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It doesn’t take a detective to deduce that the blog silence during the month of February is due to several very busy weeks. The MBA program is going gangbusters, and February was marked with several take-home exams and even one in-class exam (the fastest 90 minutes in the history of the universe ever). Challenging though the program is, I am learning a lot and have enjoyed working with everyone in the cohort and in the different group projects in which I’ve been involved.

In the next section of the program we will begin our entrepreneurship Action Learning Project. Watch this space for future details on the project I’ll be doing with a classmate. I’m not the lead so I’ll defer to him on when and how to make details available. It’s a wicked sexy project, though.

It’s been silence of the podcasting front as well. I should have a new episode out sometime this weekend. I conducted a very interesting interview with a fellow CI practitioner this past week. The topic is quantitative data analysis using data gathered from free and inexpensive sources. My interviewee is a really smart guy, and I hope the listeners come away with some ways to conduct this kind of analysis without spending an arm and a leg. Usually when I hear about data-intensive analysis I see dollar signs, so this conversation gave me hope.

The other big project on my plate as of late is finalizing my presentation with a former coworker for the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP) conference in May. The slides are due this coming Monday (eep!) and I’ll be glad when that’s all done and dusted. The topic is on application of Social Networking Analysis in Competitive Intelligence, something we’ve scratched the surface on at EBR. There is a lot of potential for applying the analytical methods of SNA to CI, and I’m particularly interested in how to use SNA to track government contracting, where personal connections and coopetition among firms is the norm. R&D-heavy industries such as IT, consumer electronics and pharmaceutical are also prime candidates for SNA as well. It’s very exciting stuff.

I also learned that I will receive the Catalyst Award at this conference. The Catalyst is given to those who are considered to have made significant contributions to SCIP or the field of competitive intelligence in the past year. I’m not sure who nominated me, and I was surprised and honored to have even been considered.

Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got IS and LM curves to plot and market forecasting methodologies to evaluate.

Peace.