The speed of light is a hard constraint in this world.
“Just mention the letters “I.T.” and a disheveled Harry Potter like figure will emerge from his back-row slumber. Either cheerful or recovering from a perhaps too cheerful night, he continually brightened our spirits. He has entertained us with his guitar stylings and has bemused us with his weekend hangover wear – an exceedingly well-worn bathrobe. Sociable and hospitable, he quickly shed his studious image to become the social butterfly we know and love today. He became, in short, the man we’ll remember from the party photos. The women, for their part, will remember him too. From the Guatemalan highlands to the valleys of Ireland, the man is a legend. Though he often did his best to provide evidence to the contrary, he is both fantastically bright and, according to his group mates, surprisingly efficient. Nonetheless, we will remember him best in his inefficient moments, evoking smiles, laughter and, often, puzzlement.” From the Republic of Insead 03D yearbook edition.
Tune in to find out who the guest was, I promise he’s one of us – the INSEAD MBA’03D vintage.
A few of my favorite snippets from my conversation with the first guest to this limited series podcast.
20 YEARS IN PERSPECTIVE:
§ It's amazing how much the world of technology has moved forward - when we were at INSEAD, it was a time before Facebook, before cloud computing, before the iPhone, before cryptocurrency.
References, mentions:
Republic of Insead, MBATRIX_, Chris Larmour, Victoria Entwistle, Common Crawl, AlphaFold, Protein fold, Deepmind, “Dial F for Frankenstein” by Arthur C. Clarke, Open source software, Machine learning, Hallucinations, The European Molecular Biology Laboratory, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), Vint Cerf, Hermann Hauser, Chat GPT, Wikipedia, Reddit, Project Gutenberg, bayesian prediction machines
The 20 Years Later MBA'03D podcast edition
Welcome to the Republic of Insead podcast edition and enjoy the show.
So here we are – 20 years later, hopefully all the wiser, naturally smarter and as charming as ever. There were 432 of us in the 03’D vintage and certainly there are 432 unique and very interesting personal and professional stories to tell. While I cannot physically cover all, I have tried to make a selection of stories, that will keep you interested and curious and will hopefully convince you to join us on campus for reunion.
The show is here to remind everyone what an interesting and dare we say, colorful, bunch of people we are and how much we can contribute to each other, be it through ideas, knowledge or mere inspiration. The podcast is inspired by the original Republic of INSEAD yearbook, produced on paper 20 years ago by Oliver Bradley and team.
Remember to book your tickets for the 20Y reunion in Fontainebleau, October 6-8 2023.
Thank you for listening.