On the 4th of October, our Ghent campus had the pleasure in welcoming back MGM alumni from the past 5 years. The reason they were coming back to their familiar learning ground, was to share some tips and tricks with the new Masters students of this year.
At 6.30pm last year’s vice-praeses kicked-off the event with a presentation on ‘the life at Vlerick Business School’. They offered some insights in the important deadlines, events and recruitment of in-company projects. Of course, there was also time to share some pictures of their activities, even if they were not all course related.
Afterwards, the students and alumni were all divided over the tables in the lounge and could meet their godmother or godfather, based on the number of the table. At first the new recruits where a bit hesitant, but the alumni made for a smooth transition by introducing themselves. What followed was a night of sharing some initial sights and sounds from our 2013 batch mixed with some seasoned advice from the alumni. Be sure to check out more pictures on our Facebook page

During the last months, we all required a lot of empathy. For the ice tea peach for kids we had to think what we would buy or not buy if we were a parent. Creating a story, drawing a storyboard for the commercial, (re-)design the ice tea bottle,.. just a lot of creative activities for this assignment. All in all, creating an adventure from a cheesy cartoon and sugary drink is equal to a weekend of fun.

Afterwards we were challenged to think and understand the working process of a company in the B2B industry. Making a distribution company sexy is a difficult task. Still BD and our professor were glad with the end result we delivered. Although there are not immediately implementing, the sexy joggers to deliver your ads, or all the apps we designed. They are really taking our advice into account. So if you get, within a few months your weekly leaflets in a different format, there is a big chance that it is a M3 idea.

After thinking sexy, we had a task that was almost the opposite, working for a women’s magazine. Not all our boys were fond of this assignment. Reading magazines that write about baking cookies, taking a relaxing bath while reading the newest novel, aren’t activities that we do during our spare time. So a new task, a new challenge, a new winning team. ^^

Although the past month was very busy, with lots of assignments, we still had some free time to let off steam. MFM organized a boat party including theme clothing. We got baptized by the alumni of M3, including nasty drinks and lots of embarrassing moments. And Porthos did a rubik’s cube party. One event that really stood out for me is the M3 cantus. It was the nicest event  so far, a colleague said. I can only nod when I hear this, cause even though I was physically in the room, I’m afraid I can’t remember everything any longer.

Vlerick has to add three words to their slogan: “Work hard, play hard”, since the Ghent campus is totally into the Music for life atmosphere, we added some words:

“Work hard, play hard and contribute hard”

During this week, we have our Vlerick for life week, all the students and Vlerick employees are joining forces to collect as much money as possible., Bake, bike, network, book pile, candy, game night, meatballs, breakfast, pancakes, party…. It’s all for life.

All the activities and parties are fun to do. However, sometimes I really feel like the rabbit of Alice in wonderland, the one that yells: “I’m late / I’m late / For a very important date. / No time to say Hello. / Goodbye. / I’m late, I’m late, I’m late.” I’m always walking with my journal which includes a thousand of to do post its. I hardly have to time follow the news, to buy some decent food, to do anything at all except working for class.  So I was surprised that it is just 2 weeks of class in 2011, only two weeks of rushing and then I can find the time to do absolutely nothing, or maybe not.

It’s already been two months since the kick-off the opening of the academic year and already a lot has happened.

Music talks, Kinepolis experience, Ice tea adventures everything except long hours of cocooning at home.

But before I talk some more about our M3 life, let me introduce myself. I’m one of the 47 students that studies marketing at Vlerick, this academic year. I’m always fond of crazy ideas, parties until the sun rises and singing in the rain. I studied sociology and didn’t want to enter the fully mature working life yet. So I decided to try out the admission test and here we are, at the blog of vlerick’s marketing class.

The first day really felt like the first of September, kind of stressed out about the fact that I didn’t know anyone, didn’t know what to wear, cause what do they mean with “business casual” ?! However all this drama for nothing cause in the end I survived the first day quite easy. I got to know a few and I was glad that it seemed a nice bunch of people, except the fact that we’re with 30 girls and only 17 boys, I wonder how that will turn out.

The first weeks were okay, got to know everyone better, learned 46 names out of my head, quite difficult if there are 3 Wouters, 2 Lorenzos, 2 Eveliens and a few other girls whose names start with an ‘E’, but as the slogan of Vlerick says: “we manage”.

After the introduction courses we went on a seminar to the hip town of Merelbeke. We did rope exercises, built small villages, the boys loved it probably because it reminded them of “playmobile”. We partied and karaoked every night, got to know some alumni, each other and ourselves more.   The week after, we vote our praesidium and it turned out that the leader of the gang (the M3 gang) will be Wim.

Already at the end of September we had our first exams of introduction courses. It’s quite strange to already study in September, as from the previous years the only thing that I was used to do, at the end of September, was to go to uni. After the exams the first real assignment started, a research about music and consumer behavior. Interviewing people about this topic and analysing the acquired data were the main tasks. The day we reached the deadline to hand everything in, the praesidium organized their first event, a city game of Gent. The international M3’ers got to know Gent some more and we (the praesidium) got to know some juicy secrets from everyone. It was that night that Swa got to know almost everyone of our class and that we found our logo, a duck. The duck that was first part of a ING billboard located on the Vlaanderenstraat. Because we loved the duck so much, we decided to adopt him as our class mascot and made a logo out of it.

Most of the time, a new module goes together with a new assignment. This was also the case for “marketing strategy”. For this course we had the opportunity to take a look at Kinepolis, from a different angle. During this task a lot of us stayed at Vlerick in the weekend and got to know the building better than their own student place. Now we also know the reason why you get a badge, in the beginning of the year, which enables you to enter the school 24hours a day. It’s not a fancy gadget, there’s a reason for it.

After handing in the manager report and seeing each groups presentation, we followed another slogan of Vlerick which says: “Work hard, play hard”. Now it was time for playing, the party swot from M3 organized a pub crawl. Soon after this, M3 also organized a quiz for all the master students, MBA’ers and alumni. It was a tremendous success, the whole AB Inbev lounge was completely filled with eager quizzers who were dying to win. Eventually ‘the king and its servants’, a group of MFM won the quiz.

We’re constantly triggered by new opportunities like business games, establishing a sales class, organizing Dutch course for the foreigners, alumni events, company presentations and many many more.

More adventures that happen at the M3 class follow soon. If you can’t get enough of it and you want a fast update of things that are happening at M.2.1 follow us at twitter: VlerickM3

Vlerick calls it an In-company project, we felt it as the first impact we made on the market. I and my mate Kate have chosen between the many options to go for an in-company project at a Swedish company that is developing a new product to release in the construction market. We worked in Belgium most of the time, but also had trips to the UK, France, Sweden and Luxembourg so that we could interview customers from that company. The experience of interviewing businessmen from different nationalities was very enriching, and it was even challenging to interview in France and Luxembourg where the businessmen did not speak English and we needed a translator between us during all the interviews.

During the project we had weekly meetings with our promoter at Vlerick school; and in the initial meetings we were fine tuned to look for the right theoretical frameworks to achieve the expected goals of the project. This took us 2 weeks out of the 8 weeks of the project, all the other 6 weeks were intense learning about the company, traveling, interviewing customers, compiling the recorded interviews, drawing conclusions country by country and finally writing reports. It was only during the last week that we had the chance to go thought all the information and write the 60 pages report with additional 145 pages in the appendix, including all the schemes, graphs and compiled interviews.

It was a lot of work! But it was also very grateful to see the results of it in the end. We gave to the company a perspective for the new product that their engineers could never have thought of, especially onto how their customers actually perceive them and expect them to supply, either on product or on service level and what are the best ways to respond to those needs.

For a last week of work, we prepared a presentation that we had 30 minutes to present to a board which consisted of our Vlerick Promoter, the company promoter and also an external reader. The three made a final decision of our grade in this project – which represents 20% of our entire grades for the whole academic year at Vlerick.

Finally, the company asked us to make one final presentation to one of the members of the company’s executive board. This meeting was in their office here in Belgium and lasted 3 hours, with many questions and relevant discussions that allowed the company to absorb better the information from our report into their strategy.

We had many learning points during this project, especially considering the importance of collaboration in a team, and the need for continuous participation and collaboration of people who are indirectly involved in the projects, such as the customers and the sales reps that accompanied us during the interviews in the 5 countries we worked during these 2 months. But mostly, it allowed us to understand our role and responsibility as Vlerick MGM students, and now Alumni, to advise and make the most of companies we are working for in the future.

On Monday 31 January, the MFM class visited Bayer Global headquarters in Leverkusen, and Bayer CropScience headquarters in Monheim, Germany. Our day began with a visit to the Bayer Communications Center (BayKomm), which provides a fascinating insight into the role that current scientific research will play in tomorrow’s world. Our guided tour took us through eight exhibition rooms that provided an interactive and multimedia experience. We saw how Bayer seeks practical solutions to problems such as, How can we feed this growing number of people more effectively without destroying our environment? How can we improve the health of all mankind and prevent disease? How can we develop innovative materials and conserve resources at the same time?

This was followed by two presentations and discussions of Bayer’s corporate strategy, and the business strategy of its Material Science division. During these sessions, and over lunch, the MFM class was able to engage with some of Bayer’s senior executives. During the afternoon, the class visited the global headquarters of Bayer CropScience, where we were given a guided tour of R&D facilities focused on insecticides and fungicides. We were all struck by the importance of this work to building a sustainable future for mankind, as our population increases.

Prof. Dr. Christopher Voisey, Professor in Strategic Management

Throughout the academic year, Vlerick is present at several Master and job fairs in Belgium. Over the last few weeks, we have even been participating in Master fairs all over the world. We have been talking to students from Poland, the UK, Romania, India, Greece and Turkey. Upon visiting our stand at the fair, we like to give them some more information on our different programmes, scholarships and courses as well as a realistic view on how the in-company project and the business games will take place.

If you would like to know where we will be present next time, just have a look at our website via  http://www.vlerick.com/en/programmes/masters/meet-us-masters-fair.html or become fan of our Vlerick Masters facebook page  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/vlerickmasters.

This Monday, MGM Porthos’ students had to get out of bed early and fight for a spot in the traffic jam on the way to Brussels. At 9 am, our bus arrived at the entrance of Microsoft in Belgium. Two years after Microsoft moved close to Zaventem Airport, they welcomed us to show the class their human resources practices and how they use technology to connect people working within the company. This experience was part of the Human Resources Management course, taught by Professor Ans De Vos.

The morning was all about human resources. We had a presentation about the Generations, and got to know a bit more about ourselves – the Y generation. Afterwards, we also heard the HR Manager explaining how a flexible working environment is the perfect match for this generation. Microsoft showed their example and the KPIs that make sure Microsoft keeps people in the center of its strategy. After those presentations, two managers showed in practice the tools used inside the office to communicate.

The last part of the visit was a tour around the office. We all had the chance to see in practice all that we heard in the conference room: office desks are not personalized, you can sit wherever you want, no matter if you are a manager or a newbie at Microsoft. No phones, no photo frames and almost no papers around the office: everything is on the people’s laptops. “You personalize your desktop, not the table” said the guide during the tour.

All of us saw an office actually functioning in a very flexible environment. People in Microsoft can come and go at whatever time they want. If an employee doesn’t want to show up at the office on Monday morning it is alright, as long as he works from home. Microsoft also showed belief in social networks and that it can be a positive tool to increase productivity through networking and looking for insights outside of the company. Being responsible and delivering your goals is, however, an important measure of employees’ performance.

To close the morning with some fun, some of us – including me – played a bit of XBOX 360, and showed how good Vlerick students can be in virtual sports. As we all know, it’s the only kind of sports we have time for these days. However, we are practicing hard to become the strongest professionals and better than any other student around the globe.

Juliana Mafra

On Monday, our campus was once again inhabited by students from all over the world. No less than 27 different nationalities joined us for the International Welcome Day! While outside we were experiencing some typical Belgian rain, inside the students received a warm welcome from the Academic Dean and were given lots of practical tips on living in Belgium and Health Insurance. After the presentation the students enjoyed a sandwich lunch in the restaurant as well as a tour of the campus. Fortunately by that time, the rain had finally cleared the air for the sun and the guided tour of Ghent, which took place in the afternoon, showing Ghent at its most best. We concluded the day with an informal get-together at the Inbev Lounge.

Looking forward to seeing all these students in action at the Intercultural event on the 10^th of November!”

Last Friday at our graduation in the Capitol in Ghent, 325 tassels were shifted from right to left to mark graduation. This was then followed by a joyous burst of caps thrown in the air,  in the School yard. Among the 81 PT MBAs and 244 Masters that graduated, was also our 14.000^th alumnus. The more than sunny day ended in a long reception in the garden of the School with parents who had flown in from all over the globe.

Please visit our facebook page for more pictures of this wonderful event: http://www.facebook.com/vlerickmasters