Business Year 4: Learn Through Observation

I’m a double degree student at Wilfrid Laurier University taking Business and Comp Sci and I’ve noticed 1 very specific truth over the last 4 years of schooling.  While most logic-oriented people can learn computer science on their own (with considerable effort and passion), the same is not true for business. Look around. The people that are good at business didn’t have a great idea when they were 30. Some had them when they were 15 and thought: “I think I can sell this to people”. 

These people are pioneers and none of them think through all the different models and theories they learned about business in class. Hell, of all the speakers I’ve gone and listened to, most relied on instinct and clever thinking to get ahead. Computer science is a little different. While instinct and creativity is great (and needed to be the best of the best), you can’t write code without knowing the intrecacies of the language. Period. You might be able to do code reviews and debug it without knowing every little thing but the true breakthroughs happen with people who eat, sleep, and breathe it.

I’ve been in university for 4 years and, so far, I’ve learned that my business courses can be learned through observation. So far.

I hear it gets better

Mobile Weekend is revived!

Well, after a little bit of a break, Mobile Weekend is back on track. Another person on the organizing comittee, a full sponsorship/info package, and a little determination has brought this project back out of the dark!

You can find the blog over here for all the MW info . Entrepreneurial at heart? You need to check this event out!

Widescreen? Then why doesn’t it fit on my screen?

Random rant:
When a movie is “widescreen”, shouldn’t it fit on my widescreen tv? Now, I’m not an expert in this field but I have an average customer of the technoogy so would someone please explain this weird “super” widescreen they have?

Anyway, I just wanted to bring it up

What the Hell, guys?!

Remember “Fight Club” the movie? Rmember how you turned to your buddy and whispered “those guys are messed up…”.

Well, never underestimate people.

http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?videoId=3361421

My First Real Conference

So, tomorrow is the Communitech Tech Leadershipt conference and I’m going! For free! Take that all you people that paid the 300 dollars to go!

See, as a student, I get in for free….. stay in school, eh? Anyway, I’m pretty excited. I’ve never actually been at a conference before so I have no idea what one is like. It starts at 8 am and ends at 4 with breakast and lunch provided…. not bad I think. I’ll be sure to post what it’s like.

*Removes Cobwebs*

So, it’s been a little while it seems…..

Well, I’m back. Let’s see what’s cooking.

I did it. I made the reverse Mac switch. You know, the one you don’t hear about very often because it’s kept under wraps so well! I used to be a mac guy. A pretty hard-core one at that too.

I used to be the worst kind actually. I was the one that, no matter how awful a mac product was, I would find ways to make it better than whatever else it was competing with and I was good at it. Well, until the iPhone came out… then I really didn’t have much going for me.

So here I am, typing this from my new Vista-loaded PC, reminiscing about the good-ol’-days when Apple made quality products. I’ll admit it, I own two mac laptops: a powerbook G4 and a macbook. The powerbook is 4 years old, has been dropped down s flight of stairs, always kept on (or on standby) and it works the same as the day I got it. My Macbook, however, is pooched at being 1 and half years old. I figured “Why get the warranty since my other mac is so awesome?”. Well, now it’ll cost me $700 to fix the Macbook or I could go and buy a new computer for $800. I think it’s a pretty easy choice.

Unfortunately, I need windows for my development endeavours so a PC seemed to be a better choice.

You can already start to see the decline in quality of Apple products. And by quality, I don’t mean how shiny it is. I mean how functional and stable it is. Look at the iPhone…. I mean, it’s pretty but did you know that it’s not a multi-thread capable device. It only runs one application at a time!! What good is that? And safari 3 was a winner wasn’t it? I had it on my computer for all of 25 seconds before it crashed….. 4 times in a row. Apple is so concerned about getting their innovative products out to the public before their competition that they seem to be forgetting the most important thing about creating a successful business. Write this down if you have to.

No matter how amazing your product is, it’s only has good as it’s support structure. A product is ALWAYS half tangible and half intangible. What happened to you Apple? I’m sorry, but the shine is definitely no longer on you.

Mah Brothah. He’s… Speshul

My brother sent me this awesome funny pic from lolcats asking which one of us it best describes. Out of self-preservation and self-respect…. I’m going to go with the unimpressed one. You know, the one that seems totally embarrassed by his brother

Yahoo + Microsoft

If you haven’t heard yet, Microsoft has made a bid on Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion. BILLION. Isn’t that more than the GDP of Peru?

You can find the article here.

Are Ya Kiddin’?

I know Rambo isn’t the most “intelligent” or “deep” movie coming out these days but when Meet the Spartans  beats out an addition to the classic trilogy of Rambo, that should send off country-wide alarm bells. Now, I really don’t know who to blame for this… I really have 2 options.

Option the First: The production companies that fund and approve movies like “Epic Movie” or “Meet the Spartans”.

Option the Second: The people who actually leave their house, drive to theatre and pay their hard-earned cash to view these films.

I’m leaning more toward the second one.

See, I like my movies to have some substance. Anything, really, will do and I thought it would be guaranteed that Rambo would have had a bigger fan pool to draw from than Meet the Spartans. I think that’s what really bugs me…. more and more of these “they’re so dumb they’re funny” movies are being made and I really think that’s putting a pretty big crick in the movie industry’s neck. See, in this metaphor, the movie industry is a person. Get it?

Admittedly,  after all the years of filmaking, writers are probably starting to run out of innovative, thoughtful ideas but I was always raised with the phrase “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”. I think the movie industry can learn something from that.