Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

What did I do at the U the evenings of these past 2 1/2 years? Well, here is a list of some of the MBA courses I took:

• ACCTG 6000 Financial Accounting
• ACCTG 6001 Managerial Accounting
• MGT 6040 Data Analysis & Dec Mkg
• MGT 6050 Team Foundations
• FINAN 6020 Financial Management
• IS 6010 Information Systems
• MGT 6052 Business Communication
• MGT 6060 Production Oper Mgt
• IS 6410 Process Analysis
• MGT 6810 Entrepreneurship
• MKTG 6090 Marketing Management
• FINAN 6025 Managerial Economics
• IS 6420 Database Theory/Design
• IS 6470 E-Business
• MGT 6500 Managerial Negotiation
• FINAN 6300 Venture Capital
• MGT 6051 Mngng & Leading in Org
• MKTG 6300 Mktg Info Age
• MGT 6070 Business Strategy
• MKTG 6850 Promotional Marketing

You’re welome, Treu.

Friday I graduated with a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business! I’ve been taking night classes for the last 2 1/2 years, and, let me tell you, that got old fast.

RANDOM THOUGHTS from my GRADUATION:

Last week, at BYU’s commencement, the speaker, Dick Cheney, was awarded an honorary degree. Friday’s UofU’s commencement speaker was President Thomas S. Monson. Did Thomas S. Monson get an honorary degree too? Yes. Was the U playing copy-cat? Probably.

Both my commencement and convocation were held in the Huntsman center, and from the graduate’s point of view coming out of the tunnel, walking to the chairs and looking forward towards the podium, the place looks empty. That’s because no one sits in the seats behind the speakers. It’s a strange feeling.

The gown for masters degrees is fashioned differently than those for the baccalaureate. At the U, the masters gowns have what I call “Harry Potter sleeves,” that is, the cloth extends about a foot below the wrists. That’s great if you’re a magician-in-training at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but the sleeves served only to confuse me (which isn’t hard.) In fact, walking to the commencement and surrounded by bachelor’s candidates, I thought I had my gown on backwards and nervously tried to ball up the extra sleeve cloth in my hands.

The student speaker at the commencement, a Pakistani native, called life, a “beautiful struggle.” I like that.

I kept remembering the famous words of Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley, “We have met here today clothed in the black robes of a false priesthood.” What he meant was that there was no central authority which governed the graduate dress code. Indeed the graduation vividly manifested that truth. Of course traditional black caps and gowns are already silly, but the silliest of all were the faculty in their brightly mismatched apparel; like a reunion of flamboyant court jesters they sported robes of every color combination. Some had even abandoned the traditional cap for floppy beret-like hats. Then you have the big colored hoods, which are, in fact, never worn over the head as most hoods are. And then PhD grads are evidently so focused on their studies that they can’t put on the hoods themselves, they need help from the deans to do that. It’s all rather ridiculous.

Did my dad give me a chocolate cigar as a graduation gift? Yes. Can you smoke a chocolate cigar? No. Did I try? Maybe.

Tassels are irksome. They pelt you in the face. The strings are magnetically attracted to your mouth. It’s like the constant feeling of a spider running across your face. I understand now how girls with long, straight hair must feel. It rained on and off throughout the day, and wet tassels, I discovered, smell surprisingly like wet dog. Therefore, I can only assume that tassels strands must be made of dog hair.

Did a channel 5 (KSL News) television crew pick me out of the crowd to interview? Yes. Was that largely because I was heckling said crew? Yes. Did all my natural humor vanish as soon as the TV camera turn on me? Sadly, yes. But all this question and answer reminds me of how I was once in a park having pizza with a friend when a pack of Evangelical movie-making Christians stumbled upon us and asked if we would like to be interviewed. They wired us up with mics, turned the cameras on and asked lots of questions about the devil and evilness and the end of the world. During that filming, I actually managed to retain some semblance of wit. I wonder if I made it to the final cut?

I learned that 35% of my education is funded by Utah state taxes. That means that I need to thank YOU for helping with my MBA. Thank you.

or JD^*, which is big fancy Latin for a law degree and my sister evidently just got one which is why I found myself outside the Marriott Center this afternoon, standing in a long line. BYU breaks their graduation over two days. Day one is the pep rally, aka commencement. Day two is the shout-outs, aka convocation. Today was the pep rally and BYU invited Dick Cheney, or he invited himself. In any case, I had a ticket and he was supposed to speak.

And because he was coming the not-so-Secret Service also came. They were milling about looking like standard cops except for the big patch on their arms which said “Secret Service.” Also, they brought airport-style metal detectors with them and it was because of that, that I was standing in the long, long line. A line that did not move fast at all.

That wasn’t a big deal, though, because it was nice and sunshiny outside and there were a lot of people to entertain me. I’m easily entertained, or so I’m told. Forty-five minutes and a double scoop of orange sherbet later, I made it to the front of the line. There at the checkpoint the very,very Secret Service man told me to turn on my digital camera. He then looked at the viewfinder while waving his hand in front of the lens. Satisfied, he waved me through the checkpoint. I guess when you make camera bombs, you break the viewfinder on the camera.

We arrived three hours before the scheduled start. That advance arrival scored us seats in the furthest nosebleed section, one row from the wall. (Fast fact: though we were in the nosebleed section, none of us actually contracted nosebleeds.) Normally, I might be miffed at our suboptimal seating, but the event planners had included a stylish, translucent gift bag under each seat. Inside was a bottle of water, a homemade brownie, a bag of pretzels and a card of BYU trivia.

You might have guessed that that got me thinking. How do you make and deliver 22,700 brownies? The logistics are tricky. Do you make the brownies yourself? If so, how many mixes and ovens and cooks do you need? Do you call ten bakeries and have then do the baking? Who wraps them in cellophane? Who puts them in the bags? Do you assemble the bags in a big warehouse and then truck them to the Marriott Center for delivery? How many trucks would you need? Do you assemble on site? How many people do you need for assembly and distribution? It was all very interesting.

Five minutes later, having finished thinking about the brownie bags, I got up and walked around the inside of the Marriott. People were still flooding in, not yet cognizant of the baked treats awaiting them. I walk down nearly to the floor of the Center and yelled at my sister, who was busily not answering my cellphone calls. She looks over. I snap a picture. She looks annoyed.

I return to my stratospheric seat where I am once again impressed by the event planners. This time they’ve organized a variety of entertainers for us restless seat-sitters. (Speaking of Latin, those Romans were on to something with their panem et circenses.) Vocal Point. The Young Ambassadors. Some dancing group. I would have found it all rather amusing were it not for the giant man in the next row down who insisted on standing up, right in front of me, obscuring my view completely with his hulkish frame. Fuming, I passive-aggressively brainstormed clever things I could lean forward and hiss at him. “Hey buddy, you make a better door than a window.” “Hey you! Down in front!” “Move, or I’ll rip your arm off.” As it was, I said nothing, largely because the man might take offense at my comments and then try to hurt me (ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem, but remember, I’m temporarily physically weaker from my recent bout of Top Stop food poisoning.)

The gods must have heard my prayers, because, as if on cue, Mr. Big and Tall decided to find another seat just as the ceremony began. We all stood. The deans filed in. Surprise! President Hinckley showed up! Then Mr. Cheney and his entourage of even-more Secret Service arrived.

Guess what? Cheney got an honorary degree complete with a nifty turquoise hood. Then he spoke and made us all laugh and like him. Did I record Cheney’s speech and transcribe it for you? Yes.

I understand that a few not-so-bright BYU democrats in the graduating class boycotted the commencement in favor of their own anti-commencement featuring the eminent Ralph Nader. Some choice immortal words for those geniuses, “[you] chose… poorly.”

* also, Doctor of Jurisprudence

I’m doing a marketing audit of Apple for a class I’m taking at the U, so in order to gather some data, I sat outside the Gateway Mall Apple Store this afternoon (April 14, 2007 from 2:30pm until 2:45pm) on a bench jotting down quick demographics of those entering the store. I had a clipboard and I recorded gender, age range and whether they happened to look like a hippie. Here, below, are my results.

By the way, I really wanted someone to stop and ask what I was doing, because then I would have said, “counting hippies” and that would have been really, really funny. At least to me.

Have you taken my PC vs MAC Survey yet? If not, I would very much appreciate if you would because the survey gives me some insight into PC and Mac users’ views which are important for my marketing audit. Thank you in advance!

Talk of the Nations on NPR today interviewed Georgetown University law professor David Cole on his decision to ban laptops from his classroom. David wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post on Saturday describing the circumstances and effects of his no-laptop policy.

Says David,

Note-taking on a laptop encourages verbatim transcription. The note-taker tends to go into stenographic mode and no longer processes information in a way that is conducive to the give and take of classroom discussion. Because taking notes the old-fashioned way, by hand, is so much slower, one actually has to listen, think and prioritize the most important themes.

and,

In addition, laptops create temptation to surf the Web, check e-mail, shop for shoes or instant-message friends. That’s not only distracting to the student who is checking Red Sox statistics but for all those who see him, and many others, doing something besides being involved in class.

To back this up David states

95 percent admitted that they use their laptops in class for “purposes other than taking notes, such as surfing the Web, checking e-mail, instant messaging and the like.” Ninety-eight percent reported seeing fellow students do the same.

The results for David’s classroom experiment? according to an anonymous survey he conducted six weeks into the semester:

About 80 percent reported that they are more engaged in class discussion when they are laptop-free. Seventy percent said that, on balance, they liked the no-laptop policy.

At the University of Utah, where I have been an MBA student for the past two and 1/2 years, laptops are required for all students and are therefore seen in nearly every class. Recently however, a few teachers have asked us to shut them down after the end of classroom administrivia (assignments, announcements, scheduling etc) which is about 15 minutes into class.

Initially I was irked at this change. Though, shifting perspective, when teaching at UVSC I’ve had to teach students who had laptops open and I can attest how annoying that is from the professor’s point of view. It isn’t uncommon to have to repeat a question in order to get a response from the distracted students. Of course, for you non-academics, the immediate parallel to the classroom setting is in company meetings and that brings us to the question of the day, Should laptops be banned from company meetings?

I’ll summarize some more arguments for and against laptop bans in classes/meetings.

For the Ban

• Class time is for discussion and listening, not transcription of notes from professor to student. Professors should provide class notes.
• Laptops are the equivalent of taking a “bookshelf, mailbox, newspapers and a board game” to class, as such they are major distractions.
• “Doing five things at once on the laptop, students miss out on the unique educational experience of college, where the student’s sole responsibility is to learn as much as possible.”^*
• Something about writing notes forces the brain to work and results in better comprehension.

Against the Ban

• Banning laptops just means the added annoyance of typing class notes after class.
• Students are able to contribute better to class discussion by bringing in material from the web
• Some students have illegible handwriting, so hand writing notes doesn’t work.
• Some jobs require students to be online and available over IM.
• Just disable the local wireless to prevent people from surfing.
• Some classes are highly technical in nature and not discussion-centric. Students need to be able to take down what the teacher says verbatim.
• We have technology, we should be using it?
• Why require laptops only to ban them?
• College students are adults and are mature enough to make their own decisions about such matters.

What do you think?!?

Now that my MBA education is coming to a close, it’s time think about a Ph.D.

Of course I need to first decide in which subject to get that doctorate. Here are my top picks:

• 1. Computer science
• 2. Electrical engineering
• 3. Linguistics
• 4. Archeology
• 5. History

And then I’ll need to pick a school. I wouldn’t mind attending a university in California or somewhere on the east coast. And speaking of schools, here’s an album of pictures from my recent visit to the Stanford campus.

Stanford University February 2007Click the image for the complete gallery

The word “percent” means literally “per cent”, where “cent” means 100. So “80 per cent” is “80 (of something) for each 100″. Cool, eh?

The longest one-syllable word is “screeched.”

“Dreamt” is the only word that ends in the letters “mt”.

“Underground” is the only word that begins and ends with the letters “und.”

There are only four words which end in “-dous” — tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

There is a seven letter word that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein” — the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

“Stewardesses” is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.

The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.“

Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious.

“So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them.”

– Lawrence H. Summers, Remarks at NBER Conference (as reported on Slashdot)

That is a paragraph from a speech by the President of Harvard University. Summers tried to explain why there aren’t as many woman as men in the Science and Engineering disciplines. In order to avoid offending anyone, (who wants to be called out as a misogynist?), but in an effort at preserving intellectual honesty, he disguised his thoughts by using big words and complex sentence constructions (“unquoteables”, if you will.) I’ll translate

“the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity” translation: Women often prefer to spend more time at home with their families. Men work longer hours.

“there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude” translation: Men are simply better at math and science than women, particular in the extreme cases.

“that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination” translation: There are also lesser/supportive reasons for this, like society telling women to become nurses and society mistreating female engineers.

“I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them” translation: Please don’t stone me. I am a French, cheese-eating, surrender monkey.

So, you tell me: why aren’t there as many woman as men in Science and Engineering?

Someone once asked me about my blogging routine. To be sure, blogging is not exactly mainstream (although I argue that it’s becoming more so.) Sadly, a lot of people don’t know what blogs are. Even more have never read one. I’ve been blogging really for about a year and I’ve been Gung-ho about it for six months. So maybe I’ve learned a little.

Here’s how I do it:

Whenever I have a good idea (like bot week), I start a blog draft. I currently have 12 or 13 drafts hanging out in my WordPress. The drafts start out as lists/outlines with few complete sentences. Then I flesh them out when I have a spare moment. Then I add links. Then I decide which draft will be published. Then add any transitions, humorous rewordings, clever titles, etc. I then I read and re-read them. Then I read them out loud. Then I add pictures. Then I click “publish”! Then I edit four or five more times. It’s actually a lot more work than I like to admit (although I just did.) If people knew how much time really went into this silly blog, they would think I was pretty weird and my reputation as an incredibly macho yet brilliant scholar-athlete might be tarnished. There goes my rep.

For a better blog: try discussing the blog topic with a few of your friends beforehand. For better blog topics, be sure to be inspired through interactions with other people: Get out and do stuff. Listen to the news. Listen to NPR. Watch funny people. When you write: Be funny. Be flippant. Be controversial. Be clever. Break your content over a series of articles so people have to come back for the conclusion. Again, get out and do stuff; unless your imagination is amazing, it’s really hard to have an exciting blog if you lead a boring life.

Oh, you must enable blog comments (it’s ok to moderate them to prevent spam/objectionable material, but for the love, turn them on!) For one, blogs are more fun when people comment. It’s about the community and the conversation, not just your blatherings. Blogs without comments suck.

The best blogs still need readers. You need to get people to come to your site, so you have to promote the heck out of your blog.

Promoting your Blog:

• submit your site to search engines (Google) and blog aggregators
• tell everyone about it
• google for blogs on similar topics and post a comment along with a link back to your blog entry
• get friends with blogs to list you in their blogrolls
• blog about interesting stuff frequently so people want to come back
• don’t talk about software bots for days at a time
• create supporting accounts (with back links) at Myspace, flickr, etc.

Clearly I can do things to make my blog better too. Any ideas for me?