Phooning

Yesterday I was still taking it easy back home in Denmark. Today we are back in the pressure cooker and yesterday is only a faint memory. I barely landed in Lausanne yesterday before I went to work on the pile of emails that I use as my to-do list. It was in the early ours of the morning before I felt that I was just reasonable up to speed and could go to sleep. Today was the usual full speed schedule and the next four days are packed to the brim as well. Assignments, startup projects, carreer coaching, personal development initiative (PDI) and the regular class preparation. You name it and we have got it at the moment.

Professor James Henderson introduced the International Consulting Projects (ICP) today and asked us to state our preferences for the project. It was a bucket of very varied projects that was presented. Different industries, different tasks and different parts of the world, some very far away and others just around the corner. The ICP is the part of the year that I look most forward to.

The morning started in celebration, though. Rasmus Figenschou from Norway turned 30 on Monday and the class had prepared a special gift for him. Rasmus is a fan of 'phooning'. To phoon means to have your picture taken as you strike a pose like a runner in special places or under a particular set of circumstances. Here Rasmus shows how it should be done.



Rasmus has previously declared that his biggest 'phooning' dream is to have all 90 students phooning on the tables in the auditorium. So last week, while Vahid Khamsi lured Rasmus away, Henry Low [Singaporean] snapped the below picture. You can probably imagine Rasmus' reaction when the picture popped up on the screen in the auditorium today. It was great to kick off this period of heavy workload on a less serious note.

The MBA Archway

The very first task we were given when the MBA program started on 7 January was to build an archway over the door leading into the auditorium where we have all our classes. We were 90 people and had 90 minutes to do it, so you can imagine how chaotic it all seemed when everybody jumped into action at once. I have to say that I was very impressed with the result. I had never thought it would be possible to be both creative and get everything planned, coordinated and constructed between so many people in so little time. It was amazing to see the archway come together bit by bit. You could almost see it grow.

I was carrying my camera, so I took a lot of pictures and some video clips. I have over the past couple of months worked on getting my photos organized and learning how to share the photos, include them in blogs, make webalbums and so forth. Doing this had made me curious about whether I could make a small movie also. Now that I had both the photos and the video clips from the building of the archway I decided to give it a try. You can see the result below. Not bad for a beginner if you ask me. It is incredibly easy to do this on the iMovie program that comes with a Macintosh computer. The program imports all the photos and videos automatically. You then just cut it the way you want it, drag-and-drop the music and the text into place and you've got yourself a movie.


Tip: Click in the lower right corner of the video if you want to see it in full screen.