The AIM Blogger

Last week, MBA Cohort 3 students Vaidas Sukys, Ron Acedillo, and Sandeep Kaul successfully sailed (well, rowed to be more accurate) across the Pasig River using a makeshift boat . Yes, a makeshift boat using used plastic water bottles. This was part of Vaidas' walkabout project and it aimed to make a statement about the environment. The launch was a huge success that the city government of Pasig supported the initiative. Media also covered the event and Vaidas & co. were featured in the evening news. Congratulations to the students for this successful project! More coverage: Ripples of Change Lithuanian Student Rows His Plastic Boat in Pasig River

Credibility, whether on the physical or virtual world, is not easy to gain. It takes time, a good track record, and good relations with people. Like what I learned in Social Entrepreneurship (SE), one builds " Social Capital " as he moves around and interacts with society. In the real world, it's easy to imagine how one gains credibility-- one can get it by good character, proper actions, or deep knowledge. A simple act of honesty can help one's reputation and credibility. But when it comes to the online world, how does one gain this valuable commodity? My research brought me to a recent study entitled " Web Credibility in Online Journalism " where the researcher sought to find the link between web credibility and several factors, among them the author's identity. The study cited a work by MIT Media Lab expert Judith Donath: The writer’s identity – in particular, claims of real-world expertise or history of accurate online contributions – plays an ...

I've had my share of mistakes, but there has been one mistake that has come to bite me in the @$$. When the a certain forums site was launched a few weeks ago , I welcomed it with open arms. I saw its potential of being an avenue of intelligent and meaningful discussions among AIM stakeholders, particularly the students. A few weeks has passed and that site has accomplished none of what I thought it would do. Instead, we saw people posting crass criticisms like crazy, discussions focusing on "who's doing who," and doing very, very little to create a positive change. The moderators eventually saw the lack of responsibility in the postings of the message board, and disabled anonymous posting. The quality improved a bit, but the general atmosphere of that website still remained-- a raw environment filled with character assassinations. What was my mistake in what I've mentioned? I grossly overestimated the benefits of that forums site and underestimated its ne...

The Online Marketing mini-elective I taught with Professors Richard Cruz and Titos Ortigas had its 10th and last meeting yesterday and I had the pleasure of closing the class. The class session was brief but we recapped what we learned for the last 10 weeks and had some final tips for the groups will be competing at the Google Online Marketing Challenge . We also had a quick evaluation of the strategies of the different groups for their respective companies/clients. We rounded out the class with feedback on how the class was handled and the course content. Thankfully, the feedback of everyone in the class was generally positive. (Well, I wasn't expecting a vicious feedback a la AIM Bloggers Forum on the Professors , but you get the picture :P) I handled three sessions of the 10-session mini-elective (regular electives usually have 20 sessions), and I think it was a very good experience. I was there in almost all the 10 sessions to observe and learn as much about handling an M...

I'm proud to share that The AIM Blogger has been selected by GraduateDegree.org as one of the 100 Best Blogs for MBA Students . This blog is in good company-- blogs from MBA students, alumni & faculty from Wharton, Columbia Business School, Kellogg, Harvard Business School, Fuqua, London Business School, Ivey, Chicago Booth, Stanford, and Sloan were included in the list. I just feel honored that The AIM Blogger was recognized as one of the best all over the globe. :)

Just a quick one: In a basketball clinic where I served as one of the assistant coaches a while ago, the girls team of KT Tan, Karen Bitagun, Laurice Alaan, Bhavisha Dave, Carmie Pacheco, and Clarence Lim beat the boys of the MBA Cohort 3 in the all of the shooting drills and games. The girls and boys competed in free throw shooting, jump-shooting, lay-ups games and the AIM girls slammed the boys on all of the events. The basketball clinic was a walkabout project and it was held at the AIM parking lot. Congrats girls! :D

I've been visiting the newly-launched " AIM Bloggers Forum ," an online forum for all Asian Institute of Management initiated by, according to them, students and alumni. The forum's heart is in the right place-- it wants encourage feedback from the all the AIM stakeholders and elicit change in the institute. However, in my last visit, I've been quite disappointed with the quality of posts in the forum. As of this writing, almost half of the forum posts are placed in the threads pertaining to AIM rumors (which reads like a gossip column) and AIM faculty (which reads like a mud-slinging campaign). I'm disappointed because of the lack of responsibility of the forum posters. Here are samples: I will just fill in the blanks -- He is a xxxxxxx. To his future student, specially the girls out there, better weara skirt and a plunging neckline to class. Yes he can teach but he better stop talking after class. Not a good role model especially with the way he tal...

Last year, the Asian Institute of Management participated in the Inter-MBA Games , a sports league composed of the arguably the business schools in the Philippines. I was part of the basketball team that competed in the friendly games and we finished a respectable third in the basketball tournament, and we finished third over-all in the competitions. Thanks to my classmate Mark Chan and then AIM Student Association (AIM SA) Chair Macoy Del Pilar, the Inter-MBA games was one of the accomplishments of the Sports Committee of the AIM SA Sports Committee that I headed. A few weeks ago, a couple of current MBA students asked me if why there was no Inter-MBA Games this year. I wasn't able to give a straight answer, and I was equally wasn't sure if there were games this year or it may have been delayed. But to my surprise, I was wrong. I dropped by the Ateneo Graduate School of Business for an alumni meeting (I finished my other master's there) a while ago and I saw posters p...

I was reading the news (yeah, I read the news), and one line from a news story caught my eye: You’re (an) AIM ( Asian Institute of Management graduate). You’re a financial wizard. You used your financial wizardry and look at what happened? That line was said by Senator Mar Roxas to Celso de los Angeles, Jr., an AIM alumnus who earned his MBM in 1976. The senator was asking Mr. de los Angeles about the latter's involvement in the financial shenanigans of  the Legacy Group, a local group of financial companies that closed down last December 2008. The senate is investigating de los Angeles and other Legacy Group officials for allegedly masterminding a financial scheme that left bank depositors and insurance policy-holders with the proverbial empty bag. I couldn't help but think about this whole issue. I have little doubt that the training de los Angeles got from AIM helped him master the financial instruments to use money to make more money. But the part where he  used th...

I'm posting more photos from the recent visit of MBA students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School . The photos are courtesy of NUS MBA student Ooi Aik Hwee and the photos were taken during the Inter-MBA student interaction activity.

Yesterday, I was having a nice Sunday afternoon snack in Greenbelt 3 when a text message from my good friend Mae went to my inbox. Mae alerted me that someone was using my Plurk account on the AIM Library terminal and that person was not me. (For the uninitiated, Plurk is a micro-blogging tool similar to Twitter ). I got worried when another text message came saying that the person was threatening to do nasty stuff with my account. (View the transcript of their Plurk chat here ) My initial thought was that my account was hacked because I was pretty sure that I only used Plurk on my personal notebook. I hurriedly went to the AIM Library (Greenbelt 3 is a 5 minute walk to the Asian Institute of Management ) and I saw this young guy who was probably in his early 20's in front of a computer. Undoubtedly, he was using my account to post micro-blogs as I saw him from a unobstructed vantage point. I immediately called his attention and asked him to log-off using the account. He exp...

The students of the elective I'm co-teaching with Prof. Richard Cruz and Prof. Titos Ortigas are now set to take on the Google Online Marketing Challenge . The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a global competition for higher education students that will use the Google AdWords platform to launch marketing campaigns. Teams of students will promote a company's website using the Google's advertising platform and the best campaign (based on a set criteria) will win the contest. The winners of the competition and their professor/lecturer will receive a trip to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. I think this is a very good exposure for MBA students to get practical experience in Internet Marketing . We've spent the last seven weeks preparing for this competition and the teams will be running an internet campaign for three weeks. I think the three teams are ready to take their proponents' websites to the next level: The Sexy Chef Cafe   Baseball Philip...

A new forum for the AIM community has been launched and it's called the Asian Institute of Management Unofficial Stakeholder Forum . I assume that it's an initiative by a student ( for his/her walkabout perhaps? ) and it has been getting some promotion in the AIM student mailing list and even a comment in this blog pointed to this new site. This is a very good democratization of the voice of the students, since this is gives the students another venue to voice out their angst and frustrations. This is evidenced by the thread that has gotten the most number of posts: the one about the AIM faculty. (Read this thread and it reads like a character assassination dossier). Since the forum is an unmoderated one where anonymous folks can post stuff, you could imagine the "fun" this forum will have in the future when it focuses on controversial topics. I like this forum because it frees up people to say really truthful (read: bad) things about people and the school. B...

Well its been building up inside of me For oh I dont know how long I dont know why But I keep thinking Something's bound to go wrong - The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby" It's March 2009. Two months after the MBA  graduation , nothing much has changed since December 2008-- the world's economy is still in the dumps and the career opportunities seem to follow the trail down the drain. Among the things I leaned while studying at the Asian Institute of Management is the value of making plans, after all, it's one of the main tasks of a manager. I drew up some some sketchy plans on what I'll be doing around this time, and I anticipated the economic situation somehow. I figured that opportunities will pickup sometime toward the end of the first quarter, but to my disdain, it's slower than expected. Much, much slower. Sometimes, it gets a little discouraging, even for someone of my optimism (or denial? :P). But when things don't go according...