hilary [week 9]: hello press

I’m a seasoned veteran by now. It’s been nearly 6-months since I arrived in Oxford to start my MBA program. I guess you can say that I’ve reached the “half-way” mark...and I’ve been blogging about it ever since.

I am so interested in recording my experiences here, in fact, that I was one of the first MBAs to respond back in October to a request from the Saïd Business School Press Office to serve as a “Public Relations Ambassador”. They invited me to sit for an interview so that they could write a profile on me. That profile was then neatly tucked away in a desk draw. For nearly a half year that profile has not seen the light of day – until last week.

Apparently, an independent contributor to the Financial Times was writing a story on “blogging, Facebook, and social networking.” The SBS Press Office reached out to me asking if I would be interested in answering a few questions, and that the writer had a strict Monday deadline. A couple of days later I was chatting with the writer over the telephone for a half hour. I followed up a day later with an email to thank him. I also wanted to make sure that he was clear on what I had said during the interview, so I included the following recapitulation:

Introduction...the problem
After heeding the mantra of my previous employer that the future of investment banking was "Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai, or say good-bye," I crossed the other side of the Atlantic to attend the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford where our class hails from nearly 50 countries. Now I was faced with a new problem...how to stay in touch with a diverse group of 250 MBAs? Facebook emerged as the clear solution - then Linkedin.

Facebook/Linkedin solution...
Facebook was such a popular choice, that the incoming MBA class actually migrated over from the "Incoming Student" intranet site to the new "Said Business School - Class of 2010" Facebook page. Part of the reason was that Facebook not only allowed for richer content, but also proved to be a better vehicle for communicating with past and future Oxford MBAs. Facebook proved so valuable to me as President of the Oxford Finance Club that I even launched a "Finance-OBN (Oxford Business Network)" Facebook page to publicize group events.

Blogging solution...
Nevertheless, as useful as Facebook and Linkedin have been to our MBA class in helping us coordinate and publicize activities, they couldn't quite capture the "human narrative" that old-fashioned blogging filled rather nicely. During the application process, in fact, I derived the most benefit from Googleing "Oxford MBA blogs." This led me to both the "official" Oxford MBA blog (for which I am now a contributor), and all the way to India where I regularly read (and contributed) to Pagalguy.

It became clear to me that no matter how glossy the MBA brochure, nothing could replace the down and dirty nitty gritty narrative of personal experience that others so kindly provided on these blogs. Having benefiting so much from the kind postings of others, I decided to give back to others by launching my own blog called, "Confessions of an Oxford MBA." Through Google Analytics I can see that my blog currently reaches thousands of readers in 45 countries from New York to New Dehli.

*I'm very curious to read this Monday's weekly FT "MBA Report" to see if: (a) they even run the article (b) do they mention me explicitly (quote) or implicitly (c) if they do quote me I hope it reflects well on SBS and myself. I'm sure I'll write an addendum to this blog post if they run the story in some form or another - it was a great experience either way.