From About.com

Preparation for a career in sports marketing or management is similar to preparation for any professional career. Typically, the more education, the better.

MBA Preferred

According to a 2004 Turnkey Sports Poll that surveyed 400 sports industry executives, a traditional Master of Business Administration is the favored degree by executives in pro and college sports when hiring a senior executive. But, a variety of degrees received votes:

• Traditional MBA, 41.4%.
• Law degree, 18.5%.
• Sports MBA, 16.7%.
• Undergraduate business degree, 17.9%.
• No response, 5.6%.

Of those executives polled, just 19.8% had a sports-specific college degree while 78.4% did not. (1.9% did not respond.) ...

(Incidentally: Last minute applications to http://master-sports.ie.edu)

Download "The Changing Face of Sports Media January 2010" (PDF 16 pages) (very quick signup) from:
http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/insights/reports

Other Nielsens Sports ratings and rankings

Television ratings Week of January 25, 2010 (NFL PRO BOWL No1 on Cable)

Super Bowl XLIV: Battle for Media ROI As we gear up for Super Bowl XLIV, consumer expression and cross-platform integration have created a powerful dynamic hovering over the largest single-spot ad spend on record. This webinar will take an in-depth look at measuring the impact of paid, blended and earned media through the lens of the Super Bowl, and also how brand advertisers can create higher degrees of engagement and conversation around their campaigns.

The 2009 National Magazine Award winners are: 

·         Reader’s Digest for General Excellence (over 2,000,000 circulation)

·         Field & Stream for General Excellence (1,000,000 to 2,000,000 circulation)

·         Wired for General Excellence (500,000 to 1,000,000 circulation)

·         Texas Monthly for General Excellence (250,000 to 500,000 circulation)

·         Foreign Policy for General Excellence (100,000 to 250,000 circulation)

·         Print for General Excellence (under 100,000 circulation)

The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers

Wikipedia entry: "Foreign Policy" is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970... Under the stewardship of editor-in-chief Moisés Naím, Foreign Policy evolved from an academic quarterly in the 1990s to a bimonthly glossy, winning the 2009, 2007, and 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. It is published by The Washington Post Company in Washington, D.C., USA. Its topics include global politics, economics, integration and ideas.

Post of January 18, 2009, Andrew MacAfee´s blog

The New York Times ‘Corner Office’ interview on January 16 was with Cristóbal Conde, the CEO of the Fortune 500 IT services company SunGard. I found it fascinating for two reasons. First, Conde spends the first portion of the article talking about Enterprise 2.0, and about how and why he’s tried to increase the amount of freeform and emergent collaboration at his company. Below are a few of his quotes on the topic, followed by links to related posts from this blog.

Second, I liked hearing what he had to say on other topics as well. The final three quotes below aren’t directly related to E2.0; I just wanted to include them because I think they’re really sharp.

• Organizational Structure. “I think top-down organizations got started because the bosses either knew more or they had access to more information. None of that applies now. Everybody has access to identical amounts of information.” -I wrote about this in “The Great Decoupling“
• Fostering Collaboration. “a C.E.O. needs to focus more on the platform that enables collaboration… You have to work on the structure of collaboration. How do people get recognized? How do you establish a meritocracy in a highly dispersed environment?” – see this 3-post sequence on Enterprise 2.0 ratings for knowledge workers.
• ...

The Lecture Series Open Society Institute chairman and founder George Soros shares his latest thinking on economics and politics in a five-part lecture series recorded at Central European University, October 26-30, 2009. The lectures are the culmination of a lifetime of practical and philosophical reflection. Soros discusses his general theory of reflexivity and its application to  financial markets, providing insights into the recent financial crisis. The third and fourth lectures examine the concept of open society, which has guided Soros’s global philanthropy, as well as the potential for conflict between capitalism and open society. The closing lecture focuses on the way ahead, examining the increasingly important economic and political role that China will play in the future.

This is the unofficial transcript of the CNBC Town Hall event Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great, taped Thursday, November 12, 2009 at Columbia University in New York City. The transcript is also available for downloading PDF. 

Recruiters are skittish and the job market is more competitive than ever, but career services directors say 2010 may be the year of the turnaround.

The Huffington Post. Amy Rosen, President & CEO, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Posted: February 2, 2010 (bio)

...

My organization, NFTE, provides entrepreneurship education programs to young people from low income communities. We see exceptionally smart and gifted kids whose talents would otherwise go undiscovered. More often than not, these kids aren't given a chance because they are not taught the basic knowledge necessary to find their own pathway to success. Taking children from low income areas and helping them to tap into their potential helps combat poverty and crime while breeding a new generation of entrepreneurs, strengthening the very backbone of our (US) nation.

In his January 23rd New York Times column entitled, "More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs," Tom Friedman emphasized the vital role that entrepreneurs and innovation will play in lifting the United States out of economic turmoil. In the article he kindly points to NFTE as an example of a program that will help make the difference. Due to the support of people like Tom, NFTE and organizations like us are seeing more support in the public debate about education for the kind of work we do. (also mentions NationalLabDay.org)...

(Friedman in same article: "In November, a documentary movie — “Ten9Eight” — was released that tracked a dozen students all the way through to the finals of the NFTE competition. Obama should arrange for this movie to be shown in every classroom in America. It is the most inspirational, heartwarming film you will ever see".)

(Friedman said in The World is Flat: "Endeavor was formed for the purpose of promoting entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Its basic model is to link up small and midsize businesses with seasoned entrepreneurs so that little guys and gals can get the advice and contacts they need to grow their companies into bigger businesses that can employ more people -- the best antipoverty program of all."

The Wall Street Journal reported last week about a Maryland nurse who won a long battle with the I.R.S. when the United States Tax Court said she had properly deducted nearly $15,000 for the cost of her master’s degree in business. The article described how the I.R.S.’s rules for deducting work-related tuition were “complicated and onerous” and said the decision “clarifies the rules and will likely lead to more taxpayers taking the deduction.”

But the article neglected to describe how the decision clarified the rules. So I did a little digging to find out.

According to the tax experts I spoke with, under I.R.S. rules, employees can deduct ordinary and necessary expenses they pay in connection with their trade or business that are appropriate or helpful to the business. Taxpayers can deduct education costs, in particular, as “ordinary and necessary” expenses if the education maintains or improves the skills required for the taxpayer’s current trade or business. If not, the expenses are considered personal...

From Businessweek´s B-School Life, 25 January, 2009.

"It's been a year since I submitted my applications and I'm still running "

+

An unusual essay in reply to the admissions question:

3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

First off, apologies all around to our English-only speaking readers, however as a sizeable amount of our readers are from Spanish-speaking countries, I hope you don´t mind if we publish this study from Telefónica that is in Spanish.

Download of Telefónica Fundación: "Tendencias´07, Medios de Comunicación, El Escenario IberoAmericano" (420 páginas, 10.7MB)

You can get the gist of it from:

The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity Marc Andreessen's post of October 12, 2009.

(for lesser mortals read "100 Awesome Organization Posts Start Your New Semester")

...The gist of Structured Procrastination is that you should never fight the tendency to procrastinate -- instead, you should use it to your advantage in order to get other things done.

Generally in the course of a day, there is something you have to do that you are not doing because you are procrastinating.

While you're procrastinating, just do lots of other stuff instead.

As John says, "The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done."

Reading John's essay was one of the single most profound moments of my entire life.

...

I can get so much done while I am avoiding... I can barely believe it.

In fact, that's what's happening right now.

A.T. Kearney Publications

How to stay ahead of the pack

More competition and pricing regulations are stifling the mobile communications industry's once-healthy profit margins. In this annual study of industry trends, A.T. Kearney finds that while cost performance is improving, there is plenty more that needs to be done to weather the change ahead.

DOWNLOAD, 12 Pages

BusinessWeek
Business Schools Beware - Gen Y is at the Door
Training the next generation

Forbes
Trying to create a well-rounded MBA
Renaissance MBA - design, Shakespeare

The Economist
Different strokes for similar folks
Diversity in the MBA classroom

The Independent
Turn on your iPod and learn
Apple iTunes, iPod etc

www.weforum.org

wef2010.unitec-media.tv

Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators

Download Education At A Glance 2009 (PDF)

The 2009 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance. It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems and represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally...

Click here for the article of the Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2010.

Patti Ristau says she was terrified when she first landed in Seville, Spain, for a semester studying abroad.

It's a common theme from students who give up the comforts of home and campus to live and study abroad and immerse themselves in another country's culture. They come back changed. And some even admit to becoming more mature -- and with a more wide-eyed view of the world...

Resources. The State Department has a Web site (www.studentsabroad.state.gov) with planning tips, cautionary advice and lists of everything from area codes to embassies.

www.educause.edu/about

Previous DeansTalk post Jan 09 : The 2009 Horizon Report - emerging technologies in Education

  Download the Horizon Report 2010 (34 pages)

The annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). Each year, the report identifies and describes six areas of emerging technology likely to have a significant impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression in higher education within three adoption horizons.

The areas of emerging technology cited for 2010 are:
Time to adoption: One Year or Less

• Mobile Computing and Open Content

Time to adoption: Two to Three Years

• Electronic Book and Simple Augmented Reality

Time to adoption: Four to Five Years

• Gesture-based Computing and Visual Data Analysis

Each section of the report provides live Web links to examples and additional readings. The findings for the 2010 Report resulted from the work of the 47-person Advisory Board, with experts from ten countries.

Global MBA rankings 2010 (report)

London Business school has claimed the coveted number one spot

Interactive MBA rankings 2010

Top 10 in the world

1. London Business School

2. University of Pennsylvania: Wharton

3. Harvard Business School

4. Stanford University GSB

5. Insead

6. Columbia Business School and IE Business School

8. MIT Sloan School of Management

9. University of Chicago: Booth and Hong Kong UST Business School

800 players.  87 matches.  29 teams.  6 nations.  1 Weekend.

30th Annual MBA World Cup Rugby Championship: April 9th - 11th

Rugby players from all over the world will gather in Danville, VA and Durham, NC to compete for the prestigious MBA Rugby World Championship Tournament.  Organized by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the 30th Anniversary tournament will bring in over 800 players from 29 universities to play 87 matches over one action-packed weekend.  Teams will travel from Ireland (Smurfit), Australia (AGSM), France (INSEAD), Canada (Ivey) and the UK (London) as well as from the top business school across the U.S

Social activities will take place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in Durham and Chapel Hill, NC.