start of week 7...

So week seven was again as crazy as the others recently! The weekend leading up to it and much of the time at the start of the week was spent on three group assignments due that week! So many completed and now just two more to go this term, next week. I'm getting to know my study group mates very, very well, as well as the interior of the team meeting rooms where we have been spending upwards of 30 hours each week.

Monday the 22nd was also the second annual Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event. The conference lasted all afternoon and included visiting speakers such as the director of new product development for google, the founder of blogger.com, the founder (craig himself!) and ceo of craigslist.com, the creator of redhat.com, as well as valley venture capitalists, and others whom I forget at the moment. All in all, a very impressive list. We started with a lunchtime panel discussion with just students, and continued with masterclasses in the afternoon, which involved a group of 15-30 students paired up with the guests for an hour a piece! Great stuff! After the masterclasses, there was another panel discussion, with the students again and also with about 150 corporate guests from around the UK who had also come to hear these people speak. A very interesting event.

As if that wasn't enough for one day, I also on Monday night attended a lecture at the Oxford Union given by Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma. It is always impressive to see people talk in the Union debating chamber, and to think about all of the people that have spoken there over the years. Gandhi's speech focused on spreading goodwill in the world (no surprise there), and digressed into a bit of a tirade against the current state of Indian/Pakistani as well as Hindi/Muslim relations. There were about eight people from the MBA program at the lecture, and afterwards we continued the discussion at the Union bar for a few hours!