Start of International Business Environment

1954 5-23-10

So today was the start of International Business Environment, which is actually more interesting than it sounds.  Our teacher is Allen Kupetz, an MBA professor from Rollins College, and consultant.  What he does is help international companies decide what markets they should enter into next.  That also happens to be what the course is about.  Sound familiar?  That's exactly what I've been helping Blue Bamboo do. 

It should be noted that there is still relatively low participation amongst the class, it drives me insane.  My Public Finance class next year is supposedly highly participation based, but even still my experience thus far with this at Hendrix is not exactly a gleaming light at the end of the tunnel either.  There's got to be a way for a student to stimulate discussion, but I have yet to figure it out.

But as much as I like this course there is a done side.  He's paired us up into teams of 8-10 for a final project which we have to present at the end.  Now I'm not a huge fan of large academic groups in the first place because someone inevitably doesn't hold up their end, but having a large group of MBA students who all work, and whom English is not their first language; now that's just cruel.  Anyways we're going to meet via MSN Messenger and see if we can work it out.  Hopefully this won't turn into a disaster because I have plenty of other things on my plate besides this.

Oh but the teacher did show us a TED video (www.TED.com), which is one of the best websites on the internet in my humble opinion.  The speaker was a statition and showed off some really novel ways of presenting data.  You can check out his website and download the software at http://www.gapminder.org/  Really pretty cool stuff, nothing ground breaking but a much better way of presenting data.

Anywho that's about it.  Night.