay in touch after graduation. It's a small thing, but I think trying to keep all my information up to date may help.

The secret to elections

2008-04-08T11:00:00.000-04:00

The other secret about elections is that when you're stepping down, you want great people to run for your spot. I marketed my post extensively, including the primary attributes "This position is, in fact, so awesome that due to the transitive property, you yourself will become awesome." Everyone else talked about how much work you had to do.

In the end, I had 3x the normal amount of contenders for my position.

China's Mainland Lament

2008-01-14T19:27:00.000-05:00

to use Dan's method of summarization:

Dear China,

MORE PANDAS!

Thanks,
Tedward

P.S.
panda panda panda

Errata from my trip so far...

2008-01-09T19:34:00.000-05:00

Lemon-lime Airborn is much tastier then the original orange flavor. The former tastes like weak gatorade, the latter is just off-putting. This is a common consensus among my cohort.
If you're on a trip like this, packing a lot of basic medicine would make you incredibly popular. Everyone is bumming tylenol and day-quill off each other.
The trick that Chris B told me (apparently quite common) of taking a pepto in the morning and at night works really well, given some of the odd things we've been eating.
Architects take really good pictures.
Western food sizes really are huge, when you get things over here they seem tiny, and then I remembered that these were the sizes we grew up with.
Somehow, more people recognize Maryland then Washington D.C. when we answer when we're from. This may be due to the fact that there is an incredibly active Maryland center that has brought in a lot of investment.
The deal is only valid while the status quo is maintained.

Spring Fling

2007-04-22T23:18:00.000-04:00

Last night was Spring Fling, Aka Comm Prom. It went fairly well, with only one minor incident, and a lot of people having a great time. Net Impact does a great auction where they have students donate items, then they give the proceeds to one or more MBA students who are working this summer on socially responsible work. The theory is that these jobs often pay nothing or far less then students could get elsewhere, and it helps us put students where they want to be going forward, rather then where they can pay the bills from the summer. As you can see below, I took the option of black-tie option, and leveraged it.

We're all Nerds

2007-04-15T02:10:00.000-04:00

So, you know that everyone is a MBA nerd when you receive an invitation for a Happy Hour, and the invitation is a power point. Apparently, that's the only way to do design or layout that anyone knows. It's even nerdy when you realize that they did in fact format it according to the design rules for effective power points that we were all taught.

A little more bite, a little less bark

2007-02-07T21:13:00.000-05:00

I have a prize to anyone who an tell me what this is and guess why I have it.

How I use ICal to track assignments and life

2007-02-05T22:09:00.000-05:00

This will eventually land on my other site, MacMBA.com

(Click image for full-size view)

This is a short writeup of how I use ICal.

The first two calendars are what David Allen calls hard calenders, they are places I need to be at certain times. This is what you expect from a calendar. I use spanningsynch (it is still in beta, but if you go to the blog you can sign up) to synchronize these two with gcal calenders.
The first one, Entourage, also synchs with my Blackberry. I don't actually use Entourage anymore, but it syncs with that too, and is my default calendar for all of these synchronizations. (Most sync programs require a default, because it needs a place to dump items from say, the blackberry, which can only handle one calendar.)

The second calendar, Gret and Ted is generally like the first, except it is also a shared Google calendar. This calendar is where both my wife and I plan our social lives or anything that impacts both of us. Again, it syncs with ICal, so its accessible on my computer or from any computer.

The next four calendars are made into a group so I can turn them all on and off at once. Each of my classes has its own calendar with the due date for all of its assignments. Each also has its own color, to make it easier to track. Turning the group off lets me concentrate on other scheduling, but I don't need to do it often.

The other calendars are all generated by KGTD. The GTD system works in contexts, the idea being that the things you need to do may require a specific mental state or physical location. I can't clean my apartment from the library, and there are times when I've got a great flow for writing, and others where I would do well to clean or to study. KGTD synchronizes each of my contexts with the calendar of the same name. Again, by clicking or unclicking the checkbox, I can make all the to-do's for that calendar disappear or reappear. This lets me block out things I can't do at the time. I may make groups for some of these, so I can show or hide them at once. Merlin Mann used to recommend this, but I agree with his later point that needing to do that may be a sign that you have too many contexts. I may consolidate some of my contexts, like handwrite, which is used for thank you notes for interviews and gifts and email into one category. Writing is actually for writing blog posts and articles, so it's a different context altogether.

Action Words and elections

2007-02-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

One of the things I noticed during the campaign is the use of action words and verb tenses. Business communication is always focused on action words and trying to increase the urgency and importance of your speech by cutting out extraneous information. This is a change from my past as an English major. I did notice a major correlation between the verbs people chose and the message they sent.

People who wanted to put forth a platform of ideas tended to use strong phrases and say I will. As an example, one candidate started with As President, I will work... and then outlined the plan that he has in mind.

Candidates who want you to get to know them used if phrases. Generally, people who started with if elected tended to spend more time telling about themselves and how open to ideas they are, and less time developing plans.

Likewise, the first group of people tended not to have topic sentences in their platforms or speeches and instead went for the "grab" to pull you into their candidacy. The second group had more pleasantries and superlatives.

In the contested positions, everyone who was more in the first group won. Even when two platforms for the same election started with asking verbs, the one that went straight to ideas beat the one that went to experience first. This was, according to the grapevine, the hardest of the two to decide between because everyone really liked both.

Overall, I think we had a really great group of candidates and people trusted that they could all get the job done. Given this background, it seems like reminding people of your past experiences didn't help as much as outlining what you planned to do. There was a certain mindset that all of the candidates had enough of a background to get things done, the difference would only come in what they did with their background.

I think this can be extrapolated to the job searching process. Too many resumes, cover letters and interviews focus on the details of what has been done before. I think employers would rather hear what you're going to be able to do for them. The stories about past performance aren't impressive on their own, but rather are an opportunity to show that you have the skill base needed and recognize that this is the right time to use it. There is an important difference between how you've done something similar before, and how you've done something similar before that means you can get results now.

Platform

2007-01-28T13:05:00.000-05:00

Here is my 150 word summary of my platform.
As Executive Vice President, I will focus on two things: communication within the program and coordinating events between the clubs. I believe we can work with the administration to make sure that we know when decisions are made; whether they are decisions that students can have input on, or if they are purely administrative, we should know what has happened and how it affects our program. At the same time, faculty and OCM should be aware of major events in our schedules, such as midterms and national recruiting conferences. Working on War of the Words was a pivotal event for me; it was a chance to combine students and faculty for social fun with an academic
goal. I believe we can combine some of the basic events, like resume workshops, and then branch out and let each club shine in its own featured social and academic event.

Elections

2007-01-28T11:16:00.000-05:00

I've decided that I'm going to run for the position of Executive Vice President of the MBAA. The EVP job is similar to the Presidents, in that its mandate spans all of the clubs and roles. The primary focus has been on coordination and communication, and on getting the clubs and activities to all work together. This is one of the ways that I think that we can polish Smith more and have a more cohesive experience. The outgoing officers laid a lot of groundwork and are leaving a great base to work on. That is my overall impression of Smith, we've done a lot of work and now need to polish and refine it so that everyone can see the solid base that we are working on. In the end, I decided to run for EVP instead of President because of the time commitment. President is a 25-30 hour a week job, which is somewhat made up for because it is also a GA position. None of the vice-presidencies are a GA positions. However, I already have a GA position next year, working with the Dean and his committee to improve the school and to try and find where the school's culture can develop. I also have really enjoyed working with Sysarc this year, and may want to do the same next year. Either way, I would be unable to meet all of my commitments this year if I took on another 20+ hours weekly and I don't want to abandon a lot of things that have been good to me just because something shinier came along.

Policies my wife would approve of

2007-01-24T22:23:00.000-05:00

My managerial accounting professor has a solution to cell phones in class....

"If your phone emits a little tune during class, you must dance to it. You can't turn your phone off once it starts, you must dance until if finishes. I only have to make the first person do this, once the rest of the class has seen it, they invariably make the offender dance."

Of course, a phone did go off today, and we made the girl who it belonged to dance.

Following up

2007-01-22T23:11:00.000-05:00

First, I have a bit of advice for anyone who's switching fields, especially if they are doing it by going back to school. If at all possible, get some experience in your new field while you are switching, whether its volunteer work, part time work or an internship. I talked to a number of companies at the National Black MBA conference this fall, and they fell into three categories. Some companies liked to take people from different backgrounds and teach them to become brand managers and marketers. These companies were excited to see switchers. Some were interested in switchers, but only if they could show the same skill base, such as numerical analysis, project management, experience in a matrix organization, and cross team leadership. Others said they mainly hired from other firms and wanted you to cut your teeth elsewhere. Everyone said to highlight anything that I had that could be considered relevant experience. I did that, and also took another step.
In addition to summer jobs, people also post 5-15 hour a week internship jobs on the Maryland job site. Surprisingly, not many people sign up. I got one where I'm doing marketing for an IT consulting firm, which is great because I have the IT past to understand what it is that the company does. It gives me a great chance to get marketing experience that I can talk about, and exposure to a whole different side of a company. It also gives me a nice stipend that I can spend to go out with friends for drinks or food that would otherwise stretch my budget.
I've started "pinging" everyone that I talked to back at the career fair and since then, with a focus on anyone who doesn't come to Smith to recruit. In each letter, I mentioned talking to them earlier, the key points about the job and the skills needed that we discusses, and then said I'd taken the liberty of attaching a resume. I also noted that we'd discussed how basic job skills that I already had could carry over, and highlighted that I'd had exactly that experience in my marketing job, where I've learned about direct mail campaigns, ad-word optimization and email campaigns. The first company that I mailed sent back an invitation to fly down and visit them for a third round interview and tour of their facilities.

I'd been a little annoyed that so many of the people at the job fair basically told everyone to check back later, or only wanted very experience candidates. However, I think a lot of people may fail to check back later, and to make the connection to the earlier conversations, which may make all the difference in differentiating yourself from all the other candidates.

Fun at Giant Foods

2007-01-22T23:04:00.000-05:00

So I'm back at school, and I went to the Giant to pick up some food, to get ready for living on my own again. A few things struck me:

One of my friends, James, has been waiting for heelies to penetrate the market for at least five years. He's always thought they were neat, and would have really like to have had a pair when he was younger. I've seen them a lot recently, they must have reached some critical mass to actually penetrate the market, ala the hush puppy resurgence talked about in The Tipping Point. Giant now has signs on every door saying that you are not allowed to use them in the store. Not surprisingly, they have had accidents with kids wiping out on waxed floors and also with the kids sliding into carts. I think this is one of those products that you only know has actually caught on when you start to see it banned.

Also, Giant has a new program encouraging you to buy and use their reusable bags. I don't know the exact details, but I think there may be a slight discount if you do. If there is, they should consider totaling how much you could have saved this year by switching, and putting it in with your bonus card information.

There is a potential problem with the program though. I bought about $70 worth of groceries, which came in 21 bags. Note that only 8 of these were actual "parcels" the bags that I carry. The rest were double bags, or bagged items inside of the bag. The checkout guy that I had used some sort of system and spent a lot of time adding things to bags, folding that bag and inserting it in another, then opening it back up and adding another bag. I'm not sure, would he have expected me to have 21 reusable bags, or would he have filled my reusable bags with plastic? In a few cases, the sturdier reusable bag would have cut down on the need for double bagging, but only three of the bags were used to double bagging, so it wouldn't have made as much of a difference as it might seem.

Glasses

2006-09-12T00:05:00.000-04:00

So I decided that dropping out of the workforce and spending a ton of money for two years only to fail out because I kept getting headaches and having trouble seeing the projectors was a non-utility-optimizing path that did not exceed my opportunity costs (see, I'm learning!). So I joined the ranks of those with an extra 10 percieved IQ points.

Back to school

2006-09-11T23:53:00.000-04:00

So all the stuff we did when we were little is coming back to me now... I'm currently duplex printing lecture notes which will then be three-hold punched and put into a binder with dividers. At least I didn't have power points in third grade, allthough my binder was a lot cooler. I think that should be right about the height of the trapper keep phase.

Quick thoughts

2006-08-29T07:20:00.000-04:00

A couple of quick thoughts:

The next two years look like they're going to be awesome.

My class is already pulling together, and mixing the people who made the early events with everyone else.

Yesterday focused a lot on theory and team building, with Meyer's Briggs testing and explanations. The results were what you'd expect from an MBA class, heavily TJ. Interestingly, most of the girls where as well, given that only 1/3 of the female population is T. I think there is some selection pressure there, a certain type of person is more likely to decide to drop out of the workforce for two years, its a long term goal with a lot of short term instability and an uncertain payoff.

I got a shout out in the class presentation for referring to my Bobby McFerrin injury and for pointing out that Winchester, VA, is an exotic locale because it has both types of music, country and western. I also came up with the stereotype of F's, feeling rather then thinking people as "Hippies". I managed to slide it in perfectly after the call for stereotypes, which got a lot of attention: one of the other guys had been basically doing the same thing so it stood out in contrast.

You know it’s a really big school when the line for people who need to get parking in person is thirty minutes long and there's only one lot left. I just needed a different sticker (soft-top cars don't get window hangers) but it was still a long trip in a hot building, especially since we had to wear suits to orientation. Not a day for hot wool.

The Indian MBA candidates are shocked at the prevalence of cheese in American cooking. Smith responded with a wine and cheese party.

On Apartments

2006-07-31T16:01:00.000-04:00

Before I comment on the new apartment, the ill-fated Ikea trip and anything else, I need to reflect on living spaces past. The largest actual room I've ever had was at my college apartment on Brandon Avenue. 316 Brandon, where I was, is close to both Old Cabel and to the corner and is walking distance, if long to the fraternities. However, it was always an obscure road that most people didn't know about, living out 14th or 15th if they were Greek or down JPA (some exceptions both ways). Which meant that you could get a really good bargain for a really close place. I saw confirmation of my not having a "hot" apartment in the CDaily:
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=27174&pid=1454

My house is out in the suburbs and I'm really happy with it, especially because it let us have L-Dog. However, its the kind of place most people move after their first house in Federal Hill or Canton. Now, the new place is one of the trendy places where there seem to be a lot of grad students in general and where there are allready a lot of people on the incoming 1st-year lists have stated that they will be living, and are allready planning parties and bar trips. Does this mean I've climbed the social housing ladder?

On the way to my place

2006-07-26T23:34:00.000-04:00

I moved the majority of my worldly goods into my new apartment in Silver Spring today (more on this later.) The heart of the "new" downtown silver spring is the Discovery building, which recently got a lot more intresting...

Now this is a cat bed...

2006-07-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

This is where the cat slept last night....

2006-01-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

Test...

Back

2005-08-27T11:31:00.000-04:00

So, I'm thinking about trying to actually post again. Yes, I know that I said that if I was going to bother doing this, I'd want to have a cool blog that actually uses some of the intresting web technologies like Matt's does. However, I'm fundamentally lazy and think that if I have something, it will motivate me to actually use it, and once I start blogging semi-regularly, I am far more likely to want to actually make a better blog and then possible some more web work.
Overall, I'm subscribing to the flywheel concept. Getting me to actually do stuff is like starting a huge heavy flywheel, but once it starts moving, momentum kicks in and keeps it going.

On that note, I should make a flickr account for the lil-dog.

GMail

2004-06-15T16:52:00.000-04:00

Yay, I'm on GMail now.

Tedwardm@gmail.com

Open

2004-06-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

More to come, I'm basically just setting up shop. That, and helping establish that all of our friends and I are normal, and Gretchen is the odd one out:

Begin email :

Yes yes... now I'll get them on sluggy and penny-arcade and you will be surrounded.
Tedward!
-----Original Message-----
From: Alana B. Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 11:17 AM
To: Gretchen Martin; 'Martin, Ted'; 'Raymond Rigo'
Subject: RE: Saturday

You're not boring, Gret! He doesn't/we don't read it because we're mind-numbingly bored. It's pretty good information. In this case, I didn't know why the fuck I couldn't log into my e-mail account until Ted passed this on about the upgrade (and now I am HAPPY!!!!! 100 megs! Woo hoo! That means I'm at 5% of my capacity instead of 79%! Badass!!! Translation - that means I'm not going to run out of storage space for all of my gushy little love notes from Ray!). :)

Much as I do love Google, and will probably still get a gmail acount when it's made widely available . . . to quote "Dracolytch": I'll take "Free existing cool service" over "Free theoretical awesome service" any day.

happyhappyhappy!!!

Alana

-----Original Message-----
From: Gretchen Martin
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 11:04 AM
To: Alana B. Smith; 'Martin, Ted'; 'Raymond Rigo'
Subject: RE: Saturday

I understand about five words (mostly conjunctions) on that site. Is this seriously what you spend hour reading, Ted???? Am I that boring???? :-(

-Gretchen
-----Original Message-----