Changing of the Guard

There's been some turnover at the EWBMAA, as I'm sure you're no doubt aware. The old team of Anlei Lee, Ben Chong, Evonne Chiu, Min-Hank Ho, Sriram Kumar, Badri Raghunathan and Christina Stewart has departed and at the helm is now Ramon Lim, Divyang Agrawal, Rahul Awasthy, Amber Ulrich, Naveen Prasana, Rohan Thompson and Sunil Kumar.

The committee is charged with ensuring that EWMBA students receive information in a timely and intelligible manner. For most of us that means avoiding being overwhelmed by the volume of emails and communication that so routinely lodges in our inboxes. Over the next few months the team will be focused on streamlining the channels of communication. We're going to do our utmost to simplify the influx of data as much as possible while maintaining a high signal to noise ration.

Let's see how successful we are.

What Have We Been Up To This Year?

We've brought you three new channels this year:

1. EWMBA eZine – What you are reading now: a newsletter catered to our every EW need and emailed weekly (and archived at http://haasewmbaa-ezine.blogspot.com/)
2. Cohort Reps - Helping first years know what's important at just the right time
3. Discussion Forum - Just for the EW crowd - Socials, Academics, Careers, and more http://haasewmbaa.freeforums.org/

In addition, the EWMBAA blog (http://www.haasewmbaa.com/) is a great resource.

Special thanks to our team members - Badri Raghunathan, Christina Stewart, Evonne Chiu, Min-Hank Ho, and Sriram Kumar, to our Cohort Reps, and especially the current EWMBAA President Jasmin Young for providing encouragement and support.

- Anlei Lee & Ben Chong (Communications Committee Co-Chairs)

EWMBA Discussion Forum

The forum will serve as a single repository to maintain discussions pertinent to the b-school life of the Haas EWMBA community.Currently, there's no single system that stores various topics of interest to the EWMBA students. While individual years maintain their own YahooGroups, there's no sharing of information across the spectrum. Moreover, none of the existing solutions (including the YahooGroups) maintain threads of conversation by interest areas. This forum will enable faster access to relevant information. For example, individuals interested in career related topics can directly jump to that folder and search for specific threads. The forum will also serve as a living repository of events and experiences (with courses, professors, school life etc).Anybody with a '@mba.berkeley.edu' e-mail address can get access to this forum. Others can neither browse nor post topics. All posts will be moderated by the EWMBAA communications committee.

Go to http://haasewmbaa.freeforums.org/profile.php?mode=register Enter the basic profile information. Please ensure that you enter your Haas e-mail address. Once, you get a confirmation e-mail (within 48 hours), you are ready to contribute.The 48 hour delay is due to having a human being (Ben) at the other end to approve sign-ups. If you have discussion forum experience and would like to help out, please contact Ben (benchong@mba.berkeley.edu).

Remember that the quality of a Haas MBA comes from the folks who participate in the program. Similarly, what you can get out of the forums will come from the number of participants. So please sign up!

First Year Cohort Reps

Do you have a program issue that you would like to address but don't know who to talk to? Your cohort rep can help facilitate communication between first year EWMBA students and the EWMBA Association. Cohort reps communicate important information and announcements to you, and they are available to receive feedback regarding the program and transmit it to the appropriate committees. Don't be shy. Talk to your reps and let them know what is on your mind so the EWMBA Association can take action to improve your experience at Haas.

Axe Cohort Reps
Tim Lee - tim_lee@mba.berkeley.edu
Naveen Prasanna - naveen_prasanna@mba.berkeley.edu

Oski Cohort Reps
Amber Ulrich amber_ulrich@mba.berkeley.edu
Kishore Konakanchi kishore_konakanchi@mba.berkeley.edu
Dharini Ramakrishnan dharini_ramakrishnan@mba.berkeley.edu

Blue Cohort Reps
Rahul Awasthy - rahul_awasthy@mba.berkeley.edu
Thomas Fitzpatrick - thomas_fitzpatrick@mba.berkeley.edu
Vikas Meka - vikas_meka@mba.berkeley.edu

Gold Cohort Reps
Divyang Agrawal - divyang_agrawal@mba.berkeley.edu
Shourya Basu - shourya.basu@mba.berkeley.edu

Greetings from the Communications Committee

Let's introduce our committee - Our awesome members are Sriram Kumar and Christina Stewart, Evonne Chiu, Badri Raghunathan, Min-Hank Ho, and our Co-Chairs are Ben Chong and Anlei Lee.

For the last year, we've been keeping students in the Evening-Weekend MBA program (EWs) informed through a number of channels:

1. EWMBA eZine - A weekly newsletter that is emailed to all EW students sharing news, announcements, happy hours, and more. You might ask how this differs from the MBA Alert - well, our newsletter caters specifically to the EW crowd whereas the MBA Alert is ublished by the full-time MBA folks. We also have a no-duplication policy which means if it's in the MBA alert, it isn't printed in our newsletter.

2. Cohort Representatives - First year representatives updating each cohort on eZine news and first year specific items. These folks help first years wade through all of the information overload and point out what's really important. They also help make sure that event organizers take into account the unique academic schedules of the first year students.

3. Haas EWMBAA Blog - A blog that shares what's going on in each EWMBAA committee.

4. Discussion Forum (New)

Thanks Mimi and Alison for all of your hard work last year. We look forward to bringing you exciting information in the weeks ahead.

Look for Us...Your Cohort Reps

Even though the semester might be almost over for the first years, we thought that we should share our photos so you know who to look for. We are the 2010 cohort reps should you need to share your thoughts with the EWMBA Association.










Mimi Frusha- Blue Cohort Rep, Patrick Fischer - Gold Cohort Rep










Dhiren Bhatia, Oksi Cohort Rep, George Kong, Axe Cohort Rep

Help Improve Communications

Do you feel inundated with emails?  Or perhaps you don't feel there is enough communication on important events and information.

The Communication Committee has put together a quick 5-minute survey to get your feedback on the quality and frequency of various EWMBA communications.

With your feedback, we will be able to make sound judgements to improve emails, websites and overall communication.

Please fill out the survey today:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=XCgXpCQPXbPx53wCTo_2bVPA_3d_3d