gunnr.ca

MBA Forever

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:17:53 -0700

At the end of the year, the students in my class at the Richard Ivey School of Business throw an event called "Ivey Laundry". It is essentially a hybrid talent show & comedic roast where students get together & celebrate the time we spent together. It is unfortunate that we wait to the end of the year to find out how many talented singers, musicians & dancers are hidden among us but it is a great way to wrap up such an important & busy chapter in all our lives.

So naturally, after watching videos from other business schools like Sloan, & Schulich a group of us wanted to make a rap video about our school.

Some questions you might have...

Q: Is it cool to make a rap video about how much you love your MBA school?
A: Most definitely not.
Q: Did anyone else hire a music video director for their Ivey Laundry video?
A: Nope.
Q: Was it ridiculously fun to pretend that we were rap stars for a day?
A: Absolutely!

I hope you enjoy it in the video in the humour it was made & thank you everyone from the graduating class of 2010 for making it such a memorable year!

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Article I wrote for @CBCNews "Facebook: Personalization vs Privacy'

Sat, 01 May 2010 09:56:54 -0700

Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to make the web better by encouraging more "instant social and personal" experiences, but the head of Facebook has some work to do if he's going to get everyone to buy in.

I was in the third row of the company's f8 Developers Conference in San Francisco on April 21 when the Facebook CEO launched new tools to help content developers incorporate information from Facebook profiles into their websites and applications.

As Zuckerberg announced policy changes, APIs, plug-ins and protocols, the geek in me was frothing at the mouth, dreaming of all the cool tools this could produce.

Then it hit me. How is my mom going to react?

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Mobile Micro-tasks

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:35:00 -0700

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Creative Capitalism seems to have many definitions, but what the guys at TxtEagle (www.txteagle.com) are doing reflects my definition the best.

According to their website there are over 2 Billion literate mobile phone users in the developing world. TxtEagle is empowering these people to earn money through performing microtasks.

TxtEagle has developed technology that sends credit to a users cell phone after they have completed a micro-task. Tasks could include translating words into local dialects, or just reading and categorizing a message. Complex tasks are broken down by TxtEagle so that they can be crowdsourced to people in developing countries and completed within the 160 character interface of a mobile phone.

In many developing countries Mobile phone credits are transferred between users much like currency, and can even be converted into cash.

The story of how they started is very cool and can be found here.

I like how TxtEagle has combined good tech with good business and created a for-profit model that has a social benefit.

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"Kara" and "Bill"

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:10:00 -0800

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I just finished an enlightening interview for a separate research project I am involved in at UWO.

For over 30 years, "Kara" has worked with people who have problems finding employment. In that time, the provincial programs that fund her work have changed four times.

With each new program that is introduced there are new reporting standards, criteria, goals and objectives implemented. The only thing that hasn't changed in the last 30 years is what Kara does on a day to day basis.

In her words, "I help people find jobs, and employers find people".

During our meeting Kara had an unexpected visit from "Bill". Bill is north of 40 years old and for his own reasons has had difficulty finding meaningful employment his whole life. Kara worked with Bill one-on-one for 6 months to help him develop the specific skills he needed to secure a job. Every client like Bill that comes to her work has their own unique challenges and needs which demand that Kara tailor her process to the individual. Whether it is a new immigrant with a language barrier, a single mother with a physical disability, or a laid-off autoworker with 15 years of experience and no high school diploma, the process that Kara goes through with clients is more of an art than a science.

At Kara's work they track impact through surveys conducted 12 months after their clients are placed. Amazingly, over 70% of the people Kara helps place are working at those jobs one year later! While Kara knows the measurement of her output is necessary (one of which she happily let's her boss deal with!) she feels that the impact of her work is not being fully captured in that percentage.

There was no agenda for Bill's visit today, however, through observing their interactions it was obvious that even though their formal relationship had technically ended after Bill got a job, he still relied on Kara for support. They had accomplished together what he could not on his own and he still needed to know that she was there if he stumbled.

As we move toward standards that attempt to measure the impact of social services, we need to focus on observing how these services really interact their local communities and not just the numbers that result.

We need to work towards a system that can support the Kara's with as much respect and individuality as they support the Bill's.

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new blog, new topics

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:26:00 -0800

I (re)started this blog as a way to record and share some of the things that interest me.

I am currently researching this question:

how can you measure the impact of hybrid/blended business models?

Over the next few months I will be exploring for-profit and non-profit worlds to learn from the real experts about how they measure their success, and what changes (if any) could ease the tensions between having a social mission and a market based solution.

Along the way, I will try to post some of the interesting things I discover and hopefully you will share your thoughts as well.

If you have any questions of comments please feel free to email me at ggunn.mba2010@ivey.ca

Thanks for visiting.
-g.

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