LAUNCH it

Tomorrow is the last day of the LAUNCH programme.

Our IMBA programme kicked off on April 13, at Segovia (a quaint, historic little town outside Madrid). There we were, all decked up in our business formals, already "networking" over coffee, and later over beer and wine as well (and for some reason I'll never understand, water too !). The ceremonies were in an ancient church. There were ruins all around. Awesome ambience!

Networking

The head spun a bit, keeping track of all the names, all the nationalities, accents and back-stories. Everybody was one their best behaviour, all charm and charisma. Pump a handshake here, flash a smile there, and voila, you're "connecting", like any MBA worth his salt should. Frankly, I'm already sick of this whole fake networking thing.

Spotting Pseudos - an art, not a science

Sure, not everyone is fake. I've already met a lot of very genuinely interesting people. A lot of people I'm going to be great friends with, over the next year and more. But the pseudos stand out easily enough. They're the jerks who're more concerned with the "breadth" of their network, the "depth" of their relationships be damned !!

Orientation & Launch

But, to get back to the topic at hand; the orientation went on for another 2 days. Then the Launch programme started. This was a pot-pourri of a lot of stuff, basically revolving around team-building and soft-skills/awareness. There were sessions on the Case Method, Team work, Action Learning, China, Japan, the Arab countries, and many more.

We tried to make a device (from straws and tape) that would prevent an egg from breaking when dropped, had some drills with a pro basketball player (formerly with the Chicago Bulls), worked with a theater artist (Shakespearean) on improving presentation skills. Did I say it was a pot-pourri?

And we're not done with the Launch, yet! It'll come around again at the end of every term.

Add-ons

In between, I managed to squeeze in a session on "Marketing for startups". Absolutely worth every minute of it! There were 2 IE graduates, one who'd set up busuu (an online language learning portal) and another who'd set up MasMovil (an upstart Telecom service provider). Inspiring stuff. I'd sure made the right choice, signing up for this one and ignoring another on Strategy Consulting that was going on at the same time. Who needs a classroom of would-be suits hanging on to every word uttered by a bunch of suits?

PS: We've got a quiz on Financial Accounting on the first class. W.T.F. !!

PPS: Each time I hear the word "Launch", I hear "Houston, we've got a problem!!" Can't get it out of my head. Man, I've got issues.