BCEMBA06

Last week, John Morel from the Haas Career Center announced Sid as the winner of the iPod for the salary/employment survey. Congrats, Sid!

Message from Career Center:

Please take a couple of minutes and complete the December 2005 graduates Salary/Employment Survey (all the data is confidential and only published in aggregate). The resulting employment report is extremely valuable as a negotiating tool for you and your classmates.

1.) Log onto CareerNet at: http://web.haas.berkeley.edu/intranet/
2.) Click "Employment Reports" on the left-hand menu bar to access the BCEMBA Salary/Employment Survey Form.

Posted by Jamie at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tim left for Seattle yesterday, so we're starting the calls next week. He'll be in Virginia from Tuesday until March 15th...then it's off to Kuwait for 7 months.

2/5: Dr. Mike
2/12: Alfonso
2/19: Frances
2/26: Yoav [Timmy's 17th birthday is 2/26 in case others want to call, too]
3/5: Gayle
3/12: Lali
3/19: Jeff
3/26: Eli
4/2: Roland
4/9: Emily

Please email me if you need Toni's email and/or phone number.

Posted by Jamie at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wednesday, February 15
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Menlo Circus Club, 190 Park Lane, Atherton

The South Bay Chapter of the Haas Alumni Network invites you to the Seventh Annual Haas Alumni Network Celebration in Silicon Valley. This always popular networking and speaker presentation event is not to be missed. Special keynote presentation on Leadership by Jeff Tedford, Cal’s football coach.
To register, click here.
For information, contact the Haas Alumni Relations office at alumni@haas.berkeley.edu.

Posted by Jamie at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Haas NewsWire:

The Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum will shine its light on Israel as a case study for cross-border investing at its first event of the year on Thursday, January 26, at 6:30 p.m. in the Arthur Andersen Auditorium.

The Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum is hosted by the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. It meets every third Thursday of the month, starting with a lively networking session at 6:30 p.m. followed by a speaker or panel discussion.

This Thursday’s event will look at the changing world of start-ups, in which even the youngest ventures look abroad for labor and funding sources, while venture capitalists are expanding their search for promising innovations from around the world. The panel will feature Isaac Applbaum, founding partner of Opus Capital; Steve Krausz, general partner of US Venture Partners; and Opher Kahane, vice president of Voice Technologies at Juniper Networks. David Akov, Consul General of Israel for the Pacific Northwest, will give the opening remarks.

Additional Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum events this semester include:
+ February 23: Opportunity Identification in the Energy World
+ March 23: Presentation of the 2006 Lifetime Achievement in Entrepreneurship & Innovation Award
+ April 27: Eigth Annual UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition Finalist Presentations and Awards Ceremony

For more information or to register, visit http://entrepreneurship.berkeley.edu/jan06.asp.

Posted by Jamie at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Haas NewsWire (weekly email):

Former Haas School Dean Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who has been on leave from her UC Berkeley faculty position since she left in 2002 to become the dean of the London Business School, will return to her faculty position at the Haas School in January 2007.

While details of her return are being finalized, she is expected to be back in the classroom teaching students soon after her return.

“Having Laura Tyson back at Haas will be great for the school, especially for the students who will be lucky to have her as a teacher,” said Dean Tom Campbell.

Tyson has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 1990, holding joint appointments with the Haas School and the Department of Economics. She was appointed as dean of the Haas School in 1998 and took a leave of absence in 2002 to accept the position of dean at the London Business School.

Tyson served as chairman of the National Economic Council in 1995-96 and as chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in 1993-95 in President Clinton’s administration. She has written extensively on the national and international economies and on competition in high-tech industries. She contributes a regular column to BusinessWeek’s Economic Viewpoint.

Posted by Jamie at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

SAN FRANCISCO ALUMNI
"Fourth Annual Haas Celebration in San Francisco: The Future of Energy in the United States"
Wednesday, January 25
5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Gap Inc. Corporate Headquarters, Two Folsom Street, San Francisco
The San Francisco Chapter of the Haas Alumni Network and the Haas School of Business invite you to the Haas Celebration in San Francisco, an alumni networking event and presentation on "The Future of Energy in the United States." Please join David O'Reilly, chairman and CEO of Chevron Corporation for a discussion of the future of energy production and use across the globe. He will be joined by Severin Borenstein, the E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School and director of the UC Energy Institute.
To register, go to http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=99864.
For more information, contact the Haas Alumni Relations office at alumni@haas.berkeley.edu.

SAN FRANCISCO ALUMNI
Bar of the Month: Haas Biotech & Healthcare Alumni
Tuesday, January 31
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Gordon Biersch Brewery, 2 Harrison Street, San Francisco
Join Haas biotech and healthcare alumni for happy hour at Gordon Biersch in San Francisco, courtesy of the Haas alumni office. It will be a fun evening of socializing and networking.
RSVP to Gerrit van Roekel at roekel@mba.berkeley.edu.

SOUTH BAY ALUMNI
Texas Hold 'Em Poker Tournament and Haas Fundraiser
Wednesday, February 1
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

UCSC Extension Campus, 1180 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale
Support Haas and have fun doing it! Please join us for our second annual South Bay Haas Alumni Network Poker Fundraiser – play Texas Hold 'em Poker and contribute to the Haas Fund. Last year the event sold out quickly, so don't delay, sign up now. In addition to a great night, we also have some big prizes from Haas, including free tickets to the faculty colloquium and other Haas events, in addition to great Haas Gear. And the grand prize will be a Haas School executive education class (Financial Analysis for Non-financial Executives) worth $1200.
Register each player at http://www.acteva.com/go/hansb. After you register, make your $50 donation directly to Haas at https://colt.berkeley.edu/urelgift/haas.html. Finally, be sure to print your receipt to bring to the event.
To register go to http://www.acteva.com/go/hansb.
For more information, contact Victor Adint at Victor.Adint@morganstanley.com or 408-286-6060 office, 408-646-9469 cell.

LOS ANGELES ALUMNI
Panel Discussion, "Catch the China Wave: Get the Inside Story on Doing Business with China"
Thursday, February 2
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Jonathan Club, 545 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles
The Haas School of Business Los Angeles Alumni Chapter invites alumni to a panel discussion, "Catch the China Wave: Get the Inside Story on Doing Business with China" A panel of experts will provide you with a glimpse into how business is done between the US and China. The event sponsored by: HSBC, Alschuler, Grossman, Stein, and Kahan, LLP, and BDO Seidman LLP. The panel discussion is presented by the Los Angeles Alumni Chapter, in association with the Wharton Club of Southern California and Stanford Business School Los Angeles Alumni Chapter.
To register, go to http://www.haasla.com/pages/020206_China.html.
For more information, contact Aaron Schechter at aaron@splusc.com or 310-477-6694.

NEW ENGLAND ALUMNI
Cross Business School Happy Hour
Tuesday, February 7
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Julien Bar and Lounge, Langham Hotel, 250 Franklin Street, Boston
Join alums from Wharton, Sloan (MIT), INSEAD, IMD, Stanford, Stern (NYU), Tuck (Dartmouth), SOM (Yale), London Business School, Johnson (Cornell), Fuqua (Duke), Harvard, and Columbia for the monthly Cross Business Happy Hour. It is a great way to meet and mingle with alums from Haas and other business schools.
For more information, contact Karen O'Brien at karen_obrien@usa.net.

Posted by Jamie at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From "Haas in the News" email:

As pundits began their annual ritual of prophesizing about the new year, Professor Philip Tetlock's recent book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? made a worldwide splash with its conclusion that expert political forecasts are frequently wrong.

Media outlets such as The New Yorker, BBC News, and The Scotsman tapped Tetlock's book to expose how people who make a business out of making predictions are no better at it than the rest of us. In fact, Tetlock's 20-year study of 82,361 forecasts from 284 experts found that the better known and more frequently quoted they were, the less reliable their predictions were likely to be.

Tetlock, the Lorraine Tyson Mitchell Chair II in Leadership and Communication, asked experts to predict the probability of events in dozens of countries and regions, including the Soviet Union, Canada and the Persian Gulf. He found that knowing a lot about a particular topic ˆ being a specialist ˆ can actually make a person an even less reliable prognosticator.

Tetlock also uncovered a "curiously inverse relationship" between how well forecasters themselves thought they were doing and how well they did. He also noted another inverse relationship between what the media prizes most in punditry ˆ a single-minded determination often required to prevail in ideological combat ˆ and what makes a good forecaster. And that, of course, casts a big shadow over the media frenzy to quote such experts about what's in store for the new year.

Posted by Jamie at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BREAKING NEWS from Rick:

On the Spicy Drink front, we received our bulk inventory yesterday (32,000 units) and my garage now smells like russian spices – not a bad thing. Now we hit the sales trail – starting with fisherman's wharf and the tahoe ski resorts.

Stay tuned for more spicy updates and announcements on the official Spicy Drink debut!

Posted by Jamie at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Click here to see Jeff's photos of baby Allyson (4 months old).

Posted by Jamie at 06:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Phil Kim: Another paper from one of our esteemed professors...

"The newest research was a paper posted last week on the Web by two antiwar Democrats from the Clinton administration: Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University and Linda Bilmes, now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Their upper-end, long-term cost estimate tops $1 trillion, based on the death and damage caused by the war to date. They assumed an American presence in Iraq through at least 2010, and their estimate includes the war's contribution to higher domestic petroleum prices.

They also argue that while military spending has contributed to economic growth, that growth would have been greater if the outlays had gone instead to highways, schools, civilian research and other more productive investment."

Posted by Jamie at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Email from Frances:

Happy New Year!

I hope 2006 is off to a great start for everyone. In order to keep the BCEMBA community alive and well fed, we would like to have a cooking party at Tante Marie here in lovely, soggy San Francisco.

Here is some information to get your mouth watering and your fingers ready to type, "YES! I am in!!!":

At a minimum we need 20 (with a max of 30) friends for our own private cooking party. Note this is ALL about having a great time - you do not have to be a Malta Mario to enjoy yourself. The evening starts at 6:30 pm at which time we have snacks and wine. The instructor will then brief us on the evening's menu - one especially designed for our group. Then, the fun begins: tie on an apron, gather your ingredients, and get cooking. At about 8:30 pm, once we have done our sauteing and julienning, we will sit down to a terrific three-course meal. The party ends around 10:30 pm (after dessert of course!!!) - we can take home new recipes and cooking skills to impress the people in our lives who weren't able to make it.

A dinner menu might consist of:

• Roasted Asparagus with Pecorino Sabayon
• Boned Leg of Lamb with Black Olive Tapenade
• Artichoke and Potato Gratin
• Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote with Lattice

In order to make this economical (at $100 a person, what better way to spend a night???) we need a minimum of 20 people. We are considering March 19th, a Sunday, for this event. There are also some Friday night dates, too, but after a full week of work that may be a little much.

You can look up Tante Marie (and see how much I have plagerized) by visiting: http://www.tantemarie.com/
Ok, so who is in!!!

Frances

Posted by Jamie at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After Steve Jobs' keynote speech at today's MacWorld, Rick and I jumped online to buy new "MacBooks." With an Intel Core Duo processor, our new laptops will include iSight cameras, so now we'll be able to video chat while working on this site. (Randy will complain they're not Linux-based and Darren will short AAPL...)

Apple offers a 10% student discount, even on the newest products. Click here and enter "94720" for Berkeley's zip code. We're still eligible since we're technically not graduates from Columbia until May.

P.S. Darren - Apple sold 42MM iPods last year -- more than 1 per second during the holiday season. I figure they can convert 5-10% of that user base to laptops and iMacs.

Posted by Jamie at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Becton Dickinson to Buy GeneOhm Sciences
Tuesday January 10, 8:38 am ET
Becton Dickinson to Buy GeneOhm Sciences for $230 Million Plus Incentives

FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J. (AP) -- Becton, Dickinson and Co. said Tuesday that it will buy privately held GeneOhm Sciences Inc. for $230 million plus incentives.

The transaction includes up to $25 million in additional incentives for the San Diego, Calif.-based maker of healthcare-associated infection tests. The company booked about $5 million in revenue in 2005, and will expand Becton's presence into the healthcare-associated infection market.

Becton said it expects the transaction to lower profit slightly but affirmed its fiscal 2006 earnings per share outlook from continuing operations range of $3.15 to $3.19. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial expect earnings per share of $3.19.

The company expects the deal to close by the end of March.

Healthcare-associated infections account for nearly 6 million illnesses annually in the United States, Europe and Japan, and cause up to 90,000 deaths in the United States per year.

Posted by Jamie at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Emily's graduation photos. To view other graduation photo albums, click here.

Posted by Jamie at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rick uploaded the family photos from the graduation dinner slideshow into a Flickr album.

Posted by Jamie at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Click the photo below to see Travis' album on Flickr.

Posted by Jamie at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you who love to ski, but don't have the luxury of living 20 minutes from the slopes (Ben and Elliot), you can visit Darren's vacation rental in Big Sky, Montana.

In addition to getting married, going to school, and starting a family, Darren (and Bree) purchased a condo in Montana last fall. They flew out twice to decorate the home and prepare it for renters. Take a look at the photos -- they did a nice job setting it up.

Maybe we'll host a reunion event there one winter...

Posted by Jamie at 09:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Time: 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: Gap Inc. Corporate Headquarters, Two Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
Registration: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=99864
Cost: $15

Please join David O'Reilly, Chairman and CEO, Chevron Corporation for a discussion of the future of energy production and use across the globe. He will be joined by Severin Borenstein, the E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at Haas and Director of the U.C. Energy Institute.

Posted by Jamie at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Columbia Business School Alumni Club hosted the Dean tonight at Yahoo headquarters. Anyone have feedback from the event?

Posted by Jamie at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Gabriel hosted a trip to Google headquarters today. I sent him an email to find out more about the visit. Submit your comments below if you joined the group.

Posted by Jamie at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

If you haven't done so already, take a moment to set up your profile in the Haas Alumni Network (HAN) database. Last year, HAN launched a pilot test with LinkedIn, the leading online professional networking tool. Over 1,850 Haas alumni have registered their affiliation and added a small tag to their profile.

Click here to view a PDF detailing all of the benefits of participating in HAN. Antonia and I are both on the advisory council, along with Martha from the '04 class. We'll keep you posted on HAN developments via email and on our site.

Posted by Jamie at 08:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)