Throwing hats…

I got the invitation for the graduation ceremony, which takes place Oct. 23rd in Munich.

Unfortunately I will be in UK the whole week and my flight back arrives in Zurich late Friday evening. I hope it will be possible to change flights and get to Munich in time (instead of Zurich). Maybe I could also leave a day early and drive to Munich on Friday… I really don’t wanna miss that event!

Finished the Thesis Defense and my MBA studies…

So – I am finally done with my MBA studies :)

I successfully finished my Thesis Defense on Saturday and now waiting for the invitation to ‘throw hats’ in October.

I’d like to thank the whole FOM team (especially the Munich team) who did an amazing job organizing the classes and dealing with all the issues we had!

Of course a big Thank-You to all the Professors that ran the classes and evaluated our assignments. Special Thanks to:

• Dr. Charles Savage (for teaching us how to think out of the box and using refreshing new teaching methods – and of course for all the support during the Thesis!)
• Dr. Thomas “Tom” Peisl (for his open door policy and the nice Summer School in Wales)
• Dr. Thomas Städter (for the nice discussions at the defense)
• Christina Regul (for the Summer School at Pfeiffer University in Charlotte NC)
• Dr. Niklas Lampenius (for making me understand the NPV, APV, WACC and all the other obscure financial terms.. quote: “is nur n’ simpler Dreisatz!”)
• Dipl.-Kfm. (univ), Mag. rer.soc.oec. Bjørn Lillegraven (for admitting that some of this stuff is just common sense)
• Dr. Sven Winterhalder (for being so convincing in the introduction sessions)

Not to forget all my fellow students – we had a nice time despite all the pressure sometimes! I’m gonna miss the group assignments…

Looking forward to spend my weekends with…. *thinking” …. whatever people do on weekends again…

Thesis Defense

Got my confirmed date for the thesis defense for next Saturday, Sept. 19th.

Currently preparing a 20 minute presentation for the defense, which will take about one hour in total. It will probably take place in the new residence of the FOM near the Munich station. Looking forward to an interesting discussion and a nice celebration afterwards…

Sundown over Bodensee...

Sundown near Bregenz, Bodensee (Lake Constance)

Thesis is done and filed…

…now waiting for a confirmed date for the defense. Looking forward to present the results and answer some nasty questions :)

Writing the thesis was a great experience. I could have worked for much longer, but the 3 month time limit is a good thing, cause otherwise it would be a never ending story!

Now I have time again for my private life, my job and (not to forget) blogging.

As Windows 7 showed up on the MSDNAA for download end of last week, I couldn’t resist and install it on my desktop and my netbook on Sunday. It actually runs quite smoothly – except of some immature drivers for the netbook (notably the Intel GMA500 display driver).
The current Vista driver works, but crashes with a BSOD after a couple of minutes when turning on the Aero (glass) UI. At least the standard theme works pretty stable.

Funny enough, Microsoft does not have any Bluetooth headset drivers included anymore, so I had to install the Broadcom (Asus package) BT-Stack to get my headset working with Skype and the SIP phone…

Will test a nice little device driver tool this evening (Device Doctor) that is already tested on Windows 7. Let’s see what that will find…

The Clock is ticking…

I got my topic for the Masters’ Thesis officially fixed now. This means the clock is ticking… deadline is August 13th.

Topic is : “CRM 2.0 – Next Generation Customer Relationship Model”

This means full steam ahead and keep writing for the next 3 Month.

Research is pretty much all done. I just need to get some more data (probably from analyst reports) to fortify the statements made in the thesis. Often difficult to find the right book to cite from – the topic is so transient that some of the data or knowledge is already outdated (although only 2-3 years old).