Watch Episode 4 of The MBA Show | I'm On A Boat

What we learned from shooting Episode 4 of The MBA Show

Today was our first show in our new location. Here's our debrief of what we learned. We'll be posting the episode shortly.

-Best show yet!
-Sound quality is good on the video, but one can hear us in the actual space.
-Video quality makes a difference in viewer enjoyment
-When things go wrong; don't acknowledge it.
-Push the boundaries!
-We need a pre-show checklist to make sure we do everything. This is mission critical
-Miro should look in one place and not smile with teeth
-We should have gone to the costumes earlier
-Keep the guest engaged if we keep him/her on (e.g. remember to ask the guest what's on his radar).

Check out our Ideas and Scripts for Episode 4

(1) Introduction

(2) Call to action: Post on our wall in Facebook www.facebook.com/TheMBAShow/

(3) Headlines:
47 Minority Professors earn tenure
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100928006293/en/PhD-Project-Announces-2010-Results-47-Minority
Tom: never thought about it. Professors is not an area where you need diversity
Miro: Race brings diversity

(4) Business Porn
I'm on *$*!@@#@ Boat
Guest: Michael Goulet
-First Year at MIT Sloan
-Before Business school was a consultant at PRTM
-Just came back from the Rolex MBA Reggatta in Porto Fino Italy

Tell us about Regatta
-44 teams, about 350 people from 22 schools and over 40 countries
-3 days of sailing and four night of partying
-8 people per boat
-SDA Bocconi won the regatta

-Wasn't it tiring?
-How much did it cost?
-How did you pay for it?
-There was a panel?

-People are always saying MBA isn't about grades and it's about connection. How did you make the decision to go.
-What was the impact of missing class? Was it worth it?

(5) Nerf Ninjas raid your class

(6) Jargon: WYSIWYG
Miro--What You See is What You Get

(7) Business School Tip of the Week: If the name of your business school professor is on the text book, you don't need to buy that book.
Miro: Prompt on case study

(8) What's on your Radar

Change Your Feed for The MBA Show

Since Sloan TV is now becoming the MBA show, we're changing our feed.

Please update your RSS with the new feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheMBAShow

Watch Episode 3 of The MBA Show | Babson is #1

Our Learnings from Show 3

1. Content was weak
• Too much about us
• Our goal should be to educate people about what's going on about one thing and one thing that let's them know what's going on.
2. We are not interesting
• Any content about us is terrible.
• Don't focus on us ever.
3. We need to treat every viewer as if it's their first time watching
• The headline segment works
4. There is no such thing as too much energy.

Ideas and Script for Show 3

(1) Introduction
(2) Call to action: Click the new like button; 36 by next show
(3) Our new name
- Why we changed it: we got it wrong. Didn't fit our vision, misleading.
- What we learned: Start with your market and work from there


(3) Headlines:
-Princeton Review & Entrepreneur Magazine name there top 25 Business Schools for entreprneurship
Babson

• Percentage faculty who are entrepreneurs: 90% 
• Scholarships for entrepreneurship students: Yes 
• Scholarships money available: $332,500
• Number of entrepreneurship organizations and clubs: 8
• Mentorship programs: 3

Tom: Rankings are good, but they are missing criteria here : how many companies come out of the school, likelihood of success. Annual revenue of companies started by grads of that school.
Miro: all rankings are bullshit, if you're on the list you're happy. If not, you're sad. I'm sad (no Sloan). it's a game to get publicity (% of faculty)


(4) Nerf Ninjas raid your class: 
Tie! Vote online!



(6) Jargon: Pods: Ocean, Section, Cohort, 
Takeaway - When schmoozing with an MBA, ask them about their section, ocean, etc ...

(7) Business School Tip of the Week: Small decision early in a project have a big impact later on.

(8) What's on your Radar

Watch Episode 2 of SloanTV | Super Secret Ninja Attack

What we learned from shooting Episode 2 of SloanTV

Check out Episode 2 of SloanTV

Here's what we learned:
1) There is no limit how high we can hit the energy (or at least we haven't hit the limit).
2) Miro thinks we need to be more visually diverse in what we wear. Tom disagrees
3) The volume level is good
4) Miro says 'like' all the time...
5) This is the best flow and timing that we have had yet.
6) For next time: Let's push the speed and the energy to the extreme and see what happens.  Is there a point where the show is too fast and the energy is too high?  If so, let's hit that point and then back it off.
7) We need more pomp and circumstance around the show.  People believe what they see, and right now what they see if two idiots sitting behind a macbook pro talking loudly.  What we should have instead is two idiots sitting behind an enormous camera and bright lights in front of a nice, Sloan-red backdrop.
8) Tap on the thigh = Wrap it up

Three ways (Not) to Recruit for an MBA Student Club

Miro and I just embarked on a mini project to recruit some talent for SloanTV.  It remains to be seen what the products of our labor will be, but our initial reaction was that we failed as recruiters (at least on our first try).

Here's what we learned:

1. Bring the passion.  We thought that our new potential club members were going to show up jazzed about SloanTV.  They thought we were going to inspire them to become passionate about SloanTV.  As a result, no one showed up with any passion.  They were right, we were wrong.
2. Sell the dream.  When you're making a pitch, you either sell traction or vision.  Since our traction is burgeoning at this point we really should have been selling vision.  We should have been pitching our vision of reaching every MBA student in America.
3. Flaunt it if you've got it.  The potential new comers were very concerned about administration endorsement.  We should have focused on the great traction that we already have: several hundred views, eCenter camera equipment, and a show that is lightyears better than it was just three weeks ago.

SloanTV now automatically posting to Facebook and Twitter

I was able to use twitterfeed to create a service that automatically posts content from the SloanTV Blog directly to facebook and twitter.  This is crucial, it turns out, because no one knows about our blog, but everyone we know is active on Facebook and Twitter (except for Gary).

This is our Hello World post, so I hope it shows up! Fingers crossed.  Extra gravy points if the twitter post includes "#SloanTV".

Here's how I did it:

(0) I'll assume you have a Facebook account and a twitter account
(1) Setup a blog at Blogger
(2) Setup a permanent RSS feed at Feedburner
(3) Make an account at Bit.ly
(4) Make an account at twitterfeed (critical step)
(5) In your twitterfeed account suck content out of your feedburner RSS feed, authorize your facebook account, and authorize your twitter account.  You'll have the option of authorizing Bit.ly using the Bit.ly API service.  You can get your login and auth code by going to bit.ly and clicking on "API" at the bottom of the page.  (Or search for it if they have moved it.)
(6) After you authorize your facebook account, if you are the administrator of a fan page, then you will have the option of selecting that as the auto-post location for your content.
(7) Choose 'Create Service' and that's all there is to it.

Like most things in my life, now that I know how easy this is, I wish I had done it weeks ago...

Potential Guests on Sloan TV

Contribute your ideas as Comments:

Jackie Wilbur - about MBA hiring outlook
Michael Grinich - Organizer of MIT Start-up Bootcamp, about how undergrads see MBAs
Erdin Beshimov - About starting a club and what it means for your MBA experience

Ideas and Script for Show 2

1. Introduction
2. Call to action
3. Headline
1. Salary not a motivator for MBAs: Veritas Survey
4. Nerf Ninjas attack your professor
5. Jargon: NPS
6. Business Tip of the Week: Use quantifiable customer metrics.  Ref: Eric Ries' NPS article.
7. What's on your Radar

Where's the Drama? | What makes a videocast interesting to watch

I was talking with Tyler Spaulding in class and he gave some great feedback on the show.

Where I had thought that Tom and my friendly banter was a sign of great chemistry. Tyler had the opposite reaction. He wanted drama. Not hair pulling, killing each other drama, but more like Pardon the Interruption type conflict. Kornheiser and Wilbon obviously like each other, but they consistently disagree. That's where the entertainment comes from.

Tyler suggested we just make sure to take two sides of an issue when we plan out the show script.

One thing we had talked about after last show was getting from the 'facts' to the what does this mean much faster. I think we need to make sure to emphasize different takewaways.

Tom, what do you think is the best way to make sure we stay on track with these?

Episode 1 | The MBA's have no Pants

Notes from Episode 1

1. We need a secret signal that means 'move on'.  I would have tapped miro's leg, but was thwarted by the concept of naked thigh at the last minute.
2. The sound on our new Yeti is PERFECT.
3. At around 1:26, the energy dies a little.  
4. The objective of each segment is to get to: 'what does this mean for an mba' with as much residual energy as possible.
5. No repeating categories, or topic areas at all.
6. Talking with the audience is good.
7. We need a third person to get the audience going and run the equipment.  Oh, if only we had an executive producer...
8. Jargon needs to be tighter.  Instead of an open discussion, we should have a defined definition packaged and ready, followed by a packaged example.
9. ALWAYS keep the target customer, Michael M'BA,' in mind.

Tag Line | What is SloanTV?

MBA lessons learned from America's best business school at MIT.

Finding a Target Market for SloanTV

We've talked about this in several other posts, but we wanted to present our final idea for the target for Sloan TV. As Tom reminded me, good products have a clear consumer in mind and they are designed to address a pain or need of that consumer. Here our hypothetical target viewer

Name: Michael M'BA (pronounced Mee-ba)

Age: 27
Education: Currently getting an MBA at an American business school. Goes to school full-time
Background: Mostly entry-level white-collar jobs prior to B-school
-Michael thinks getting an MBA will be an important badge on his resume
-Michael cares about getting the most out of his MBA
-Michael is the kind of person who watches funny viral videos

Here's the content we will aim to produce for Michael:
-Highly entertaining and zany content. Michael will watch for the first time becuase the show is about his life. He'll stay to see what happens next.
-topics of interest would include

• Recruting
• The value of grades
• Getting the most out of class and his education
• Internships
• the impact of the economy on school
• business ethics and how it relates to what gets taught
• networking
• time management

We really debated whether the show should be focused on entreprenurship, since that's what both of us are interested in, but a quick poll of friends and our expereince told us that there is already a ton of content around entreprenurship (even focused on Boston alone) already out there.

Here are some of our prior posts on this topic
Targeting SloanTV | Who is our audience?
How to pick a topic for your Online TV Show | What should Sloan TV Be When it Grows Up?

The MBA seems like an untapped market and we have something to say about it.

Onward