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.

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!