How to make a movie and post it on the web

Last week, Jef Claes told us we would be only 2D managers (and this should be an insult, now) if we don’t use Twitter / social media and if we don’t know how to make a movie and post it on the web. So, let see what we can learn from social media, Twitter and how to make a movie and post it on the web …

Social networking in plain English:

Twitter in plain English:

And remember the slide in part about “helicopter parents” and how the dot.com generation behaves in job interviews and at work (session 2 – HRM)? Here is another example:

So why not try yourself? Twitter is here and if you look for people to start adding, I’m @jepoirrier on Twitter, Vlerick is @Vlerick, Caroline is @Caroline160981, Bart is @bart_vdheijden, Jules is @Kalengaj, etc. (sorry I didn’t have all the Twitter links ; feel free to add your twitter name in comments). Vlerick is already present on many social networks; it listed here all its social accounts.

So, how to make a movie and post it on the web?

I suppose you have MS-Windows XP (as most people do in this class) on your computer, a webcam already connected/installed and a YouTube account (if you don’t have one, just go and register there, it’s free). Newer version of MS-Windows as well as OSX may have slightly different software and a more direct integration with social media (I don’t have any of the 2).

Now suppose you have something to share with the world (Big bad wolf catching one little pig), just start by opening Windows Movie Maker (its icon should look something like the icon on the left). In the Movie Tasks bar, on the left, choose “Capture from video device” and follow the video capture wizard. If you find any question difficult to answer, just leave the default suggestion. You will end up with a window asking you to start the capture (see screenshot below). Just click it when you are ready to shoot! And click “Stop Capture” when you want to … stop shooting.

When you finished capturing your video, a snapshot of it appears in the middle of the screen. You just drag your video (this snapshot) and drop it in one of the empty rectangles in the storyboard (below the screen). You can add a title or some credit with the task … “Make titles or credits” (still on the left). You can import other videos, insert some pictures or music: these tasks are all in the “Movie Tasks” bar on the left and are followed by simple wizards. You can play with interim results in the player on the right.

Once the results suit your taste, the “Movie Tasks” bar on the left has also the option “Save to my computer”. Clicking on it launches a wizard. Again, just leave default options if you are not sure about an answer. You have now a super video on your computer.

Now, open a good browser and go to the upload page of YouTube. There, follow the YouTube wizard to upload a video (the link is on top right). Basically, it will asks you to choose a file and, while it downloads the file, you have to fill in some details (title, description, some keywords, etc.).

Here is what you can get in about 5 minutes:

Was this so complicated? :)

Don’t shoot the red monkey

Last Friday, I think we had our most controversial class. Prof Dr Dirk Buyens (Human Resource Management) warned us in advance. We were not deceived: Jef Staes is really different than previous lecturers. Given the affiliations and public profiles of some future guest lecturers, I doubt we will have anyone so different anymore.

In my opinion, in order to bring new ideas, you have to somehow be radical in your ideas. Or maybe it’s just the enthusiasm in the way to express those controversial ideas. Anyway Jef Staes began with the idea that if you don’t use twitter (he is @jefstaes) and every “social media” tools or if you don’t know how to publish a video clip of yourself on the internet, you are losing time in an MBA class. Take it literally and two students left the room because they couldn’t agree (and I think they were right to do so). Take it as a metaphor and you might agree that if you can’t use all the resources available to get the information, you have a handicap compared to other managers, compared to other teams.

I will not summarize 3.5 hours of course here but, in a nutshell, Jef Staes presented more a vision about how innovation should be handled in a company, the part of information availability / social media being something to build upon.

Personally, being part of an innovation process in my company, I already saw most of the behaviors Jef mentioned. It was nice to understand that these negative behaviors were not specific to my company but things that are usually “there” when people innovate. Jef Staes added that next (“3D”) managers will need a vision, lots of passion and be able to use all the information available, via all possible channels.

Note: for those who wonder what is a red monkey, Jef Staes published several videos on YouTube. Here are some of them …

Photo credit: I brake for red monkeys by myself ;) on Flickr (CC-by-sa)

Vlerick in FT business schools ranking 2011

Last week, the Financial Times released its annual business schools rankings for 2011. Some potential students don’t take this ranking into account when they choose a business school. From my experience, almost every candidate at the on-campus assessment I attended knew the rank of Vlerick and its position compared to other schools.

The top 3 global business schools (Global MBA ranking) are the LBS (London), Wharton and the HBS (Harvard). The first Asian B-school is 6th (Hong Kong UST). Vlerick is 55th and only Belgian B-school in this rankings. One of the candidate sitting next to me during the on-campus assessment was also applying to Rotterdam School of Management; this school is 36th. The graph below shows that Vlerick continues its steady progression to the top (the lower the better). If Vlerick continues to progress at an average of 14 places per year, it will be the first B-school in 2015! :)

The top 3 in the EMBA rankings are: Kellogg/Hong Kong UST, HEC Paris/LSE/Stern and Columbia/LSE. Vlerick is 81st and the only Belgian B-school in this rankings too. As the graph below shows (the lower the better), 2011 is the worst year for Vlerick in this EMBA rankings since it is ranked. I’m sure Vlerick has an explanation for this.

In the European Business school rankings 2011 (published in December last year), HEC Paris, LBS and Insead are the top 3. Vlerick is 13th and 1st Belgian B-school: Solvay is 35th, IAG-Louvain is 45th and Antwerp is 54th. When you look in the past, you see Vlerick went fast to the top-20 but has now some difficulties entering the top-10. At least, the last 5 years were rather stable (compared to other Belgian B-schools).

FT Belgian B-school ranking (the lower the better)

Finally, remember it’s just a ranking. It only has value if you give value to it. And you have other important aspects in a B-school that will certainly better suit your needs than a rank. However, it’s good to see the progression of Vlerick.

The MBA Oath

It’s always like this: you look for something in a vast pool of information and you end up reading an interesting article about something totally different. In my case, I end up reading an article from Della Bradshaw about promising students (FT October 24, 2011).

The article goes about how MBAs and MBA students were linked with unethical behavior following the credit crisis. But the article introduced (to me, at least) the MBA Oath, a pledge to serve the greater good and act with the utmost integrity. Initially developed by the prestigious Harvard Business School (3rd B-school in the world in 2011), the author wonder why there was a drop in people signing the Oath (more than 50% decrease in 3 years, see figure below). She put forward a number of reasons.

 There is however one reason I don’t clearly understand. Apparently, “it is very difficult for an individual to make a real “ethical” difference in a company if the corporate culture is set against such a course of action“. But MBA students are confronted with this potentially difficult corporate culture after they finished their studies. So students study and learn what they have to do. Then students optionally sign the Oath. And finally students go to work. Will you not promise to do your best, just because you think the future corporate culture you will face will potentially be difficult? IMHO, the corporate culture is a very bad excuse not to sign.

However I completely agree with Max Anderson, one of the authors of the MBA Oath, when he tells Della that “one of their focuses now was on talking to corporations and trying to inculcate them with the ethos of the oath“. IMHO again, it’s is the next logical step: you leave MBA alumni in the wild with the Oath, you try to “tame the wild wold” so it sign the oath too.

INSEAD (4th B-school in the world in 2011) seems to have a different opinion and organized a small debate between two of its professors, where we see 2 things being opposed: on one side, you have the “finance view” (the Oath is incompatible with maximizing shareholders’wealth ; more details on Theo Vermaelen’s blog post) and, on the other side, you have the “corporate responsibility” view (behave with integrity, be ethical in the way business is conducted ; more details on Craig Smith’s blog post).

Until now, 5 people from Vlerick signed the Oath. Will 2nd year students sign this oath in June/September 2012? Here is an inspirational video for them ;)

Business in India in The Economist

Happy Diwali! For those who still want to go to India for their International Trip, this week edition of The Economist has a 14-pages special report on business in India (some articles seem to be free on the website).

And for those who prefer China, its next special report will be in the June 25th issue.

Writing a paper

Aah, writing a paper! It’s been a long time since I did that! ;)

2 graphs from CMR made readable

A nice thing of having a copy of the slides during class is that you can take note directly on it (and take fewer notes and more quickly since most important points are already printed on the slides). The drawback is of course that each slide is very small. During the CMR (Corporate and Managerial Responsibility) classes for instance, we recently saw two of such slides.

The first slide is about sustainable development and the current development paradox. The slide shows a graph of the UN Human Development Index -vs- the ecological footprint (of countries). The goal is to show there is an ideal area where there is a high human development within the earth’s limits. But the printed slide is very small. One Wikipedia contributor kindly re-build the graph but you feel one can still do better. As always, it’s better to directly go back to the sources: the UNDP and the Global Footprint Network. The best starting point to explore this chart is this page from the GFN. But as usual you can find and explore these data with the excellent TrendAnalyzer tool from Gapminder.

UN HDI -vs- ecological footprint of countries (highlighted countries are the international trip destinations for Vlerick PTMBA students)

The second slide is the roadmap to Vision2050 designed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). This roadmap is again very small below (you can also click on the image to have a bigger one). But the report contains the full roadmap. And for those who thought the vision is a bit fluffy, the WBCSD also has a *huge* pathway mural with more details than the vision.

WBCSD Vision2050

And for those who are really interested in this Vision2050, I invite you to the Closing Ceremony of the International Year of Chemistry, on December 1st 2011, in Brussels. There, among other things, “a team of young people/scientists will open a debate and introduce their expectations from the lifesciences and chemistry, industry and governments to build a better world in 2050” (disclaimer: I’m part of that team :)).

An Overview of the Euro Crisis (NYT)

As the 27 EU leaders are meeting in Brussels in anticipation of the great opening of the Vlerick campus in the European capital ;) the New York Times released a visual guide to the crisis. It won’t really help you solve questions during the Economics exam (well, maybe this could give you some figures to back your answers). But I wanted to share this just because I like the way this visualization is done :)

It’s All Connected: An Overview of the Euro Crisis (NYT 23/10/2011)

1st MBA exam: done!

I wrote “done!”. I didn’t write “passed!” :-)

The first exam of the year was in Financial Accounting, a course given by Prof. Dr. Filip Roodhooft. It was a no-surprise exam: 3 questions (all exercises, like previous years), calculator allowed (and not the one on your smartphone!), any books and notes you want allowed, 2.5 hours. Just as announced. The tip to succeed? It was also announced by Filip Roodhooft: do all “P” exercises in the reference book (Financial Accounting by W.T. Harrison, 8th edition). After the exam, Roberto confirmed all the questions were very, very similar to exercises in the book. A word to the wise …

If you take a MBA exam for the first time, the most difficult thing (IMHO) is not the volume of things to learn (anyway it’s an open book exam, remember?). I believe the most difficult thing for a first MBA exam is the management of time. At the beginning, I think all the 1st year students were very happy to sit in Auditorium -1.01. Classes are interesting. Professors always digress a little bit with impact or examples in the news. It’s all very easy. But I think some of us were surprised by the speed at which exams and papers arrive. On one side, it’s very handy to have an exam to take or a paper to submit 2 weeks after the end of one class. On the other hand, 2 weeks, it’s very short! Time management, it’s called. Time management, here I come!

So, what’s next? So far, we have:

• A paper to submit (I/O Psychology) in a week,
• An exam in three weeks (Economics), and
• Another paper to submit (Corporate and Managerial Responsibility) in 5 weeks.

(And with this I don’t count intermediate papers 2nd year students have to submit too.)

Photo credit: Resistant by 96dpi on Flickr (CC-by-nc).

The amoeba!

Since the beginning I was eager to attend a course where the professor would talk about something biological. And we finally had such a class today! It was about the amoeba in Prof. Dr. Nigel Roome‘s first class on Corporate and managerial responsibility. There, corporate responsibility is somehow embedded in a pressure-state-response framework which actually is a model representation of the interaction an amoeba has with its environment.

Great! I was sure there was a link, somewhere :-)

Photo credit: amoeba from The Open University on Flickr (CC-by-nc-sa)