oggy.net Blog

It has been really a long, long time since the last update.

Basically I am doing all right. Many things happned after that, but I just wanted to give you the latest update as of today.  I have left the company I used to work for at the end of April, and also completed the master program in June. So, I left Evanston (near Chicago) already and am currently staying in Silicon Valley in Calofornia to meet my old friends. Then, I will go back to Japan next week finally.

I would like to thank everyone for the amazing years, and hope to stay in touch!

Quote from http://www.chicagoevents.com/event.cfm?eid=123 

The Fountain Square Art Festival boasts two-and-a-half decades of success as one of the most important art festivals in the Midwest. In 2005, Fountain Square Art Festival was ranked by the Sunshine Group in the top 50 of the best art festivals nationwide.

The festival is located on six city blocks in downtown Evanston amid newly built luxury condominiums, offices, restaurants such as Wolfgang Puck’s, a bevy of coffee cafes, stores and hotels. A large sculpture garden located in the middle of the festival serves as its focal point. This urban setting creates the perfect ambience for this event, which embodies the word sophistication. More than 250 fine artists show and sell their art to an audience of sophisticated, discerning, upscale, art aficionados and collectors. The event draws approximately 50,000 people who come from the upscale North Shore suburbs as well as Chicago.

This festival has been held at 2 minutes walk from where I live. I enjoyed walking around the area with my wife and just had a cup of lemonade on the street. There was also a cool blues performance.

MMM New Product Innovation Fair is an exhibition event where our MMM (i.e., MBA + MEM program) students display and present their design projects done by their teams during “The Design of Services and Products” class. This spring quarter, each team has been going through an iterative design process including observation, brainstorming, prototyping and so on, and finally had the chance to show the design concept to people now. Although at the beginning of the project there was a little pain until our team came up with a solid design concept, overall it was a fun event and we had a great team collaboration.

This friday we had Japan Night party at the lounge in McManus (Kellogg’s dormitory). It is an event totally run by students and we, Kellogg Japanese student group (mainly 1st year students), provided foods like Sushi, Udon, and Yakitori, unlimited Sake, Japanese games (such as Yoyo-fishing) and performances like Kagamiwari-openings, Enbu (a Japanese martial-arts-style performance), Skit and Dance and so on. Thanks to the great marketing effort, around 350 tickets were quickly sold out! I played Taiko (i.e., Japanese drum) for Enbu, acted in the skit (”Post-MBAs visit Yakuza office”) as a lover of the Yakuza boss, and danced (music: ”DJ OZMA”, a Japanese artist)…It was a blast!! It has been a great opportunity to showcase Japanese cultures and people to the non-Japanese classmates, as well as to deepen the internal teamwork and friendship among Japanese students through such intense preparation efforts.

Special K! is an annual theater show run by students in Kellogg. It is composed of live musical/skit and short movies whose story basically describe student’s life at Kellogg with humor, irony and passion. The quality of the performances is so high that the show is one of the most popular events here. Most of the students, even some professors and administrators at Kellogg go to see the show. The total Special K! company involves around 100 students including directors, cast, band, creative team, business team, marketing team, technical team and movie team. So, it is a quite big project and the people’s motivation and commitment are extraordinarily strong. It is a great opportunity for students not only to have fun but to exercise their leadership, team work and to bond tightly with each other. This year, there have been five shows titled “Avenue K!” and played during May 1st – 3rd.
 
Me? I have joined the band as a guitarist. Our band includes trombone, trumpet, violin, flute, guitar, bass and drums. We played 15-20 popular songs arranged by professional musicians. The sound we made was very, very energetic and we really rocked at the show! This has been my first “big band” experience and also one of the best music performances I was involved in my life. It is also our privilege that people come to us and say “hey, your performance was great!”.

There is going to be a revival show some time in this fall (November?). If you are thinking of visiting Kellogg to discover something about the school, I really recommend that you see the show!

I belong to ”Special K!” Band and there has been a rehearsal today. It is basically a comedic musical performed by students. I will tell you more story some time later. (The photo is my guitar ES-335.)

“How was your break?” or “Did you do GIM?” is the common way to start the conversation with the friends here. (GIM stands for Global Initiatives in Management). We are back to the school and the classes have begun. Everybody is enthusiastically talking about his/her unique experiences during the break.

I am taking the following classes in this quarter:

• The Design of Services and Products (Norman)
• Successful Entrepreneurship (Shefsky)
• Venture Capital and Private Equity Investing (Collins)
• Media and Integrated Marketing (Calder)
• Finance II (Eisfeldt)

“The Design of Services and Products” is a design side of MMM course taught by Don Norman. Taking five classes might be too challenging for me, so I might have to drop one of the classes. We’ll see.

During March 19-21 2008, Kellogg students, a professor and a director from career center visited founders, early members, CEOs and/or managements from startups, incubators and venture capitals in Silicon Valley to hear some insight, mindset or real-world tips on entrepreneurial activities . I was one of the leaders of the trek this time too.

Firms we visited:

• Linden Lab (aka. Second Life, http://www.lindenlab.com/)
• Plug and Play (incubator, http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/)
• Globespan Capital Partners (venture capital, http://www.globespancapital.com/)
• WidgetBox (web 2.0 start up, http://www.widgetbox.com/)
• Vuze (Open Entertainment Platform startup, http://www.vuze.com/app)
• LinkedIn (Social Rolodex – middle stage startup, http://www.linkedin.com/)
• Ooyala (Video syndication and monetalization solution – startup, http://www.ooyala.com/)
• TerraPass (Clean Tech startup, http://www.terrapass.com/)
• Breathe Technologies (Healthcare startup, http://www.breathetechnologies.com/)
• Global Catalyst Partners (venture capital, http://www.gc-partners.com/)
• AdMob (mobile advertisement startup, http://www.admob.com/)

All the discussions have been so fruitful and I appreciate all the companies who kindly hosted our visit and spent time with us! 

Just moved in to “McManus”, the dormitory (寮) for Kellogg students!

• URL:http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/stu_aff/housing/
• Room: 1 Bedroom (i.e., 1 LDK): 2BR & Studio are also available.
• Facility: Group Study Room, Playroom, Excercise room, Wireless LAN and so on.  
• 第一次感想/雰囲気： 多少古いが住むには十分。学生として必要な環境は全て揃っているし、快適に過ごせそう。夜は、早速廊下で International な食べ物（カレーなど）の香りが漂っていた。出会った人は気軽に声をかけてきてくれる。
• 荷物搬入： 昨日は「暑い！」と書いたのだが、今日はこの写真の撮影直後に激しい豪雨に遭い、足止め＋荷物の搬入に一苦労。しかし、ひとまず落ち着いた。
• 明日買うもの： トイレットペーパー（プライオリティ高）！