Unlike Soni, I’ve been getting some attention from the Kellogg. I've exchanged a few emails with my designated "buddy", who is a current first year student at Kellogg. He keeps trying to call me at the most awkward times. Strangely enough, he happens to be someone I met a while back. My alumni interviewer has also been in touch. I've now also met all his Kellogg friends in London. I might post about that later this week. I'm surprised by the attention, and also touched. They must think I'm some kind of Rockstar. More fool them.

Kellogg’s admit weekend is called "Day At Kellogg" or simply DAK. It takes place next week. I received their welcome email recently. It starts Thursday 5th Feb evening and ends midday-ish on Sunday. That's my kind of "Day". The agenda is packed quite tightly and includes all kinds of wonderful stuff. Some of the highlights are:

• Welcome addresses
• Mini-classes
• Professor Roundtable Lunches
• Careers Service overview; breakout lunches
• Parties
• Financial information sessions
• Housing tours
• Alumni discussions

Since I am making the trip from the UK, I’ve decided to stick around a little longer in Evanston - up to the Wednesday after. I am hoping to get some pre-MBA prep done that will edge me closer to my post-MBA goals. My tentative plans for the extra days include

• Meeting with some more current students, including hopefully Shahid Hussain.
• Checking out the Technology Innovation Center (Northwestern's Incubator)
  
• Attending the PE/VC conference, all day Wednesday.
• ... and a few more things I still need to get in touch with people to sort out.
  

On Thursday I plan head out to NYC for a long weekend with some friends – a holiday! All in all, it should be a good trip. I'm especially looking forward to meeting my future classmates. I’ve learnt that I’m in the "Jugheads" section at Kellogg. Isn’t that the stereotype for dumb-asses? :-/ I’d rather the section is called "Rockstars". Because, you know, I am one…

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I previously discussed how television networks act as a three way match-making platform for audiences, content makers and advertisers.  It was not always this way. In the distant past, advertisers heavily influenced the shows made for television. The medium was more akin to a two-way platform between advertisers and audiences: advertisers made shows for audiences interested in tuning in. This changed in the 1950s. With technologies such as TiVO and on-demand TV scuppering commercial breaks, are we now set to return to a world of advertiser made shows?

In the 1930s and 1940s, the early years of television and radio, broadcasting acted more instinctively as a two way match making platform between advertisers and audiences. Advertisers strongly influenced and shaped content broadcast to the audience. This is evident in the naming of show titles, which included the Ford Star Jubilee and General Electric Theater. The influence of advertisers was such that, one story even suggests that the president of the American Tobacco Company made high ranking NBC executives fox-trot to the tunes of a show that the American Tobacco Company was sponsoring. The American Tobacco Company head wanted the NBC executives to test the tempos of the songs for dance-ability.

In the late 1940s, William Paley's CBS started experimenting with making shows in-house. The experiment proved successful, as CBS in-house shows started gaining larger audiences than that of shows broadcast by NBC. Everything changed when Pat Weaver, president of NBC in the early 1950s, broke the ties that advertisers had with the content that was broadcast. Instead of advertisers sponsoring a show and working with an advertising agency to make it, the networks made the shows themselves. The focus of the advertising agency moved to making 30-second commercials for the breaks in the shows. Later, rather than making the shows in house, the networks outsourced production of the shows to studios and production companies. This is what now leaves us with the three party platform of content makers, advertisers and audiences that network TV now is.

However, the arrival of technologies such as TiVO, on-demand TV technology and the Internet is creating difficulty for this three way matchmaking system. Viewers can now skip advertisements. Over the last decade, this has started to cause significant problems for advertisers, who have been spending money on commercials that audiences can now choose to skip. The response by advertisers has been a trend taking us back to the previous age of advertiser influenced shows. BMW has a history of using product placement. However, the company took this further with two series of short films featuring BMW cars. You can see the films here:

http://fincherfanatic.blogspot.com/2007/08/bmw-films.html

These films, distributed on the internet, have been so successful - they have inspired similar efforts by Pirelli and Mercedes. In the meanwhile, Fox has started dedicating TV slots for infomercials, which they hope in future will become as entertaining as regular TV. NBC had already started creating shows for displaying in show advertisements - though these shows will only be broadcast online. In the case of the show Mall Cop, TV producers have advertised Segway PTs not for gaining profit - but out of their own shear enthusiasm for the product.

Will this transformation in advertising create moral ambiguity? Certainly. Advertisers and content makers will need to grapple with how brand sponsored content can be made ethically. Will this mean that quality TV programming will deteriorate? I think not. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, MTV pioneered the concept of the music video: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message. Investment in music videos increased, production quality of the content form sky rocketed and the music industry was forever changed. No one minds that it is advertising. What needs to happen for this to happen to regular TV shows?

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While Sammie and Glammie have been talking fashion, I've been talking to a current Kellogg student about a different kind of essential wear: thermal underwear.With temperatures touching -32 Celsius at times in Evanston, apparently this kit is absolutely necessary. Another friend has warned me: "get ready to adopt a whole new sense of fashion". Yikes!

I don't think I've ever lived or experienced that kind of cold before. The furthest the UK reaches is perhaps -10 Celsius. Chicagoland winters has already scared off one Kellogg admit ;-). I'm imagining my eye-lashes freezing over, becoming brittle and falling off. Oh, what horror awaits. I better order my thermal underwear.

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At the place I currently work, we've just had the third restructure in the space of two years. Senior managers come and go every year or so – changing the focus and direction of the workplace each time. It all makes for a work environment with a hell of a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. People literally get stuck, unable to figure out what to do with their work and their lives. Demotivation and anxiety is rife. However, a previous boss said something to me once that has stuck and always helped me get through:
For me, it has been sterling advice - sweeping away clutter and letting me focus on the right things.

In a similar way, the MBA application process certainly produces a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I've tried to keep applying the same mantra, but it has been quite hard. Thankfully, it's all over. I've been rejected by Harvard and Stanford. I'm free at last. :-)

For anyone in a similar situation and seeking consolation, here is some inspiration:

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I've had someone write in and ask a question so important, I just had to share it on this blog:


My view is this:

• Make the option of starting a business so compelling, you'd be a fool to not do it. What would you need to do so that by the time you graduate, the potential for your business, particularly in paying off that loan and then some, is so great - you can not resist doing it? I'm developing a personalized plan for myself to create that compelling option.
  
• Mitigate against failure. Some people will say forget MBA recruitment all together and keep on the startup trek - show your 100% commitment! The project manager instinct in me says this would be daft. You need to mitigate the risk of your venture failing. I plan to intertwine my startup plans with MBA recruitment.

Make it compelling
What will help you get to that dilemma at graduation that makes starting a business irresistible? I believe the key is making life as easy as possible for myself: what forces exist across the MBA, university and my life to date that will help drive my business to be as successful as it can be? I'm not getting hung up an any particular business idea. Instead, I am trying to figure out the business idea that works optimally to the resources that I bring as well as those the MBA will provide. Specifically, I am asking myself questions such as

• What are the resources that I already have access to (e.g. friends, previous employers)?
  
• What resources are there across the university to help me get a product or service built?
• What resources are there through the MBA program to help me obtain customers?
  

I am then using the answers to these to iterate and develop my plan. For example, at Northwestern (where Kellogg is based) there is quite a bit of interest in media, because the Medill school is there. This works quite well with my media technology employment background. Consequently, there are pools of media technology innovation around the university, such as News At Seven and NewsMixer. There are also a bunch of other things, such as Northwestern's dedicated cross-discipline course for commercializing medical innovation and Kellogg's own offerings. Some of these don't quite fit or help me, but some of it does. The real challenge will be winning the support of the holders of these various resources and then weaving together these resources to build my business. If I can do this, then starting a successful business won't be the huge financial risk that people perceive it to be.

Mitigate against failure
Secondly, I plan to use the traditional MBA path of going into Venture Capital as a way of gaining funding for my venture, while still keeping open the possibility of working for a VC firm.

When I was conceiving my career goal, I wanted to make it as realistic as possible. So I plotted out a path that is something like this:

• Spend a year or so leading up to the MBA in a job that has some similarities to Venture Capital.
• Focus the MBA and internship on Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Finance.
• After the MBA, go into Venture Capital: learn about building startups by working with the portfolio companies at the VC firm; build relationships with investors.
• Some years later: start a company, capitalizing on resources and relationships built earlier.

This is pretty much what I wrote in my applications, except for the MIT application - for which I said I would attempt to start a company straight from business school. Over the last few months, my grand plan has become more of a 'Plan B'. This is because I've become much, much more motivated in starting a company.

As a traditional post-MBA career, Venture Capital is itself a very, very difficult field to get into. For every person a VC hires, this is another person the VC will have to split their investment returns with. For them, the question is this: will hiring you mean that they will earn more money than they would otherwise?

Getting funding from a VC firm is a different story: it is just as difficult, but I am positioning myself as someone who could make them more money than they have thus far. In the meanwhile, I will be networking and building relationships with VCs, possibly demonstrating intelligence and flair that they might like to hire if things go pear shaped for my own venture.

So, I plan to use the traditional VC job hunt to pitch my business to them as well as build relationships that may help me get hired if things go wrong. Some of the other MBA career paths may also be conducive to this kind of twinning (though I've not looked into them as much):

• Large consumer goods companies that hire MBAs are potential customers of your venture.
  
• Some consulting firms that hire MBAs may be willing to provide your venture with services and a network of contacts, in return for an equity stake.
• Some companies that hire MBAs may invest in your company if they think your company's goods will increase purchases of their products.
  

Unlike VCs, the recruiters may not necessarily be the same people as those who could help your venture. However, the relationships you develop are still likely to help or earn a good referral.

To sum up, my plan is to make the option of starting a company as compelling as possible, by figuring out the business that will optimally utilize the resources I bring as well as those which the MBA offers. I plan to mitigate against failure by keeping open the option of working at a VC, using this traditional MBA path to pitch for investors. We'll see how I get on... :-)

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With the end of my job in sight and business school beckoning – I fully expected my motivation at work to wane. I expected I would be distracted by the life that lies ahead. I've heard from past MBA applicants that this kind of demotivation is typical at this stage of the process and I expected to be susceptible to it. Yet... none of this expectation has materialized. Instead, I've become more motivated at work.

I put it down to this: I feel like I'm representing Kellogg in everything I do. Everybody now knows I've been admitted and hardly anyone around here goes to business school, let alone a top US business school. I feel motivated to make a really strong impression in the last 6 or 7 months I'm here, just so people will have no doubt: "that Kellogg place really does take on the best". I sometimes think to myself, "how would a world class Kellogg grad do this?"... and as cheesy as it sounds, it does edge me on a little bit further. I'm now working longer hours and more concentrated at work than ever before. It sucks, really - it's distracting me from getting my pre-school prep done, e.g. registering, booking flights/accommodation etc and everything else for DAK.

In the meanwhile, I did get a chance to join the Facebook group for admitted Kellogg students. It seems a little more active than the discussion board on the Kellogg welcome site, though only a little more active. The people on there seem varied and interesting: an Italian, a guy from General Motors, a bunch of Ivy school grads, consultants from every consulting shop, a museum person, at least one person with a kid ... it goes on. There are 46 people on there so far. I wonder if any of them have found their Kellogg super-suit too.

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Students at the Medill School of Journalism (Northwestern University) have built a web application, NewsMixer, that is a step forward in creating engagement between a news website and readers. Can this innovation be developed into a business?

Some of the innovative highlights of the project are:

• Questions and Answers. Against each paragraph in any of the news stories, the readers can ask a question or reply to a question previously posed. This feature allows readers to dig into particular parts of stories to get into greater depth, creating a conversation with other users and writers. The news story almost becomes a piece of writing that develops through threads spinning off particular paragraphs.
• Integration with Facebook Connect. Users comment with their Facebook identity, which for most people is synonymous with their real identity. This forces greater trust between participants and discourages flaming and other bad behaviour that anonymous commenting on the web usually encourages.
• Letters To The Editor. You can reply to an article, in similar fashion to how you might post a comment on a blog, or even write a new article. The editors can then choose to display your reply or newly written news article on the front page as a new piece. How many newspapers allow readers to write stories that could be on the front page? This Letters To The Editor feature reflects the dynamic of the internet age, where anyone can start a blog, and almost anyone can be a journalist.
  

The ideas are interesting and thought-provoking. However, as a web site, NewsMixer is very much a sandbox for testing and playing with the features; it is clearly not production quality. It lacks news feeds, quality control for comments, production staff and a number of elements that would be needed to turn it into an operational business. Gazette Communications in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, plans to do this - creating a production version of the site in early 2009.

While it will be interesting to see how Gazette Communications' implementation unfolds, how might NewsMixer be developed into a business into its own right? I have the following thoughts on taking this forward: 

• Add features to make the site self-sustaining. The Letters To The Editor functionality could be extended to allow users to post their own full news stories. Just as Wikipedia is moderated by users, users on NewsMixer could moderate the new stories, as well as the comments. A slashdot style Karma system could be used. The more that the site becomes self-sustaining, the lower the overhead costs will be in running the site. Given the plight that newspapers face, low overheads is particularly important.
  
• Create barriers to reduce competition. The features of the NewsMixer site are sufficiently easy to be copied. As a business, this means competitors will easily be able to create copycat versions of the site, stealing readers and potential revenue from NewsMixer. If NewsMixer is to become a successful site and business, it needs to create some barriers that will make it difficult for copycats to prosper.
• The best barrier would be that of a large user-base that finds it difficult to move to a competitor's site. In the same way that eBay buyers and sellers have invested large trading histories into eBay, building their brand and reputation on the eBay site, NewsMixer could further develop the ways in which users build their histories and preferences into the site. This could be done through the stories and comments that users post - building users' reputations on NewsMixer.
  
• Develop a revenue model. Ultimately, any business will need to bring in revenue to pay for running costs and create a profit. The variety of current business models for online news is well documented. The larger the user base of NewsMixer becomes, the more it will be necessary for the articles on the site to be localised to communities. These communities could be centered around geographical locations, professions or anything else that makes sense. In the case of geographical locations, hyper-local advertising would seem to have the highest potential. In the case of professions, some professional communities may be willing to pay for articles, just as they pay for industry reports. Consequently, a mixed range of revenue models is likely to be necessary. Users can be motivated by providing them with a cut of the revenue, whether it be from advertising, user payment or elsewhere.
  

A more thorough analysis and business planning would be necessary to substantiate NewsMixer as a business, but the above provides my initial thoughts. The NewsMixer project is a great addition to the tradition of journalism innovation that comes out of the Medill. I'm looking forward to learning about the projects that will continue to arise from Medill's programmer-journalist scholarships.

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