There are three main things SAB members want to achieve by attending orientation:

1. Meeting and welcoming the members of the incoming cohort.  We can help jump-start their sense of belonging within the Enterprise MBA Program and the greater WSOB community.  Plus, we get to meet them before everyone else.  Score!
2. Explaining our means of effecting change in our program, the Student Advisory Board.  We will discuss the history of the SAB, what we do, and how the upcoming elections will operate.
3. Presenting experienced MBA student perspectives.  Until you are actually in an MBA program, it is difficult to know which skills, behaviors, and activities are necessary to optimize one’s experience in the program.  For example, it will seem to them as if they are being invited to an indistinct, endless array of events.  But in reality, many events are rare opportunities only available to members of the WSOB.

I enjoy being a part of events like this.  This is one of the greatest things about being in a three-year, lockstep, cohort program: when you start, you get to meet your cohort and the two years ahead of yours.  By the time you are in your third and final year of the program, you have additionally met the two years behind yours.  A person in the WSOB Evening MBA Program can know 300 to 400 professionals with MBAs by the time they finish!

The backgrounds, skills, and experiences of our fellow program members are rich and varied.  My mission during the orientation will be to encourage the members of the Class of 2012 to meet as many of the students in the program as they can.

For the past several months, we have been contacting businesses who have offices in Beijing, coordinating either having our entire class visit their facility or having representatives from their company visit us in the conference center of our hotel.  (Some companies are not set up to handle a visiting group of 60 people!)  The list of companies we will be meeting with is an impressive who’s who:  Kimberly Clark, IBM, Li & Fung, Lenovo, GE Healthcare, Cummins, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson Controls.

I had a really neat experience setting up my team’s site visit to IBM.  A friend of mine, Mike Payne, has been working at IBM for over 10 years.  Mike and I first met during our days as undergraduates at UW-Madison, struggling through the computer science curriculum together.  Earlier this year, when I asked if he had any contacts at their facilities in Beijing, he was able to connect me with the event manager for IBM’s brand-new Supply Chain Innovation Center.  This is a major score for a bunch of strategic management MBA geeks!

I did not have to be a member of Accelerate Madison to attend the event, but the entry fee for non-members was $35.  Since a friend and I both wanted to go, I figured I would join.  Then both of us could participate for “free” and I would be instantly getting $70 back on my $185 yearly membership fee.  Plus, when there’s an all-inclusive, deluxe way to do something, that’s how I tend to do it.  (For this reason, my wife and I established a 3-day waiting period before I am allowed to set foot into a golf equipment store.)

Two notable things happened at this event:  I did get to meet Penelope Trunk and the group of people in attendance got to exhibit their inexperience with social networking.

As my friend and I stepped into the elevator at the Fluno Center, he suggested I hold the door for the woman heading across the parking garage.  I held the door, and as the woman approached, I half-whispered to my friend, “I think that’s Penelope Trunk!  I mean, I’m not sure, since I only know her face from the picture on her blog, but it really looks like her!  What do you think we should….”  By then, time had run out to talk about the situation.  She boarded the elevator and I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself standing right next to our famous, esteemed, very tall speaker for the evening.

And I am not afraid to admit I found myself more than a little bit star-struck!

Like a gazillion other people, I read her blog, and since her posts convey so much about her, I was overcome by the same self-conscious feeling you get when a person you’ve been innocently observing suddenly meets your eye.  Not only that, but she is also so accomplished, she has chosen to run her latest startup here in Madison, and she was the speaker that evening – I felt a lump growing in my throat!

But wait!  I’m going to business school, dammit!  I am getting an MBA!  I have an elevator pitch!  I’m going to lay it on her and blow her mind!

But wait.  Doesn’t she write extensively in her blog about how going to graduate school – especially for business – can be a fool’s errand?

But wait!  I disagree with her when she writes things like that!

But wait.  It’s just a short elevator ride.  Better say something, quick.

“We’re here to see you speak tonight,” I say, nodding and smiling.  Penelope takes over, sparing me further deliberation about how best to handle the situation.  She ably guides my friend and me through a round of introductions and even asks us about what we do.  We discover she is familiar with the services of the company I work for.  I try to say something funny and self-deprecating.  Then we’re suddenly in the lobby reception area of the Fluno Center.  It’s time for her to move on and have the other 200 people there try to talk to her.

Later that evening, her talk about BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES & COMPANIES through SOCIAL MEDIA was on-target, her delivery enthusiastic yet casual.  At the conclusion of her talk, she took questions from the audience; most of them apparently still regard social networking as charming, alluring, and mysterious.  Penelope found herself teaching an impromptu session of Social Media 100.

Her most profound statement came at the end of the Q&A session – in which Penelope revealed that in spite of having been running her company in Madison for three years, she had never heard of Accelerate Madison until recently.  I hope the audience understood the relevance of her comment, especially at a talk about BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES & COMPANIES through SOCIAL MEDIA.

One of the hot topics was the use of social networking sites, blogging, and SMS texting to communicate between recruiters and candidates. I described how I thought Joel Spolsky was doing it right. His company, Fog Creek Software, has always been profitable and is located in New York City – one of the toughest markets in the world. Joel enables transparency by blogging and writing articles for Inc. magazine about Fog Creek Software’s policies and practices. His efforts have made Fog Creek Software one of the most desirable employers in the world.

To help add value to what I said during the panel, I wanted to collect together links to several of Joel’s articles. These articles are relevant to recruiters, hiring managers, and anyone in the position to reveal their company’s policies to better enable candidates to self-select their employer:

• Fog Creek Compensation System
• Fog Creek Professional Ladder
• Incentive Pay Considered Harmful
• The New Fog Creek Office
• Thanks or No Thanks
• Finding Great Developers
• Joel on Software Job Board
• The Joel Test

ME: It’s s-h-a-d at s-h-a-d-i-t dot com.

HER: So, Shad at Shad IT dot com?

ME: YES! That’s exactly correct.

She immediately figured out the meaning of my new domain. Thank you, Liz, from the Wisconsin Innovation Network!