If I were to point out the single most useful ‘resource’ during the summer project, it would be technical blogs. Yes, Blogs!
Blogs from industry experts, marketing experts, specifically B2B marketing experts, and last but not least blogs from people who have an expertise to share and are not shy about it, complimented my experience and education as valuable resources during the summer. Two such examples of experts and their blogs would be Jim Cahill’s EmersonProcessXperts (Chief Blogger for Emerson Process) and Walt Boyes’ Sound Off! (Editor-in-Chief of CONTROL)You must be thinking that this guy spent his whole summer reading blogs, big deal !. No, I put in long hours and burnt ‘midnight oil’ reading through process control and automation publications and journals, called product users to analyze buyer behavior, and related marketing activities but the insights that I obtained from ‘personal’ expertise (listed on blogs) were of unbelievable help to me. People who live on the internet and in turn, live in public through the internet are more helpful then I imagined.
The summer of 09 was one of the most eventful and interesting summers of my life, both personally and professionally. Personally, my wife and I enjoyed watching our one year old grow, walk and speak in a language we don’t understand ‘yet’. I played in a summer league USTA 5.0 team and I played a few rounds of golf. I had a winning record in the 5 singles tennis matches and I scored in the 90s in four successive golf rounds.
Professionally, I worked on an incredible project in collaboration with a very profitable billion dollar European firm. I worked with a seasoned industry and academia ‘veterans’ in an industry which I knew nothing about, on a scale which was very hard for me to imagine outside of MBA style case studies. To say that my job description for the summer project was broad would be an understatement. The summer project started out as an academic project and then took the turn towards a corporate ‘real world’ problem. I got the opportunity to simulate what it is like to work as a Product Marketing Manager for a large, profitable corporation. Needless to say, I got my money’s worth on the $100,000+ investment in the MBA program. (I am only half-way there)
I am sold on the idea to put my thoughts out there for the world to see. I will add a more details about the summer and anecdotes along the way.
Good Day!
UQ
UQ's blog 