Vlerick FTMBA Movember – The Sequel

Following the tradition of video filming at Vlerick, here is the FTMBA students’ movie about Movember! Great job!

Via @adamgarone

Male FTMBA students in Het Nieuwsblad about Movember

A few days ago, Het Nieuwsblad, a Belgian daily newspaper, highlighted the initiative taken by full-time MBA students from Vlerick growing a moustache for Movember (English translation). You probably noticed the increasing number of male students with growing moustaches in Vlerick premises; that’s why! And I think it’s excellent! You’ve also probably seen some of the PTMBA students growing a moustache. But what is Movember?

During the month of November each year, Movember asks men across the world to grow a moustache with the aim of raising vital funds and awareness for men’s health issues. This November 2011, it’s about prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. In most cases, this cancer is slow-growing, symptom-free, and tends to develop in men over the age of fifty (more info on wikipedia).

When you look a bit further, you find that prostate cancer is in fact “only” the 7th cause of death by cancer (men and women together) and the 4th cause of death by cancer in men only (both in Europe). And, imho, that’s already a good reason why it deserves some highlight. Especially that prevention methods are rather easy (and classical): exercises and a correct diet (and there are no preventative vaccine, not yet). You have a few days left to make your moustache grow …

Via @Vlerick. Photo credits: Het Nieuwsblad

Second set of results in!

The results for the Economics exam are in! Again I could have done better but I passed :)

We were also blessed to receive the grade distribution. This time, no A+. No C neither. The spread is shorter and the shape is more like an U than a bell. Anyway we did it, congratulations to everyone!

These results arrived during the same day we had to give the 2 CMR (CSR) reports as well as attend nearly 8 hours of Financial Accounting. We also received a first set of information for the international study trip. And if you add new babies for some of us, you can understand we were not short of work last week! :)

Prof. Roodhooft’s publications on TCO

For the last session of transparency creation in management accounting and control, Prof. Roodhooft talked about his favourite topic: total cost of ownership (TCO) in purchasing management and strategic sourcing. Here are three papers he talked about during the class:

• The first Belgian paper in HBR: A Smarter Way to Buy by Zeger Degraeve and Filip Roodhooft, June 2001
• The Cockerill Sambre paper: Effectively Selecting Suppliers Using Total Cost of Ownership by Zeger Degraeve and Filip Roodhooft in the Journal of Supply Chain Management 35(1): 5–10 (12/1999)
• The use of mathematical programming models for strategic procurement (case at Usinor) in the Journal of the Operational Research Society 56: 51–59 (2005)

There are lots of other references in his webpage at Vlerick (suggestion for the webmaster: add links to the actual articles, it will make everyone’s life more easy).

Feel free to add your links in the comments below if you have anything else …

How to Speak Like a Business School Grad?

I realized already two months went by. 2 months. One tenth of the whole program. So do we already know how to speak like business school grads?

Ha ha ha! Far from it, imho. :-D

Via @Vlerick.  Photo credit: The Shark by Miguel Pires da Rosa on Flickr (CC-by-sa)

And results are in!

The results for the Financial Accounting exam are finally in! I could have done better but I passed :)

We were also blessed to receive the nice grade distribution … Congratulations to the one and only outstanding A+ student! And also all the others, of course! We did it!

How to change your Vlerick password?

Well, this seems very silly but that’s the question I ended up asking myself when I realized that my password is too long (btw thanks, Mike). Yes, you correctly read: my 17-chars password is too long.

I am not a security professional but I have some interest in security. A bit everywhere around the web, your password strength is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability (from Wikipedia, that elaborates and gives more details about it). Regarding length, the minimum length varies according to sources. But, for instance, Microsoft recommends to use eight characters or more. On the Microsoft password checker, a 8-chars password has a weak strength and my 17-chars password has just a strong strength.

Anyway, as previously mentioned here, Vlerick uses a mix of its own infrastructure and the Microsoft Office 365 cloud infrastructure to provide online services to its students. This means our login and password for desktop PCs as well as the Vlerick Central Login Portal and the Office 365 services are shared between these services. Fine and sweet. But what if I initially chose a password that has more characters than the Office 365 limit of 16 chars? I didn’t find where one could change its password online (except writing an e-mail to helpdesk – I already mentioned they were very reactive). You really have to connect to one of the desktop PCs at Vlerick, change your password and voilà!

• Before: long password, no access to outlook.com nor skydrive.com. I had to connect through the Vlerick Central Login Portal to get access to my e-mails or anything else ;
• Now: shorter password but direct access to outlook.com and skydrive.com (as well as other stuff via the regular way).

I agree it’s not really a Vlerick issue. I just thought it might help someone out there :)

Photo credit: Vault by ostrograd (CC-by-nc-sa)

2nd MBA exam: done!

Well I will not continue to write after each exam we take (unless there is something special). But it’s the second one: things are going fast but we are still here :)

This time it was economics. 5 questions: 4 exercises and one multiple choice-type question (-1 in case of a wrong answer). I personally think the questions were more oriented towards current news than on the sample exam, not bad. And there was something special: although it was an open book exam we were not authorized to have the answers to exercises in the book (*) nor the slides (this I don’t understand but I think they would not have helped much – did I miss something?). Now waiting for the results :)

Next step: CSR paper!

(*) this is understandable as one question was ditto one of the exercises :)

Private International Study Trip: Mumbai?

This has nearly nothing to do with Vlerick. However, here are the tiny links:

1. Who chose Mumbai as the 1st or 2nd destination for their international study trip?
2. Who would be interested in going to India for a private international study trip?

Let’s bounce back from the disappointment that Vlerick cancelled Mumbai and St Petersburg this year. Let’s see this as an opportunity to organize a private trip. And I would be more than happy if this idea of private trip is copied or even enhanced for other destinations that students would like to see (I heard about Brazil, the B in BRICS, but why not Russia – also cancelled – or Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Israel, Greece – why not, Canada, etc.)!

My idea is that we can do it!

We = the students in Apollo (even the ones who didn’t choose Mumbai at all, 1st year, 2nd year, I don’t care). But then why not invite students from other PTMBA, the modular one and even the full time students (if they have time), professors? And why not welcome spouses and kids (but not for “classes” or meetings)? However I understand there will be at least two drawbacks: it is an additional cost both in money and in holidays (but everything is an opportunity cost, right?).

While I’m talking about holidays, dates would be flexible: the ones that suit most people. I understand one week is a lot (regarding absence from work, family, classes at Vlerick, etc.) but I think it’s a minimum given the investment in money and time (already 2 times half a day for the return journey). Practically, I wouldn’t advise doing it in July-August (too hot).

A starting point for the content could be the program of last year. I already asked Prof. Dewettinck if we could potentially get some help from Vlerick about that. I hope we’ll receive a positive answer. And we could also find people by ourselves (in our companies, in our relations, some full-time students maybe, etc.).

Money: it will be more costly than the Vlerick trip since we’ll need to pay both the trip and the accommodation. I guess there will be also a cost regarding invited professors, guest speakers, meeting places, etc. But we are studying this MBA also to be able to find creative ways of funding, isn’t it?

Sweat: we’ll have to organize this by ourselves, even if we may have help from 3rd-parties (Vlerick?, embassies?, companies?, etc.).

Now,

• Who would be happy to participate?
• Who is just interested / curious and would maybe join depending on the conditions / dates / etc.?

I have put some draft ideas here. I probably forgot lots of things. I don’t know if it’s too ambitious or really the bare minimum.

Just think about it.

Now I should really start studying Economics for Thursday but I will be more than happy to discuss about this electronically or during classes, next week.

Photo credit: panchratna buidling, and chaupati view ,mumbai town view, Mumbai, INdia by ganuullu on Flickr (Cc-by-nc-nd)

International Study Trip: New York!

In my last post, I forgot to mention my preferences: 1. Mumbai, 2. Beijing and 3. New York. Since less than 15 students asked for India and less than 15 too for Russia (15 students = less than 10% of PT and modular MBA students!), there will be no trip to Mumbai nor St. Petersburg. Canceled. Dura lex sed lex. Anyway …

New York, here I come! :)

 

 

Photo: Traders in front of the New York Stock Exchange by leonem on Flickr (CC-by-nc-nd)