The AIM Blogger

It makes me feel grateful, to be writing this, after the worst storm hit the metro. Last Saturday was depressing. If anyone stayed online for extended periods of time, the neverending calls for help or the announcements of villages and household getting completely submerged by the floods will eventually take its toll on someone. Add to that the knowledge that some former colleagues are spending their weekend stuck on rooftops, seeking shelter in schools and desperately waiting for supplies of food and fresh water that might not come. I believe the internet is already swamped with stories and pictures and videos of this incident. But more important than posting and talking about that is actually doing something about it. I guess the first problem that all of us face, is the sense that we are not important enough or that we can't do anything. But if we really think and ask that question from ourselves, we know we can always do something, no matter how small. This is one of the ...

For the past few days of meetings and classes, I learned that one of the most important things that AIM students value was the rare commodity called TIME. The professors weren't kidding when they said that the pre-MBA class(with courses which would have lasted for a semester in other schools) was nothing compared to the actual MBA. I've acquired a taste for coffee of the bitter and sugary kind. I've learned to value breaks more and plan ahead when it comes to readings and meetings with my CAN groupmates. While it is a technique still far from being perfect, at least I've started to make more use of the available time at hand. You have to learn to manage the time you spend when doing case readings and meetings as a lot of Cohort 5 can attest. Even some of our professors constantly reminded us to spend just 1 hour and 30 minutes with our case discussions with the CAN group. It was an adjustment period for most of us I think, with the in-your-face realization of wha...

The video you see above is just one of the shocking scenes that happened in Manila as Typhoon Ondoy (internationally known as Typhoon Ketsana) slammed the city. Thankfully, the Asian Institute of Management was spared from much flooding-- despite the water reached approximately 50cm in Paseo De Roxas Avenue, the street in front of the campus. But for a brief moment, the Zen Garden became a pond. Now that the storm has passed, relief operations are now underway in the city. The Philanthropic Activities Society (PACTS) of AIM are participating in the relief operations for the victims of Typhoon Ondoy. Spearheaded by MBA Cohort 3 student Laurice Alaan, the PACTS have volunteered manpower to the efforts and have been collecting relief goods and donations. AIM alumni and students who would like to support the initiatives of PACTS, please contact Laurice at alaan.mba2009_b3 (at) student.aim.edu . This is a worthy cause and I join the PACTS in encouraging the AIM community to do ou...

This is the final part of the "How Socially Responsible Should Managers Be?" Series. In the previous posts, I talked about the need for social responsibility for managers and Prof. Jun Borromeo's thoughts on this gap . For this blog post, I'm sharing Prof. Junbo's plan on how to address the seemingly widening gap between what managers are doing and what managers ought to be doing. Prof. Junbo's idea is quite simple: Bring all the folks from the MBA, MM (Master in Management), and MDM (Master in Development Management) together. To quote Junbo: "...It is time to bring all of our degree program students together under one roof (in a manner of speaking). Of course this does not mean that there will only be one program. It simply means that we have to find a vehicle that will give all degree students, during their stay at AIM, the time and the opportunity to learn together and from each other's diverse backgrounds and experiences. Imagine in one c...

The Asian Institute of Management will be hosting the 2009 edition of WordCamp Philippines . Last year, I spoke about Web Standards at the event where the special guest was none other than Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress. This year's event will have folks from Automattic and Mozilla  to speak about developments on Wordpress and Firefox respectively. Here's the program for tomorrow's WordCamp Philippines 2009: 8:00am - Registration 9:00am - Welcome Remarks & Backgrounder: Mindanao Bloggers Community by Blogie Robillo 9:30am - Meet the WordPress Family by Beau Lebens 10:30am - WordPress in the Wild by Markku Seguerra 11:15am - Citizen Journalism in the Context of the 2010 Elections by Danilo Arao 11:45am - A quick look into the Mozilla community through the lens of localization by Seth Bindernagel 12:25pm - Lunch 1:30pm - Vlogging Mythbusters by Coy Caballes 2:30pm - The Editorial Voice and Taste in Writing Tech by Jeff Villafranca 3:15pm - Adva...

I'm writing this in a coffee shop somewhere in the Fort. This week, our batch(or as our Professors put it, COHORT) has been divided into 2 groups. So far, only our systematic management analysis class has been split. Meaning besides that class and schedule, we're all still attending the same schedules. Last Tuesday was my SMA class, and today is my day-off, or the other group's class schedule for SMA. So far so good is what I can say with my stay in AIM. I still remember how my grandma gave me some encouraging words. She said, "you'll be entering a school where most of your classmates are probably top of their class or are honors and you're just one of the regular guys." Hahaha come to think of it, are those really encouraging words...? Well I guess looked at differently, they are. We've been all told that we are a group composed of people who are at least of equal caliber compared to our predecessors. I do not know if I should look at it as a...

Meeting good friends is always welcome and I could say I made some good friends during my MBA stint at the Asian Institute of Management . We had a little get together last night because two folks in our class were in town: Cheska Herrera and Howie Schmidt. Thanks to text blasts from Diamond Uy and Faye Abis, we were able to round up a few folks. :) Around two years ago, we had our Cubs' Night, or the welcome party to the juniors thrown by the seniors. This is how we looked like then: A little trivia: Our Cubs' Night theme was Hawaiian Luau. (Isn't it obvious? :P)

Just a quick one: We had a photoshoot for the upcoming AIM Alumni Leadership Magazine this morning and it was a pretty quick shoot. The folks from the Alumni Relations Office needed extra photos for the layout on the article I contributed to the magazine. If you have a chance to grab a copy of the issue at the end of the month, please do. The article I contributed is about The AIM Blogger and I feel that it covers some of the things I've not been able to talk about in the blog. So, will it be an explosive tell all? To give you a hint, I originally titled the article "Confessions of an MBA Blogger." So go figure. :)

I'm very pleased to announce that The AIM Blogger now has a new MBA student contributor! Francis San Luis of the new MBA Cohort 5  has already been blogging about his Pre-MBA experience at " The AIM Student Life " blog. I was ecstatic when he accepted my invitation to blog here and share his experiences at the Asian Institute of Management . A little info about Francis: He finished his undergrad at the Ateneo De Manila University and he was with HSBC for two years prior to starting his MBA. Here's a sampling of his blog posts in his blog: http://theaimstudentlife.blogspot.com/2009/08/pre-mba-jitters.html http://theaimstudentlife.blogspot.com/2009/09/missed-holidays-pending-trip-and-start.html http://theaimstudentlife.blogspot.com/2009/09/2-days-of-pre-mba-of-economists-and.html I'm sure you'll get to know Francis more by his blog posts and I'm sure he'll share his unique perspective on AIM life here at The AIM Blogger and The AIM Student Lif...

Last Friday, the very first offering of the Winning Internet Marketing Strategies & Tactics (WIMST) elective for the MBA students was concluded. As you can see from the photo above (courtesy of Anton), the class is much, much bigger than the Online Marketing elective that was offered last summer. The last class we had for WIMST was the presentation of the results of the internet marketing campaigns the thirteen (yes, thirteen!) groups in the class ran for the last month or so. Based on what the MBA students from Cohorts 2 & 3 presented, they definitely learned and got a better appreciation of using the various internet channels for marketing. And I'm sure my co-faculty ( Anton Diaz & Jayvee Fernandez ) shared my feelings of pride on what the students accomplished. I'll blog about my personal learnings from handling this class in the next few posts. But I extend my congratulations to the WIMST students for a job well done! :D