Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford

One of the most anticipated events at SBS, the Silicon Valley comes to Oxford happened this monday. There were quite a number of executives from a lot of companies in Silicon Valley who attended it. I attended master classes from Chris Sacca, Head of Special Initiatives of Google and Tom Esselman, Founder of Altran Holdings Inc., USA. Sacca's Session was amazing and you can good insights into Google and what they value. Tom's session was around Innovation in Science and Engineering. He is also professor of this subject at Harvard University and it was interesting to get to know about the challenges that one can face to do problem solving with Scientists and Engineers.

The master classes followed by the Panel Discussion which was attended by Matt Cohler (VP Strategy & Business Operations, Facebook), Reid Hoffman (CEO, Founder LinkedIn), Allen Morgan (Managing Director, Mayfield ) and Chris Sacca. It was moderated by Jonathan of FT and we had an interesting discussion on Colloboration which included blogging, the network sites et all. I had an oppurtinity to dine with these executives at Oriel college later. I had a chance to have a detailed discussion with Kevin Waudby, Head of Innovation at Cancer research institute UK and Villy Wang of Baycat. All in all it was a fruitful day with a lot of insights into various things and this will be/was an amazing oppurtinity for budding entrepreneurs.

On the other end, the time is running up and we will be completing our first term next week. I am able to get some 60s and 65s in the assignments, which are not bad enough considering that most of the scores in the class are around 60s and 70s. The exams are due starting Dec 11th finishing on Dec 14th. I will be taking a long break from Dec 19th to Jan 12th in India.