Over winter break, a group of 25 Haas MBA students visited South East Asia and explored Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Bali, and Vietnam. During their stay in Singapore, the students networked with influential Haas alumni and members of the Berkeley Club of Singapore at a beautiful outdoor bar called OverEasy.
Click beneath the fold to see some of the pictures from the event.
Guest Post: David Breger, Co-President of the Berkeley Digital Media and Entertainment Club (DMEC) gives us a peek into the different events hosted by clubs at Haas. This recap is cross posted on the DMEC Blog.
One of the best things about DMEC is our extremely passionate and fun alumni base. Because the Club is less than a decade old, DMEC alums are recent alums that are awesome to hang out with and are always working on the most interesting things.
Case in point: a couple weeks ago was our First Annual DMEC Past & Present Scotch Tasting. Sponsored by Johnny Walker, we held the event at the Yardbarker offices in San Francisco, started by two DMEC co-founders, Pete Vlastelica and Jack Kloster.
The night began with appetizers and cocktails, where dozens of DMEC members and alums alike had the chance to talk and catch up with one another. Then began the scotch tasting. The Master of Scotch explained to us the differences between the five types of Johnny Walker scotch we tasted that night: Red, Gold, Black, Green, and Blue. It was a great chance to interact with DMEC students and alums working in the digital media and entertainment industries over some fantastic scotch!
—Vince
Long time no blog, I guess. But then the first-years have done a good job taking over this blog, so I don’t feel too bad about it.
My third semester is almost over. Three down, one to go. I am currently busy finishing papers for a number of classes. Having just come back from a four-day trip to Copenhagen for the final round of the Vestas Winnovation Case Competition, I am both jetlagged and a little behind on all of the end-of-semester work, but the trip was well worth it.
I had worked on this case competition together with another second-year student and along with another team of Haas students we made it to the final round in Copenhagen where we presented our proposal to Vestas executives. Key buzzwords for our presentation: Renewable energy and China. Even though we did not win, this was a great opportunity to learn more about the energy sector, to network with people from Vestas and other MBA students (15 MBAs made it to the finals along with 15 engineers) and to visit beautiful Copenhagen. And since a UC Berkeley engineering student came out winning the Engineering price we still got to cheer for a fellow Cal student.
Now back to my marketing research paper.
—olistrut
After a busy week of Spring-A finals, two Italian exams and the officially unofficial End-of-Spring-A party I had a hard time getting up this morning. But since I had registered (and paid) for the 2008 Haas Asia Business Conference weeks ago, I felt obliged to go to the conference to claim my lunch box. And I an glad I went. Not just for the lunch, but for the conference as a whole.
Kudos to the organizing committee for setting up an amazing conference. My favorite events of the day were the keynote by Dr. Laura Tyson (Chairman of the National Economic Council and the President’s Council of Economic Advisors under President Bill Clinton, former Dean of both Haas and the London Business School and currently a Professor of Business and Public Policy at Haas) and the Mobile Industry Panel.
Dr. Tyson’s talked mostly about the current economic situation of Asian economies, with a heavy focus on China and India, but also touched upon the current economic crisis in the US. After 7 intense weeks of macro-economics it was nice to lean back, listen to her talk and see all those concepts and frameworks come together once more.
At the Mobile Industry Panel, I was once again impressed with the creative uses of mobile communications particularly in developing countries. Prepaid mobile minutes have become a de-facto currency in some developing countries and Nils Johnson, President & CEO of Gorilla Mobile and founder of Arity, explained how Arity facilitates remittance payments to the Philippines in the form of mobile minutes. Very creative use of an existing technology and a good demonstration of how new ideas can shake up decade-old industries like remittance payments service providers.
I am still tired. But I am glad I did not just stay in bed this morning.
—olistrut
Well, we’re back. All 62 of us. A good-lookin‘ crew, huh?…A mere fraction of the total Haas representation in Nashville!
I’ll give some context in case you didn’t see my post last week. Haas sent a large contingent to this year’s national Net Impact Conference, Nov. 1-4, hosted by Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management in the heart of country music…umm, country.
The Conference was an amazing opportunity to not only meet experienced practitioners and academics in fields we’re interested in, but also a chance to network with socially-minded MBAs from schools all around the country–while getting to know our Haas brethren much better (sometimes it takes getting away from school to really do that). Panel topics ranged from CSR and triple bottom line to social venture and nonprofit management to supply chain greening…and everything in between. One of our Career Services Advisors, Rich Wong, even made the trip out to support us. What a guy.
All in all, the weekend was intellectually engaging, viscerally energizing, and socially satisfying. And we topped it all off with a little line dancing on Saturday night!
Many of us are now fighting colds from the long flight and lack of sleep, but it was well worth it. I, for one, am already looking forward to next year (Wharton is hosting)…
—Omar
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