• blog more
• eat less carbs
• come May, get that perfect job that I would do even without a paycheck
• spend all the time I possibly can with my son
• read much more
• travel more by car
• go to the opera 
• finish a great last semester at Babson
• do more finance-related stuff
• get tickets for the South Africa WorldCup in 2010 

1. Evil Urges - My Morning Jacket
2. Only By the Night- Kings of Leon (this is definitely my favorite album in this year. I can’t get enough of it and seeing their concert made me loved them even more and put them in my top 5 favorite bands of all time)
3. Viva La Vida - Coldplay (they no long represent what they used to represent in my musical universe but I liked this one a lot, too)
4. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
5. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT
6. Day & Age - The Killers
7. We Started Nothing - The Ting Ting Tings
8. Narrow Stairs - Death Cab for Cutie

During the semester-long course we read Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, both Forrester analysts. This post by Charlene Li helped me understand the 4 conceptual components that Social Networks will pursue in order to become “like air” for us. The last of these points, “Market Value defined by Social Influence” is key when trying to make sense of the monetization strategies that Social Networks have in place today and will seek to implement in the short-term. As this Business Week article points out, Google has an ambition plan for this already, developing a sort of “PageRank” for people, based on the influence they have in their social media surroundings.

Below are the slides I’ll use for the presentation tonight. I must say that I really enjoyed this “virtual” class and I learned a lot from fellow students and the keynote speakers we had the privilege to have during the course. A big thank you to Prof. John Bourne for making this course a (virtual) reality at Babson.

It was great to meet and hear the stories of proven entrepreneurs that today guide companies like Pixily, GamersDNA, Tourfilter, Chestnut Hill Sound, to name a few. It was also amazing to meet there other Babsonian friends like Matt Lauzon and Rush Hambleton (whose company, I must say, I really admire and look up to). I think that the sole activity of connecting these entrepreneurs with students (entrepreneurs-to-be) is not only necessary, but extremely beneficial to the startup ecosystem in New England. A week later, Scott would revisit this issue in his Sunday column in the Globe by answering the question: How can we hold on to student talent?. He also wrote a long and thorough post about the role every trade association in New England is playing in engaging student entrepreneurs in local business activities with the purpose of retaining their talent in the region. Some of them scored low and others are doing well and contributing to this important endeavor. From my experience, I know that MITX is aware of the “brain export problem” and is taking concrete actions to further investigate and contribute to solving it.

From this humble blog I just want to thank Scott for being not only a Maven but a true Connector (sorry for all the Gladwell references but I’m just in the middle of reading The Tipping Point). If you ask me today, my first choice would be to graduate and stay in Boston to either start my company or work for a startup.

Now back to the job hunt.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Couldn’t agree more.