Month: November 2008

Rowing, couples, and an elegant Jesus College dinner

The big thing that I was trying to focus on this weekend was the Four’s Head of the River Race, on the River Thames in London.

Last year I rowed for Thames Rowing Club; this year I rowed for my Cambridge college crew (Jesus College Boat Club). The race went okay, but wasn’t spectacular. Our crew had little time to practice together, so the actual race was about our third outing as a boat. A couple of the guys had never experienced the “Tideway” conditions on the Thames, and they were fairly brutal yesterday. (Pouring rain in the last five minutes or so of a 20+ minute race doesn’t make for happy rowers.) But at least we finished without any disasters. It’s a good step toward the real goal of college crews: Lent and May bumps races on the River Cam.

In other rowing news, Cambridge did quite well against Oxford in the Fours Head, winning pennants in both the Elite 4+ and the Senior2 4+ categories. And I’m happy to say that the Thames women won the Women’s Senior2 4+ pennant!

There’s something else I’ve been meaning to mention for a while… it’s a bit of an oddity of our MBA class. In a class of 150 people, there are four couples! (Where both partners are enrolled in the MBA.) The Times did a bit of an article on them titled “Lessons in love for high-flyers.” Note that the Kate and Peter they discuss are not the same as this Katie and Peter.

I forgot to mention that about a week and a half ago Jesus College had a Matriculation Dinner for all of the new graduate students this year. It was quite an affair; black tie with gowns was the dress code. I grabbed a quick picture of the table and table settings. When I saw that each of us had five knives, four forks and a spoon and was a candlelight dinner, it was obvious this was certainly a special Cambridge type of event.

Thoughts on Obama and leadership

It was clear to me quite early on Election Night that Nate Silver’s reputation was well-deserved, and Barack Obama was going to be the next President of the United States. As blue states were called quickly for Obama and it took quite some time to call red states for McCain, the result was even more clear.

I’m incredibly happy and proud for the United States to have the new leadership that we will soon have. It’s going to be an incredibly challenging time, and the next four years will not be easy for Obama or the country. But I feel that we have a wise, capable and visionary leader.

But I wanted to take some time to reflect on some themes around Barack Obama and his campaign. Fred Wilson posted his list of what he believes the country can expect from an Obama administration:

  1. A world class management team
  2. Honesty
  3. A steady hand
  4. Diplomacy
  5. Fairness
  6. Leadership

There’s a reason that “A world class management team” is at the top of the list, and it’s closely tied to “Leadership.” It’s clear from articles like “Near-Flawless Run is Credited in Victory” that Obama built a solid team. Not only that, but he had the confidence to push out a tremendous amount of responsibility to his organization. From a military outlook, it was an excellent example of what is called “maneuver warfare.” But there’s a great example of his management and leadership styles colliding in this video of his talk to his Chicago campaign headquarters just after securing the Democratic nomination. I encourage you to take 10–15 minutes to observe what Barack Obama is like as a leader:

Obama is clearly a charismatic leader. Just take a look at this incredible collection of photographs from the Boston Globe. And because I think they’re both still so meaningful, check out his New Hampshire concession speech and the video that was made from it. Even in defeat he lifted people up and inspired them.

Finally, I’d like to remind everyone that elections matter. I recently created a prediction market on Hubdub for something that I think will become very critical quite soon: Supreme Court nominations. I encourage you to register on Hubdub and predict for yourself!

How many US Supreme Court Justices will retire by the end of 2009?

Things making me happy today…

These are the things that are making me happy today:

  • Top Gear! — Top Gear is back on television! One of the best shows on TV anywhere, it started its new season last night. Really funny, and just lots of fun to watch.
  • This also allows me to bring up a HUGE pet peeve of mine with British TV. They do a HORRIBLE job of promoting new seasons of shows. With American TV, new shows debut around the same times of year (September, January, etc.) and the channels promote that the shows will be starting soon. On the BBC, I have NEVER heard that the new Top Gear season will be starting, even though I was checking their website every few weeks!
  • For a show that makes a tremendous profit for the BBC, you’d think they would try to make sure that people are actually… you know… WATCHING IT?
  • Lewis Hamilton — Well done to Lewis Hamilton and the rest of the McLaren team. (Though I doubt he’s reading, congrats Oli!)
  • If you don’t follow Formula 1 (far too many Americans, unfortunately), Lewis Hamilton just won the Drivers Championship yesterday in one of the most thrilling and nail-biting races I’ve ever seen or heard of! Coming into the last race (Brazilian Grand Prix), Lewis Hamilton was leading in number of points, but his only competition (Felippe Massa) has always dominated in Brazil, his home country. Even if Massa won, as long as Hamilton placed fifth or better he would become Formula 1 champion.
  • The race was crazy. Rain at the start delayed the race and forced teams to upend their strategy as they changed tires to Wets. Hamilton stayed in fourth or fifth for the majority of the race and seemed to be playing it safe in order to win the championship. But on the final ten laps of the race, rain came out again, forcing teams to choose to either leave “slick” tires on and hope it didn’t rain hard or go into the pits and get their “wet” tires.
  • On the second to last lap, Hamilton was in fifth place but passed! He drove like crazy trying to catch up, but didn’t, and the championship slipped out of his grasp… Massa crossed the finish line in first place. But out of nowhere, Lewis Hamilton passed the car that had been in third place! It hadn’t pitted to get new tires, and was slow on the wet track. Hamilton caught up and passed him just seconds before crossing the finish line… in fifth place!
  • It was an amazing race. Lewis Hamilton became the youngest person to win the Formula 1 World Championship, and the first black man to win the Formula 1 World Championship. Britain hasn’t had a driver win the championship in twelve years, so the country is deservedly celebrating!
  • Barack Obama — Is Lewis Hamilton’s victory a portent of things to come in tomorrow’s election? I certainly hope so. According to fivethirtyeight.com, he’s heavily favored… winning >95% of the simulations.
  • Prototype — The prototype for my new venture is nearing completion. While it is FAR from perfect, I will be launching it within my MBA class here at Judge Business School soon to start getting feedback from real users. The U/I in particular is rather crude (my fault), but I’ve been talking to a really talented guy (a fellow Jesus College grad student) who’s going to be helping me out on the coding/design end of things.
  • I do promise to write more about this soon, but that post will take longer to write than I have today!