There’s been, so far, a few interesting themes coming out, the first of which is Common Good investing.

Selling up without selling out
My first conference session was called “Selling up without selling out”, which addressed how companies like Ben & Jerry’s, Tom’s of Maine, or The Body Shop sell up to larger PE funds or trade sales and how to keep your social mission.

In true conference fashion, there was very little discussion of actual strategies. It seemed to boil down to:

• Have a good relationship with the CSR people in the acquiring organisation (or, failing that, another power broker who has a remit or passion to keep your social mission alive)
• Get acquired by the right person (who believes in your mission), i.e., a fund like Calvert or Satori Capital.
• Don’t get acquired – build your business to succeed and generate cash (from Better World Books)

Socially Responsible Investing: 1995-2005(ish)
One of the most interesting things, however, was the closing remarks that Terry Mollner from Calvert made. He talked about the first tranche of socially responsible investing (a term he says should be falling by the wayside shortly).

Socially responsible investing is the next evolution from the no-sin funds– i.e., no guns, alcohol, or tobacco, which your financial advisor might have structured for you due to your personal or religious beliefs. It’s a well-structured, easy to understand, and exclusive– broadly, a list of companies or practises that are excluded from investment. The exclusive nature hearkens back to an us-vs.-them mentality– we (the enlightened few) are trying to change the world while them (profiteering corporate managers) are trying to amass all the wealth at the expense of anything.

These days are, from a certain perspective, over.

Common Good Investing
The new model is harder to define and understand, and it’s related to the shift to constant learning, that I’ve talked about before. There’s no good-housekeeping seal that shows that you are a good business. This person wants organic. That person wants Fair Trade. That person wants Local. Another wants pro-poor. Another is concerned with the environment. An awful lot of people just want to know that they’re doing the right thing, whatever the right thing is, but they aren’t sure which of the above is better.

In the UK, we’ve seen a shift to ethical branding– at the first Oxford Business and Environment Summit, which I co-founded, Ella Heeks, the marketing manager for Able & Cole talked about how they had carefully crafted their brand to be constantly on the leading edge of what it means to be doing good, so that their customers can trust that, when they shop A&C, they are getting low-carbon, organic, or whatever it is that they want to care about but don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with, because their learning capacity is being stressed by everything else. this is a great example of a brand helping people to learn (and A&C puts leaflets in with their vegetables telling you why this cabbage is good– it’s local, organic, sustainable, fair-waged, or whatever).

All of this makes responsible investing more tricky– it’s easy to say that one wants to invest in social enterprise, but we know that businesses that lead towards a more sustainable society in a broad sense– by doing simple things like pension plans, taking care of their workers, working towards their communities, or anything else, outperform similar businesses who don’t. Employee turnover has a cost. So do lawsuits. Happy workers are more productive.

Finding those businesses don’t lend themselves to a stock screen on your bloomberg machine, unfortunately. There are a few groups like the B Corp who are trying to make a list of things that companies should do, but doesn’t lend itself to what you care about.

The trick, it seems to me, is to investigate companies not just on their practises, but to see if they practice what they preach, and what their strategy is. In your company, make sure that your strategic priorities do include exactly what nonfinancial external effects you actually want to see from your business.

San/Bushmen dance & walk
That night, we had a group of San (Bushmen), the original inhabitants of southern Africa, come to show us some traditional dancing, which was interesting, save the couple of Afrikaaners who crashed the show (we paid for it & they didn’t) and then insisted on talking through the whole thing, even after being asked– very politely– to keep it down. The first I didn’t mind, but the second was just rude.

San dancing…

The women provide the rhythm and music, and sometimes dance…

In the morning, the group returned at yet another spectactular sunrise to take us on a walk to show us a bit about their culture & what they use in this area. It was interesting & fascinating– they showed us, among other things, some of the ways that they know individuals’ footprints in sand, herbs used in healing, gatherer food, animal spoor, and a Wildebeest skeleton.

Earlier, we visited a Himba village, and we were struck by how well they kept to their traditional ways, even to the point of making me rather uncomfortable. The village was an orphanage, where Himba children could be raised in their traditional ways, which are significantly different from the outside world. Some (about 20%) of the children go to Western schools as well. I personally felt like I was trespassing in the peoples’ homes, however, and failing to be a fly on the wall. It’s a way for the Himba to get cash, required in this modern world, but it seems like they’re trying to fuse the irresistable force of westernisation and globalisation with the immovable tradition of their own past. It’s a hard thing to see.

With the San, it’s even worse. These were once feared tribes of hunter-gatherers who ranged from present-day Angola down through all of Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. They were fierce hunters and feared warriors, but when the Dutch landed at Cape Town, they just left the area.

These people have been relocated to small areas, often different areas than they know, with different plants, animals, hunting requirements, and climate. Often, the relocated areas are not very good for hunting or gathering. The traditional ways of the San are more readily crumbling in the face of globalisation: There were only two members of the group under about 30, one the translator, and the other was an infant.

There were, however, still smiles, joy, and laughter in the face of all of this. Something that I see nearly everywhere I go in Africa, and perhaps a lesson to us all.

Yet another stunning sunrise…

This is Not Unix.

San women, traditional

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It was Mousa in the Library, with the laptop.

There has been much studying and late nights in the library. I had intended to do more studying over 9th week which is mostly revision but somehow ended up doing some MBA bonding with some of my classmates (read: drinking heavily. Very heavily. Constantly.)

Exams at Oxford are, well, odd. We have to troop off to Summertown dressed in full subfusc, essentially a tux with a polyester cape (with these wierd wings that I would expect would look really good if you were jumping off of the roof onto the evildoers), carrying our hat, and do the exams. They are all marked by two people and possibly a third and the whole system takes ages. Grades run from 40 to 80, with a 50 as a pass, a 65 as a “perfectly respectable” score (I’m equating it with a B+), and a 70 is a distinction. If I get six disctinction courses and an overall average of 65, I get to put “MBA with disctinction” on my CV which will make some people (probably the people who expect me to work 14 hour days) go “ooo”. It is apparently also quite hard (one smart guy I know filled all the requirements and ended up with like a 64.2 average) So I am trying to get my best grade, though I am preferring learning to marks.

I’ve also been heavily prepping for the seat races to see if I make the cut into the Pembroke Men’s 2nd boat. They asked me to try out for M2, who in our very sporty college means that we’d be racing against other college’s first boats, which is very cool. Especially since most of the guys I’d be rowing with are 15 years my junior. It’s odd to be somewhat sporty as I pretty much missed out on all that back in my undergraduate days at UNO I wasn’t very sporty and the sports training at UNO left much to be desired. Or at least so I thought at the time. I feel like my stress levels are generally much lower when I’m doing training, and all the assorted benefits that seem to come with it– blood pressure, etc. Considering the astonishing amount of coffee I’m drinking now that I’m back in school, that’s probably a good thing overall. There is something to be said for this “whole person education” idea.

And I spent a couple of days in London starting with the Oxford/Cambridge Rugby match (we lost, though we were within 1m of the goal line at 35s to time), and later hanging out with Ed, Jane, Finlay, and Iona, finishing with an excellent xmas dinner with Stephen/Alma, The Johns, and Kevin/Vivienne. A fun time was had by all, but particularly the meat eaters as we had a most excellent cut of venison that Ed and I cooked up with juniper/port gravy. mmm mmm good.

I love this photo. “Man down! More cava!”

And, of course, a lot of wine. And champagne. And cava. Much of which was furnished by the Johns, as was only right.

And I like it when you see Viv and Kevin looking at each other…

That’s all the news from Lake OX1, where the all the women kick ass, all the men row, and all the children are shipped off to boarding school for their education.

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I have arrived safely in the UK. I’m staying in Bournemouth with Jamie and Barbara and headed to London tomorrow. On an interesting note, the world keeps getting smaller and smaller:

Alef who I know from Franklin back in the days of high school is living about 10 minutes’ walk from Ed and Jane. I’ve probably walked past his house a dozen times in the last 5 years. He’s teaching maths in a London inner city school which is cool, particularly considering that we met in an Algebra class where our British teacher made particular fun of us all year long.

My dear friend Amy Laura has a friend who’s in SBS this year who is doing financial models for sustainability. Another poet-turned-superstar. At least, I hope that’s what’s going to happen with me. (They call anyone without a business/econ/finance undergraduate degree a poet– I guess Performance Art counts)

School hasn’t started yet but I’ve already done about 3 hours’ work. The professor suggested that it would be 5, so that’s something. Although I’m planning on keeping my mind open to any possibilities that come my way I think I can safely say that I won’t become an accountant. I took a basic accounting class and man, it’s all legwork and details, which I’m terrible at. I feel pretty confident in the material but I keep making careless errors– like putting in 100 instead of 200, or writing “common stock” instead of “share capital”. Blah.

I made it to SBS very briefly– Jamie’s picked up a motorbike that I can use. It’s a 1999 Triumph Tiger 900– same engine as the speed triple but much more comfortable. And way faster than my old BMW F650, at about the same price point. We rode 500 miles: From the S. coast of England into Wales, then across some hilly parts of England (all of which was beautiful, though a bit hair-raising riding for the first time in 3 months, on the wrong side of the road, on a newer, more powerful bike, learning how to use “roundabouts” (traffic circles, which are only decorative in the US) and marveling at how generally conscious British drivers seem.

Me and the Tiger. mmm… 855 cc triple…

Not that I’m completely enamored with Britain. They haven’t really got customer service figured out, everything costs a ridiculous amount of money, and they have this habit of throwing up horrible developments right in the same neighborhood with ancient (think medieval to Edwardian) buildings.

Not that I’m complaining. The beer ain’t bad.

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Check it out:

Other developments: I’m slowly making my way through my wine. And my house. And my stuff. Yay, stuff.

It’s now T-minus 30 days in SF. I’m having loads of lasts, or at least “maybe-lasts” which is pretty… odd. It struck me on the stumble home from Declan and Sofia’s going away party that this might be my last 1:30 AM drunken CanCun burrito. Which made me sad, though I was really appreciative it was a 4 pints drunken stumble, rather than the How Wierd Fair stumble from a couple of years ago. I think that one was Chad and my brilliant idea to get 40s of King Cobra.

Anyway.

Off to non-drunken shopping and shipping and prepping for dinner. Lamb-a-licious!

College selection and accomodation

I’ve been accepted to Pembroke College, which apparently has better food, is a bit formal, was founded by James I (successor to Her Coolest Majesty Elizabeth I, the “Virgin” Queen. James I of England is also James IV of Scotland, which should make my Scottish friends either happy or not, as he’s sort of in the unification game…). In respect to James I, I get to wear silver tassels in my cap.

Other cool things about Pembroke:

• John Pym, early arguer of the merits of an English Republic went here.
• Samuel Johnson (first decent attempt at a definitive English dictionary, including some really funny entries) dropped out due to poverty.
• Tolkien wrote the Hobbit and the first 2/3 of the Lord of the Rings while a don here.
• They’ve given me one of the “better” rooms, which means I don’t have to share a bathroom with anyone, which, at (almost)35, is really pretty key. I mean. Really. I also pay more for it as well as everything else as an MBA student, which is just how it works. Yay, us.

Moving

I’m leaving San Francisco on August 1st. Which seems like a long way away but also doesn’t. It also means that I’m desperate to get things out of my house, find a renter for my two rooms (or to my whole house) which I’ve decided not to sell, buy a lot more tickets on the train/plane/automobile, figure out how to get a years’ worth of clothes/shoes/toothbrushes/books/etc around the US and onto Oxford.

I’m headed out to Tucson where my brother and his family will be, as Danny trains to go to Iraq. Here’s hoping that the 2 1/2 years he’s spent learning Farsi will prove useful enough for him to get sent to a safe place. Please send up a prayer or whatever else you might do.

After that, on to New Orleans to say good-bye to that city, then on to Alabama to see the cousins and uncles and aunts that I haven’t seen in far too long, then to DC for a week, NYC for 5 days, and I leave on 3 Sept, the day after my birthday.

Hoping to see Steve & Sara, Ed & Jane, Jamie & Barbara, and Kevin & Vivienne before I head to Oxford. I think this’ll be doable, though I need to get my prep reading done in that time.

etc…

I’ve been reading Getting Things Done which I suspect is changing my life. I reorganized my calendar and tasks for the next hectic 3ish months along his lines and am about to pop $75 for the Outlook plugin, therefore chaining myself to Outlook for life. It works, even if it is a bit wonky at times. And it talks to my BlackBerry. I’m just going to have to write something to automatically back it up on startup or exit or something. I’ve lost a .pst file once and man, it just shouldn’t be that bad.
I’ve also been noodling around with Microsoft OneNote and it’s really, really cool. There’s a send to outlook functionality (and you can do the reverse as well) and you can categorize and sort free-form information really well, and I don’t even have a tablet PC. I almost wish I never got that T42, because then I could justify picking up an X-series tablet PC which opens up even more functionality. Think of OneNote as a notebook where you can put the pages whereever you want and you can insert information wherever you need, even if you’ve run out of room. It really does win. It’s like vim on supersteroids. Crossed with Barry Bonds. I got pointed to it by a current SBS student, Ean Hernandez, who’s promised to let me buy him a drink and tell me how to survive when your classmates are mostly 10 years younger than you are.
A few of us are going to meet up for a drink next week at Elephant and Castle downtown, drop me a line if you’re interested in coming. I’m also hoping to meet up with other SBS current, future or former students here in SF before I head out. If you’re reading this, then please drop me a line.

I should really get back to my task list…

Assuming, of course, that they actually DHL me the promised paperwork and whatnot. After my pretty-good interview with Professor Westbrook, I waited with bated breath, chewing my nails to the quick (and beyond), thinking how much I wanted to go to RSM Erasmus.

And I did. Quite a lot. I learned a lot about the program, and was really impressed. I think the Netherlands is a great country and would have had a great time there, but there’s no subfusc and whatnot.

Besides. Oxford boasts high use of the word whatnot, which I adore.

So that’s it. Time to focus on scholarship essays and getting rid of my stuff and hiring my replacement and living San Francisco up and all that jazz. Thanks for watching. Watch this space for details of my actual going to Oxford and doing my MBA. Cheers!

All in all, I think I did fairly well. The interview may not matter– each committee makes a “yes” “no” and “maybe” pile. The interview only matters if I end up in the “maybe” pile.

But in any case, I hit all my talking points, and good things were said about my answers, though the very kindly (and impressive) professor was pretty hard to read. I, however, said what I had to say and if they don’t want me, then they don’t want what I have to offer so they’re not the program for me.

Except that I think they may be.

So I should hear something in about ten days time. Less, now.

And I should be getting on with my essays for RSM.

And getting rid of everything I own.

And finishing all my wine.

and stuff.

BUT

The same day, I got an email from Oxford offering me an interview slot in DC, and I’d really planned on going there, but the prospect of gnawing on my nails for several weeks while I prepare for the interview and work on scholarship essays…

So I’ve decided (along with the aid of a cheapish direct airline ticket) to go ahead and go to DC. I get on a early-AM flight out of Oakland to DC for the weekend. Maybe this time I’ll get to see some of my nation’s capital, unlike the past few trips which have proved to be a tour of the DC/Baltimore area hospitals and the Morgue. Whee. Not a visit I suggest.

Now I’ve got to a) do a stellar interview for Oxford, b) decide if I’m going to RSM Erasmus, c) write more stunning essays for scholarships, d) work up all my student loan stuff, e) get lots and lots of scholarships, f) get some sleep.

Please think good thoughts for me Friday AM at 11:30AM Eastern. That’s the 29th of March, 2007.

Thanks!

I’m going to call them on Monday first thing and see if I can’t get in on one of the Oxford days. Flights to DC this week are already pretty expensive, and it looks fairly reasonable to go to the UK… besides, there are some children that are rapidly becoming not very small that I’d really like to see in South London.

More news as it develops.