Just read this interesting article: Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes Is Buying ‘The New Republic’

What grabbed my attention was Chris’ idea of the tablet bringing back the appeal of long-form content. I’m a huge book nerd and library geek. As such I had lamented the rise of our sound-bite culture. Yet, I’m a willing part of it. I love my Facebook, Twitter, and reader feeds and the rapid access to seemingly limitless, timely information they provide. At the same time, I have a new found appreciation for novels that I read on my iPad. (I love reading using the night time mode on the Kindle App so as not to disturb my sleeping wife.)

I didn’t really know anything about Chris, and I found this excellent article.  Pretty amazing.  Helps co-found Facebook.  Helps elect Barack Obama.  Next stop, publishing.  It will be interesting to see what he does.

Bonus feature: free copy of The Wealth of Networks.

Recently, I received an email from a reader who is a prospective student for our program. One of the big questions he/she asked was regarding jobs. As I know others are interested in this topic, here’s what I wrote back to him/her:

Basically, at Carey, it’s up to you to craft your job. They have excellent resources in terms of career counseling/support. We’re surrounded by excellent people in the larger University. The Hopkins name carries a lot of weight regionally, as well as internationally (mainly because of medicine).

But to be clear, people don’t think of Hopkins and our business school. We don’t have an established alumni base. Companies don’t have experience with our graduates. Compared to other programs, on campus recruiting is fairly limited. We have a handful of businesses/non-profits visit, but not to the extent of other top business schools which have on campus interviews and active recruitment.

That said, again, it’s up to you to craft your career path. There are no placement rates/salaries as this is the first class, but I expect them to range considerably. I have heard of friends with offers ranging from leading investment banks to local non-profits. Some of my friends have accepted jobs with Cigna, Amazon, and Evernote.

In general, I think the Global MBA has been worth the investment of time and money. I find myself transformed, and view business issues in a different light. I have developed ways to solve issues and interact with people that would have taken me several working years to comprehend/master. The international experience was absolutely amazing.

But, I’m still looking for a job. A big part of our job search is spent developing relationships through networking and personal interaction. So, this has been occupying a good amount of time outside of class. Perhaps this would be easier in a higher ranked program with an established alumni base where introductions have already been made…

So, back to school after a bit of a break. Here’s my 3rd quarter classes:

Healthcare and Business Law – Pretty straight forward law class. Studying the law from key components as they relate to healthcare. However, each group picks an industry for a semester long project. Our group chose the craft beer industry. Great professor.

Project Management – Part of the entrepreneurial track. While it’s particularly interesting due to my previous work in web development, most of the class follows the Project management from an enterprise level. We’re using the PMBOK as a reference text. Taking some good lessons out of it.

Customer Relationship Management – How companies create programs for managing customer relationships. Working at QVC this summer exposed me to a tremendous amount of strategies in this realm. Critically important for success. Lots of interesting trends developing in this field in regards to online information gathering.

Integrated Marketing Communications – Understanding full scale advertising initiatives. Here we’re looking at the various components that contribute to a modern day advertising campaign, and how these parts work together to create a seamless experience to the customer. I was surprised how much I’m enjoying this one.

As I described in a previous post, the second year of our MBA program is broken up into four quarters. I’m into my second, and it’s going to be challenging. Here are the classes I’m taking:

Managing Medical Services – Looking at operations issues and solutions in health care settings. Case study based. Two of my favorite professors from the first year. Queuing theory, data envelope analysis, optimization modeling, and some more linear programming tossed in for fun.

Advanced Marketing Strategy – Further application of major marketing frameworks through case study. We’ll be doing a semester long simulation on managing the marketing budget of a medical device company.

Discovery to Market – Capstone for our year long course on commercialization. We have been doing research for a new electronic medical records solution. This semester we bring our work together for a final presentation and report to our entrepreneurs.

Healthcare Delivery and Strategy – This class is taught by a former Johns Hopkins administrator. As such, we will be presented with first hand knowledge of how health care is delivered in our country. Studying the industry to see why our current system functions like it does. We’re also focusing on international comparable systems. Frustrating, but good to understand.

Entrepreneurial Finance – Here we’re analyzing the various funding sources for small businesses. From angel investors, to commercial lenders, to venture capitalists. How companies should be organized, managing term sheets, and other issues relating to the financing of entrepreneurial ventures.

TEDx MidAtlantic

Wow.  Talk about going back to the well.  If one is ever in need of inspiration, or a reminder of the capabilities of the human mind, attending a TED talk is like drinking from the fire hose.

My program is a sponsor for TEDx MidAtlantic.  Part of this sponsorship included opportunities to volunteer for students.  I jumped on it, and had an amazing day today.

Some of the many highlights:  A discussion with a doctor on the cutting edge of e-health, performances by Reggie Watts, a NASA Astrophysicist, and even Omar from The Wire.

Most TED-ish talk goes to Vint Cerf, one of the “Fathers of the Internet” who co-designed TCP/IP protocols and laid the foundations of the internet.  He discussed the current state of interplanetary communications and proposed solutions to interstellar communications.  Pretty amazing stuff.  One of his problems: the speed of light is too slow.

Most profound for me was a discussion by Eldar Shafir on the economics of scarcity and implications of poverty on decision making.  Did you know there are more pay-day lending locations than McDonald’s, Burger King, and Target combined?  Incredible.

Mind-blowing goes to Luis von Ahn, who helped create captchas.  You know, the little annoying boxes of text you have to decipher on some web forms?  Well, von Ahn utilized this system to further assist with the digitization of books, and he has similar plans for translating the entire web into multiple languages.

Pretty heavy stuff to be sure.  TEDx will be posting videos of the presenters and I’ll post some later.  Meanwhile, check out some of the best TED talks here.