Sorry for falling a bit behind on reviews of Capital in the 21st Century.  I’ve been busy these last couple of months.  One is a video which professor Patricia Peknik (Liberal Arts – History) and myself made all about Berklee students voting and encouraging folks to do so.  It’s not yet visible and I’ll say more about that once it’s up.  I can say that it was far more work than I ever thought it would be–not so much the making of the video, but everything else–getting it funded, getting it hosted somewhere, finding video people, etc.  My dept. chair, Dr. Simone Pilon, was absolutely wonderful and it would not have happened several times over had it not been for her.  However, dealing with the rest of Berklee was like pushing a cart through knee-deep mud, where you’re thinking that aren’t these wheels supposed to make this easier?
The other thing was this event, which happened last week:

This was the largest event I’d organized, with seven of us speaking.  One sad bit about being a professor is that we virtually never see our colleagues in action, as we’re on our own while teaching.  But this let me get a taste of what my colleagues do and I was extremely impressed!  Nobody goes to Berklee for the Liberal Arts, but my feeling is that our students get a very nice unexpected treat, as we do our best to deliver the value they pay for.

My own presentation–that one should look for a partner with the same hard-headed rationality that one should develop a career, using many of the same tricks (networking, improving yourself, going where there is high demand for folks like you)–went over well, but took quite a while to prepare.  I got a lot of good material out of the book Date-onomics by Jon Birger.

Again, my dept. chair has been wonderfully supporting, and I really enjoy doing these events!  I came up with the topic, then sent out a dept. wide solicitation for speakers, including following it up with many, many individual invitations.  Plus getting info on everyone’s topic, getting a room (with help from the dept. coordinator Katie Clement), making the flyer, etc.  Serving on the Special Events committee is one of several things we all have to do, and I love it because, while it may be a lot of work, it gives the opportunity to be creative and make things happen.