I spent my P1 break at Bootcamp: The Startup - a two day workshop on how to start a company and I got to work on a very cool and very real project - a scanning system for opaque liquids that can be used to scan the bottom of ships entering a harbor. The technology is being developed by MIT and has already won a sizable grant by the Singapore government, so it was exciting to get my hands dirty with something that might actually be realized.

INSEAD is organizing two more workshops and one of them will be led by Peter Sage - a very successful serial entrepreneur who will also be presenting at the INSEAD Entrepreneurship day in about a week. Incidentally, he gave a talk about his space energy project at TEDxNottingHill, which you can watch below.

<div class="posterous_quote_citation">via youtube.com</div>

Another one of the classes I had to take during P1 was LPG - Leading People and Groups. Some people rolled their eyes, other people loved the class. Our professor is a TED fan, so it is only fitting that I post a video, which beautifully touched upon what it means to be a leader.

Benjamin Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic for over 30 years (if I only knew about him when I was still in Boston!). He speaks about passion, classical music, leadership and success. Check out his talk below.

 

statistics -> data management -> data visualization -> pictures -> autistic minds -> TED talk by Temple Grandin

I am at the end of P1 - a good time for reflection about the classes I've been taking and things I have hopefully been learning over the past two months. Statistics seemed a lost cause for me until we started talking about regressions.

Then I ran into this special report from the Economist about data management, http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15557443.&n... In a world of increasing rate of accumulation of data, statistics will be one of the most valuable tool we may have to make sense of it. Another interesting tool the report mentioned was data visualization, which also helps make sense of vast and often complex data (http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15557455).

"The brain finds it easier to process information if it is presented as an image rather than words or numbers." (No wonder Harald Hau, our finance professor keeps saying, when stuck, draw a picture).

So this reminded me of a recent TED Talk (from TED2010) by Temple Gradin, who is autistic. She claims she does not think in language but in pictures and that we would need autistic minds as much as we need "normal minds". Check out the talk below (my friend Maria "Brainpickings" Popova, www.brainpickings.org, thinks it is the best one from this year's TED - http://www.good.is/post/best-of-ted-2010-a-response/).>

Second day into orientation and I am already receiving emails from McKinsey's recruitment team. Intense!

INSEAD does not have university housing. The 500 or so students currently at Fonty are spread out across villages around the university, which is a certain impediment to socializing with my fellow classmates, especially given my lack of car. One building with suites could have easily fitted more than half of the student body. Fonty does not seem terribly overbuilt, so finding land would probably not be a huge problem. There are real estate investors who specialize in student housing and would have probably taken up the opportunity. University housing would have also mitigated the drink-and-drive problem the school seems to face. True, the charm of living in a converted barn would disappear, but so would the heating problems!

Danone may be French, but that does not mean you can easily find yogurt in France. Creme fraiche, on the other hand, comes in all sorts of sizes, brands, and amounts of fat... and you would think that a notebook with simple lined paper would make sense. but no, it has to be graph paper, music paper, penmanship paper, dot paper and what not!

The name plate that I received and will have to display at my seat in every class includes my first and family name as well as my nationality. Nationality?! What kind of useful information exactly is my nationality supposed to represent? Peculiar. On a different topic, they charge you separately for the gym and for a language exam. I do not know much about consumer psychology, but isn't it better to rename "tuition" to "tuition&fees" and increase the amount by 540 EUR than to ask for additional payment at every step? Peculiar.