The Hubbards

Glenn Hubbard, CBS's dean, has the tradition of hosting students who cannot travel home for Thanksgiving for a meal during the long weekend. This year, the meal was held on Friday and, after my name was drawn from the lottery - there's only 25 places available - I joined some other exchange students and headed to his house. This is an admirable initiative, I have to say, and unfortunately we don't have anything like this in London. As if having a free lunch wasn't good enough, we also had the opportunity to try some good turkey and have a chat with the dean. Cool stuff.

The day after, on Saturday, I joined another bunch of exchangers (actually, it was the same bunch from the dean's lunch) and headed to Washington DC. We spent the weekend there and had great fun! The city is not that fun - lots of museums, monuments, too formal for my tastes - but the nightlife seems to be really good! Either that or we were lucky. We went to a bar called KStreet and had a terrific time. As for the city's main attractions, Lincoln's memorial is awesome, Iwo Jima too, the White House is too far away and it would be impossible for Robert Langdon to steal anything from the Archives.

For a first Thanksgiving experience, this last weekend was not bad at all! Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving too! :)

The perfect job

This week I had the opportunity to attend one of the best speaker events since I started this MBA adventure. One class I am taking here at Columbia is Media & Entertainment Marketing (a half-course) whose professor is, apparently, very well connected in the Media industry. He has been bringing interesting guest speakers every week, but the one this week was definitely the best. Just imagine having the following job title 'Director of Marketing for the Lord of the Rings movie'... WOW!!! Now that's a job! And that was the title of Rose Polidoro, our guest speaker.

Of course, listening from someone who worked on the Lord of the Rings movie is enough to keep me interested for hours! Hearing about how Peter Jackson handled the trilogy and funny stories from the set from someone who actually WAS there is an opportunity I couldn't miss. It was also reassuring to confirm that Media is an industry that badly needs business management knowledge and that this management is not necessarily an enemy of creativity. She told us how the marketing strategy for the movie was planned and implemented, starting from the initial engagement of the strong cultish fan-based (in which I proudly include myself) and ending on the strategic marketing partnerships and promotions. It was interesting to see that something so MBA as a marketing framework, like the 4P's, was followed by her team (it was actually on one of her slides!)

However, although the LOTR subject would be a strong reason to make me love this presentation, it wouldn't be enought to consider it as the best one ever. What made it really outstanding was Rose's enthusiasm and love for her job! She said that she 'never worked for a single day in her life'. Although a bit cliche, you could really feel how true this was, her passion for her job. After the speach she just staid there, answering question after question and her friends actually had to drag her out of the class room. She wanted to be there and answer all our questions. She worked in several other media segments (like radio) and told us that it was always like a hobby. The fun was always there! And as she said, this was what we should pursuit, our dream job, what we really love to do.

Now, I'm sure that there may be someone who REALLY loves investment banking or consulting. But sincerelly, from the tones of presentations I have attended from consulting and banking companies, I never heard a single speaker with the same enthusiasm as Rose's. That says it all, I would say...

- I wish The Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened.
- So do all who live to face such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

300

Every year, there's one or two movies that I am really anxious to see. Sometimes it's because I love the book it is based on (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, A Scanner Darkly), and some other times it's just because I read about it or saw a trailer that gave me shivers down my spine (Matrix, Dark City, Ghost in the Shell). There is also the chance that I had just seen it at Fantasporto before worldwide release, but that's something more specific to my hometown... Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, anyone? ;-)

As I posted before, Sin City was one of the movies I was anxious to see last year. Having heard about a movie filmed on a shot-for-shot adaptation of Frank Miller's comic books just seemed impossible to go wrong (and it didn't!).

And now, there's this:



F*cking unbelievable! Based on another Frank Miller comic book, it just looks insane! I saw this trailer like 10 times in a row! Of course, the Nine Inch Nails song also helps making it look (and sound) amazing. This movie is based on a famous battle between 300 Spartans and the Persian army - for more information, check the Wikipedia entry - and again, it was filmed on a shot-for-shot basis. I can't wait to see it!

And people still wonder why I want to work in the Media industry!

Vegas