This post inaugurates the section TOPS: The Occasional Post in Spanish

Ayer sábado tuve la oportunidad de ver a Café Tacvba en vivo en un salón de baile en Revere, MA. Debo decir que ya extrañaba a los tacvbos y a esa cadencia que tanto los caracteriza. Además, es la vez que más cerca los he visto, en un pequeño escenario que no reunió ni a 150 personas. Tuve la oportunidad de ver cosas que nunca pensé ver en un concierto del Café Tacvba (una parejita abrazada con los ojos cerrados y de espaldas al escenario en “Medio día”, tres “chavas” que aprovecharon su presencia en la primera fila para solo tomarse fotos todo el concierto con la banda tocando como fondo, como si estuvieran turisteando y los tacvbos fueran atracciones turísticas, y bueno, el típico güey con su cartelcito que leía Harvard es una mierda, o el carnal que no se movió durante todo el concierto pero que cuando tocaron “Ingrata” se transformó y saltó como si estuviera en un concierto de ska). Fue la primera vez que oi el “Sino” vivo y debo admitir que suena increíble, tiene canciones que funcionan muy bien en vivo (como “Vámonos” que es excelente en la voz de Meme) y Rubén (nimodo, no me se el alias en el que está ahorita y voy a tener que llamarlo por su nombre) no dejó de hacer énfasis en que como todas las rolas del nuevo disco no las conocía nadie por acá, las iban a tocar toditas por sentir ese “misterio” que guardan, en claro contraste con el resto de su repertorio. 

Hoy me di cuenta de que el de ayer fue el segundo concierto en una larga gira que están haciendo los tacvbos por Estados Unidos y sabiendo eso entendí mejor su comportamiento durante el toquín. Sinceramente yo esperaba un corto “recital” en el cual aprovecharían para presentar sus nuevas rolas y ya (al final del día tienen que encargarse de empujar las ventas y subir el “awareness” de su marca, como cualquier otro producto de consumo). Pero de nuevo los tacvbos salvaron el día con un set completo, incluyente y divertido. Siendo esta la segunda presentación supongo que estaran probando canciones, el sonido y algunas otras cosas. Que suerte haber estado ahí ayer y verlos tan dispuestos (Quique hasta posaba para las fotos de las “chavas” de la primera fila) y tocando como si estuvieran en el Zócalo frente a millones de “fans from hell”. Incluso nos dieron ese momento más alto a mi gusto en cualquier concierto de los tacvbos con su coreografía en “Déjate Caer”. Pensé que se la iban a saltar por falta de quorum. También tocaron “Trópico de Cáncer” (que yo nunca la había escuchado en vivo) en un tono

 como tratando de hacer un statement en pro del medio ambiente por estar en el país más derrochador.

En fin, ahí les dejo el setlist que pude rescatar del escenario para que vean todo lo que tocaron y cómo deleitaron a la “banda bostoniana” como el mismo Rubén se refirió a nosotros. También le mando un agradecimiento a Luis y a Vanne por la excelente compañía y especialmente a Vanne por haber puesto en alto el nombre de Chihuahua en ese escenario. Me quito el sombrero!

El pensamiento que más cruzó mi mente durante el concierto fue de que si algo va a quedarle claro a mi hijo/a algún día cuando se pregunte sobre los gustos musicales de su papá va a ser este: Mi papá fue fan del Café Tacvba.

For more than a year I’ve been following the digital footprint of Argentinean entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky (his blog and on Twitter), a spirited and successful businessman/salesman/thinker that (at least for me) represents all the right decisions and philosophies that somebody can implement in order to live life at its fullest.

Here’s the video of the conversation he had with Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Expo Europe, held in Berlin last week. I hear him mention, yet again, what I’ve been hearing for quite some time about the single most important success factor in any entrepreneurial venture: a good team of people.

Mondays nights are usually the nights I end up dreaming and speaking in my sleep about numbers and balance sheets after a late class of Entrepreneurial Finance. The takeaway from that class is always very straightforward: Entrepreneurs don’t have to be accountants in order to see financial statements from arms-length and be able to perceive uses, sources and status of capital and hence be able to conclude what’s wrong or right about the business. Our faculty for this course insists on neglecting the use of spreadsheets and calculators, he wants common and rapid sense when looking at numbers in financial statements. Gut-driven entrepreneurial finance. Love it.

So Mondays are always days filled with numbers and today was not the exception: I received 2 emails that had a number in the first sentence and that together give a simple summary of my life these days: 208 days until graduation and 168 days until my wife’s due date (the latter arrived in my inbox from BabyCenter.com). The former was from the Center for Career Development of Babson, sharing with us all the open positions and job-seeking resources that are available to us…and scaring the crap out of the entire Class of 2009 at the same time. The second email, I must say, provided comfort, excitement and joy. I can’t wait until the cold New England winter is over and I can greet my son/daughter into this world.

In case you were wondering, in my own scared-to-death-because-of-the-economic-meltdown job search process, things are progressing. At least I know where my passion is inclining me to apply: Apple, Facebook, Google, Digg, AT&T and Netflix are on my list as of today. Let’s see what happens.

I must first say how much I’m enjoying the class of Prof. Anirudh Dhebar called “Marketing High-Tech Products”. It is some sort of philosophical marketing class in which we discover the inner mechanics of every part of the theory of marketing, heavily applied to products and services that have a high-profile or high-tech component.

In one of his classes he put marketing aside to briefly give us some advice in our search for a job. There’s one quote that really resonated in me (which I bold and underline below) regarding the way we present ourselves. I literally quote from the email he sent later to follow-up on this subject:

First and foremost, never, ever, ever, ever forget the following line (attributed to Nicolas Hayek of the Swatch Group conglomerate): “Everything you do and the way you do everything sends a message.” You want potential recruiters to treat you as “world-class,” then there is only one choice: In how you prepare for and conduct yourself during and after the interview, be world-class in what you do and how you do it. And that requires your “message” to be “strong, exciting, distinctive, authentic, consistent, clear, and credible.” Yes, a tall order!

Thanks a lot to Prof. Dhebar for this and if you know of somebody searching for a job, please forward him these thoughts.

On Monday I had the chance to interview Matt Lauzon, Co-founder and CEO of Paragon Lake, as part of an assignment for my Entrepreneurship class with Prof. Zacharakis. Matt is an overly nice person and an accomplished entrepreneur at just 23 years of age. Amazing story.

His company, Paragon Lake (a startup that is using the latest and greatest web based technology to change the way people buy and sell fine jewelry) just got $5.8 million in VC funding and expanded its executive team. 

Being the busy individual he is, he sat down with me for half an hour and patiently answered to my questions. Think of it as giving back to Babson and, as he pointed out in the interview, “always agreeing to take people out to lunch”. This strategy of constantly reaching out to people and offer them a fraction of your time certainly tops Matt’s list of key success factors. That and having a team of “world-class ass-kickers in what they do”, individuals with “high levels of integrity” that helped him build a culture in his company of which he is extremely proud.

Apart from being an entrepreneurial story worth telling, Matt’s is the classic example of an opportunity in an established industry where not much has changed and is very fragmented (jewelry). Paragon Lake’s ability to put the right technology in the hands of the right people is what took them to where they are now: changing the way an industry does business.

A big thank you to Matt for his time and for giving me this experience. It definitely tops my list of “key entrepreneurial days” in my MBA at Babson.

I just started reading “Groundswell” by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff and Chapter 1 includes this hilarious take on Internet censorship:

You can’t take something off the Internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.

Couldn’t agree more.

Today I attended my first class in Second Life, the famous virtual world for the elective Social Networking and Virtual Worlds. It was an interesting experience and it certainly changed my skeptical perception of the uselessness of SL. Yes, I thought it was kind of absurd to spend time and money in a world that really doesn’t exist…but the truth is that today we experienced a real class, with a real speaker, with real slides and with real interaction. Just like the one you have in a real-world class. I must say that I’m positively impressed with the result of this experiment. The learning process and setup time for all attendees is still very high and complicated but I guess this can be reduced in subsequent meetings.

The guest speaker (who interestingly is physically located in New Zealand) was Mary Ellen Gordon, the CEO of Market Truths, a company that among other things assists brands and firms to understand and interact with their customers in SL. She gave examples of companies that have successfully played a role in SL and have found that there are unique and beneficial characteristics using this channel as part of a marketing mix.

I want to use this post also to introduce the blogs of my classmates Deanna Briggs, Katrina Gosek and Jesse Mendenhall. Keep up the good work guys!

This is literally the first “Hello World” post I’ve written in my life. And it comes to life to start this blogging effort that will let me capture what it is that is happening in this very important phase of my life (and hopefully capture many readers in the process also).

In spite of the fact that my mother tongue is Spanish and I’m a Mexican citizen (quite proudly), I’ll mostly blog in English for three reasons: First, I live in the US right now and the people that are likely to read me don’t necessarily speak Spanish. Second, the Spanish-speakers that are most likely to end up reading this stuff are likely fluent in English and it’ll do them good to read more English. Finally, I need to get up to speed with my written English because the grades of my second year as an MBA will greatly depend on final papers and long deliverables.

Eso no quita que de vez en cuando postee algo en español que tenga interés específico para hispano-parlantes o mexicanos (al grito de guerra). Especialmente sobre asuntos de la “blogosfera” o de la política latinoamericana.

You’ll notice that the headings in this site are in English, Spanish and German. This is to stress the fact that I speak all three languages and that I grew up learning from all three cultures and idiosyncrasies. I’m a proud tri-cultural being that everyday embraces all three languages, weltanschauungs and cultures. It is less likely, however, that I’ll blog in German…sometimes I’ll link to stories in German or throw in a quote like this one:

Man muß einfach reden, aber kompliziert denken - nicht umgekehrt -Franz Josef Strauß

I hope that you will find something of interest in this set of words and online situations. 

Yours in blogging innovation,

B