There are many conferences at Columbia Business School, mostly organized by student associations. I have been to the Retail & Luxury Conference, the Media & Entertainment Conference as well as Cyberposium at Harvard Business School, but there’s almost a conference for every industry club (PE/VC, Marketing, Brite, Social Enterprise etc).

The conferences’ stated aims usually include networking / recruiting opportunities for students, raising Columbia’s profile and in theory allowing for thought leaders in academia and the field to exchange ideas.
I can’t help but feel that none of these objectives are met very well. Perhaps it is time to rethink these formats.

Fred again:

All that said, I really hate panels. I hate watching them and I hate being on them even more. I think it’s a lazy way to participate in a conference. You show up, answer a few questions, sit up on the stage with a bunch of other people, and then go home.

I much prefer the 15-20 minute talk with Q&A afterward. I think I’d prefer even more a 10 minute talk with longer Q&A afterward.

I like the idea of programming a series of interviews rather than panels that allow for deeper explorations of a given topic. Perhaps a faculty member and an industry thought-leader, or two industry folk, or two competitors interviewing each other. The Q&A sessions can sometimes be the best part of these things, but here too there’s perhaps room for improvement. I like the idea of sourcing questions from students, faculty and attendees in the period leading up to the conferences and during the sessions, this can be done via twitter, facebook, sms, email etc and then the moderator or the conference team can select some of the more interesting questions to get conversations flowing.

I also like the Pecha Kucha / Ignite formats of constraining actual presentations to short and impactful and then allowing for in-depth Q&As to follow.

In terms of networking, small break-out sesssions, breakfasts and lunches etc with the speakers can be organized and students can apply to attend or a lottery system can be implemented (I think a combination of the two would result in the most passionate and interested students attending whilst maintaining fairness in the process).

The conference format as it is at Columbia is broken. I’d like to see us fix and improve it for next year’s round.

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I am as awed as usual by China on the Columbia Global Immersion Program Shanghai and thought I’d repost a review of the essential China Shakes The World that I read on my first trip to Beijing in 2008.

Napolean once said “let China sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world”.

My personal China awakening (late to the party as usual) happened on my first trip to shanghai last year where I celebrated my thirtieth with some close friends. walking down the pedestrian section of nanjing road, i looked around and it suddenly occurred to me that the rest of the world could have perished at that instant, and China would have barely noticed. (it was a feeling rather than a thought). I have barely stopped thinking about China since.
I spent july living in Beijing’s Haidian student district on an introductory Mandarin course and then joined John Shoaf‘s pre-MBA Columbia World Tour in Shanghai. Living in China for a few years is firmly on my life game plan map, in the meantime i am trying to learn more about the place.

China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future — and the Challenge for America
James Kynge, former china bureau chief of best English language newspaper in the world (The Financial Times), won the FT / Goldman Sachs business book of the year award in 1996 with ‘China shakes the world’ which is a superb, concise introduction to how and why china is shaping our world.
The first half tells the condensed history of China’s post-cultural revolution rise and illuminates its leading position during much of the last six thousand years.
The book starts off recounting the mysterious disappearance of manhole covers all over the world (with plenty of reports of unsuspecting pedestrians falling into the suddenly-there holes from Mongolia to Montreal) as a signal of when the direction of the world – China relationship switched: the view of china flipped from how the outside world was changing china to how China was affecting the rest of the world. China’s voracious appetite for almost every conceivable resource including the scrap metal that those manholes were destined to become was just one signal that the causal direction was switching.
James has plenty of engaging first-hand accounts from his two decades living in china through which it often seems we are witnessing China’s economic transformation unfold through his eyes.
some of the major themes / ideas that run throughout include:

• Businesses everywhere are finding it harder to compete (manufacturers in particular), the sustainability of europe’s welfare state model is in question as the industrial base there is hollowed out.
• China out-competes and out-capitalizes everyone, especially America.
• Chinese possess the impressive combo of intelligence and second-to-none work ethic.
• China through lowering the cost of goods and its insatiable appetite for US treasuries (in part to manage its currency) has fueled the low-iinterest rate driven housing boom and general drive for yield that has resulted in the current sub-prime, credit-crunch, free-fall dollar mess we’re in.
• 400 million people have been lifted above the poverty line over the last 28 years of above 9.5% economic growth.

A could be briefer! summary of some of the book’s chapters:

Rags to Riches.
Kynge recasts the economic revolution that started with Deng Xiapong’s (who famously said “to be rich is glorious”) reign (after the madness that was mao’s cultural revolution) as one based on the creative disobedience of china’s local governments rather than the top-down implementation of a genius Xiapong vision (which is closer to the official line). Deng’s genius lay in his strategy of running with whatever seemed to be working (i.e. creating jobs). we follow China in the 80s and 90s as it takes the initial steps towards becoming the world’s workshop. it’s a time characterized by an impressively enterprising private sector scrambling through post-communist bureaucractic loopholes, aided by subsidized capital, power and water.
those who ‘got rich first’ were often the unemployed or unemployable (who had no choice but to become entrepreneurs) which made for some surprising characters filling china’s rich list lists a few decades later (former convicts, peasants, etc).

The Future is the Past.
Kynge attacks the historical determinism widely prevalent in today’s China that its superpower status is inevitable; after all the country has laid claim to that mantle for much of the last few thousand years.
he questions whether China’s status truly was as strong as is often claimed. He opines that the Tang dynasty (800AD) was the country’s peak (and not unrelated, also its most open period) and that China had been in a state of relative, per capita decline through the end of the cultural revolution.

Most of the chapter takes place in Chongqing (once called Chungking), the contemporary equivalent of Chicago circa 19th century; Twain wrote “…astonishing Chicago, a city where they are always rubbing a lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago–she outgrows her prophecies faster than she can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time”. hg wells wrote of an “unwholesome reek”, “a dark smear in the sky”, he found it “one hoarse cry for discipline”.

China is following the path trodden by America in the 19th century, or Japan post-1950, but the sheer scale and speed of its trajectory puts it in a class of its own.
Kynge talks about the ‘compression of developmental time’ when describing the unrivaled urbanization taking place. and with 700 million still living on less than 2$ a day, it can still count on pre-industrial revolution wages to maintain its competitive edge for the forseeable future.
linteresting, china studies much from america’s own rise, and models its highways, railroads, infrastructure on the us (learning from its mistakes of course and leap-frogging straight to the 21st century).
this is the magic of china – it is replaying out the birth of a great american nation but on a scale that dwarfs it.

Population Paradox.
Kynge discusses how the lure of a billion person market often masks a highly fragmented and obliquely protected domestic market, but the foreign investments continue regardless.

• Numbers hold a special, magical place in chinese culture (as we witnessed with 8.08pm opening ceremony on 080808).
• China takes a super-long-term approach to things: ZhouEnlai, Mao’s premier, when asked whether the French Revolution had been a success, replied without irony that it was too early to tell..
• China may grow old before it grows rich (thanks to the draconian one-child policy).
• Its famous lack of respect for intellectual property.
• Many chinese ventures are unprofitable and propped up by state banks (the state prioritizes jobs over profits, and
• China’s high savings means there’s is plenty of liquidity).

China goes to Europe.
James visits several cities in europe to see first hand the crippling changes that china’s matchless competitiveness has wrought on the crumbling european industrial hinterland (steel mills in germany, clothing factories in italy etc).
If Prato, a city that has been at the center of the global fashion textiles industry since the Medici’s, is unable to stand up to the chinese competition that starts with manufacturing and works its way up the value chain, in time buying brands, technology and skills, what does that say for the rest of europe and its welfare state so painstakingly put together after world war ii?



Image by shehab.hamad via Flickr

America bought and sold.
Takes us to average america to show first-hand how the country’s middle is being hollowed out (middle class, middle america, mid-sized businesses) and sets the scene for a possible future where the politically critical middle class turn against further globalization. the key idea here is that china started out at the bottom of the global value chain – manufacturing – but is moving higher and higher up much faster than a lot of people realize. although china is spending more and more on r&d, it still significantly lags the us on this front, but it is increasingly simply buying its way up the value chain (buying brands and the ip of companies bankrupted by china’s competitiveness).

Not enough to go around.
The mismatch of resources (in part due to China’s inefficient, wasteful use of its geological assets) and the size of its population has meant the environment has been an incontestable loser of china’s magnificent rise. but as kynge notes in the book’s final pages when tempering the possibility of a military clash between the US and China, pragmatism usually wins over at least in the short-term in china and as the environmental costs to china continue to be felt, action will probably be taken. in deed the SEPA profile seems to have risen noticeably since the book was published.

We also learn about the CNOOC v congress battle, and that the commodities boom kicked off when China joined the WTO – probably not coincidentally. also, the yangtze river is running dry!

Corruption and inefficiency are to blame for a lot of this (as well as a philosophical disrespect for nature).

Collapse of Social Trust.
China has a rich philosophical history (we learn about the concept of ren- roughly benevolence) but as mencius said in his bull mounatin parable (on ren, human goodness):

“The Bull Mountain was once covered with lively trees. But it is near the capital of a great State. People came with their axes and choppers; they cut the woods down, and the mountain has lost its beauty. Yet even so, the day air and the night air came to it, rain and dew moistened it till here and there fresh sprouts began to grow. But soon cattle and sheep came along and browsed on them, and in the end the mountain became gaunt and bare, as it is now. And seeing it thus gaunt and bare, people imagine that it was woodless from the start.”

Social trust is being eroded at an alarming rate, evident in

• News with bonus (pr companies customarily bribe journalists to print stories).
• the emergence of 100,000s of private detectives a job that did not exist just over a decade ago.
• state corruption has lead to HIV infecting one million peasants and orphaned 100,000 children.

Communism vs Democracy.
Kynge: “the main problem with China’s political systen is that it does not permit the checks and balances necessary to supervise and regulate a capitalist society”
some personal thoughts: i believe in democratic in principle (checks and balances, efficiency, accountability, etc, legitimacy), but apart from police and military states that rule completely by fear and intimidation (saddam’s iraq, iran, egypt, etc) there is an invisible social contract between party and people in non-democracries.
the lack of legitimacy conferred by elections if anything drives regimes like china, singapore and the uae to work especially hard to appease their populaces (and you can’t help but be impressed with these systems’ efficiency- beijing’s pre-olympic transformation could only have happened in this context, india would fail given twice as long).
On balance, the loss of efficiency inherent in democracy is a worthwhile sacrifice in my opinion, but it needs renewal i think.

Can we be friends?
‘Waishi’ or foreign affairs in china often blurs the boundaries between friendship of individuals and that of states when it comes to achieving goals.
Chinese schoolbooks teach that the 109 years leading up to the cultural revolution involved attackis and fireign meddling by the US, Japan, Russia, Britain and France without distinguishing between then and now (this will be unsurprising to anyone who grew up in the Middle East where the West, US, and Israel are given similar treatment) which is obviously unhelpful in building sincere fruitful relationships with foreigners.

The state uses nationalism and its ability in returning international respect and prestige to china to build its legitimacy amongst its people. but this brooding, sub-surface xenophobia is difficult to control (evidenced in the street’s reactions to the US bombing of the chinese embassy in belgrade or the recurrent anti-Japanese demonstrations)

We are entering a new era of international politics defined by the geopolitics of scarcity, Kynge outlines a very real possible scenario of heightened military showdowns between the US and China but ends the book on a more hopeful note extolling China’s pragmatism (at least in the short-term) as a characteristic that could lead to the unprecedented peaceful rise of a superpower.

my (more worriesome) thoughts on this at the moment are that key differences between the japan and german post ww-ii rises including:

• The commitment to china’s (played down) military build-up.
• Size!
• Sustained domestic pressure to grow (they need 24 million jobs a year, and must feed the increasingly rich and decreasingly agrarian population).
• and China’s is just as xenophobic as everyone else it unfortunately.

A must read for anyone remotely interested in what our future will look like.

I will have to add the 30million bare branches expected in China by 2020 to the list. Figuring out what to do with that many frustrated, un-marriable men could produce some truly ugly incentives.

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Shang-Jin Wei introduced us to the theory he is putting forward to explain the global savings glut that has shaped so much of our modern times during our first class in Shanghai on the Global Immersion Program. The common narratives incorporate China’s weak safety net, post-Asian financial crisis conservatism, oil booms, Confucius culture and more. Professor Wei claims that the most influential driver of increased savings has actually been the wildly divergent male to female ratios that many parts of the world have been experiencing over the past couple of decades. With perfect timing, this week’s Economist, coinciding with International Women’s Day, quotes professor Wei’s research in its fascinating Gendercide cover report.

(The Gendercide + Economist image search is censored here in China so this is the best jpg i can use!)

Some of the consequences of the skewed sex ratio have been unexpected. It has probably increased China’s savings rate. This is because parents with a single son save to increase his chances of attracting a wife in China’s ultra-competitive marriage market. Shang-Jin Wei of Columbia University and Xiaobo Zhang of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC, compared savings rates for households with sons versus those with daughters. “We find not only that households with sons save more than households with daughters in all regions,” says Mr Wei, “but that households with sons tend to raise their savings rate if they also happen to live in a region with a more skewed sex ratio.” They calculate that about half the increase in China’s savings in the past 25 years can be attributed to the rise in the sex ratio. If true, this would suggest that economic-policy changes to boost consumption will be less effective than the government hopes.

Professor’s Wei’s thesis is that the increasing male to female ratios (which according the Economist is due to cheap prevalent ultrasound technology, shrinking families and gender bias) have encouraged higher saving levels as sons’ parents must vie for the limited pool of potential brides. Professor Wei in a recent Forbes op-ed had this to say:

The resulting pressure on the marriage market in China might induce men and parents with sons to do things to make themselves more competitive. Increasing savings, mostly by cutting down on the family’s spending, is one logical way to do that. Wealth helps to increase a man’s competitive edge in the marriage market. Ironically, increased savings does not change the total number of men who get married in the aggregate. In this sense, the increased savings is socially inefficient. However, from an individual household’s viewpoint, when the competition for a marriage partner is tough, it cannot afford to save less than its competitors. I call this effect “keeping up with the Zhangs.”

Professor Wei goes further still, claiming that the ratios can also help explain regional differences in entrepreneurship and appetites for hardship. We have heard him present his research findings to a few different audiences here in Shanghai and it looks like he has some work to do in changing general consensus. It seems to make a lot of sense to me, the only question is how big of a factor is the sex imbalance relative to the competing explanations.

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Admission to all Heyman Center events is open to the public.
Unless noted below, events are free and no registration is necessary.
Seating is on a first come, first served basis.
For more information, please visit www.heymancenter.org.

ANTHONY GRAFTON
“Race in the Renaissance”
Thursday, 4 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

PETER GALISON
“Blacked-Out Spaces: Freud and War Censorship”
Thursday, 11 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

BLAIR WORDEN
“Puritanism, Liberty, and the English Civil Wars”
Monday, 15 February 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

RICHARD AXEL, MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN, GEOFFREY STONE & JONATHAN COLE
“The Great American University: Is Its Preeminence at Risk?”
Wednesday, 17 February 6:00pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center

STEVEN SHAPIN, Chair: Craig Calhoun
“The Ivory Tower: A History of an Idea about Knowledge and Politics”
Thursday, 4 March 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

SUSAN SULEIMAN
“Jewish Identity and the ‘Jewish Question’ in France: A Propos of Irène Némirovsky”
Monday, 8 March 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

JOSEPH STIGLITZ, PRABHAT PATNAIK, JOMO KWAME SUNDARAM & JUSTIN YIFU LIN
“The Continuing Financial Crisis: Perspectives from the North and South”
Thursday, 25 March 12:00pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought
**Registration is now closed.

DAVID HARVEY, PRABHAT PATNAIK, DUNCAN FOLEY & SANJAY REDDY
“Marx or Keynes or…?”
Wednesday, 31 March 6:15pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought
Registration required. To register visit: http://heymancenter.org/events.php?id=167.
Unclaimed Seats will be released at 6:05pm.

JAVEED ALAM, C. P. CHANDRASHEKHAR, JAYATI GHOSH, PRABHAT PATNAIK & SITARAM YECHURY
“Neo-Liberalism, Secularism, and the Future of the Left in India”-a day-long conference
Thursday, 1 April 10:00am-5:00pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Co-sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Committee on Global Thought

A lecture and concert by USTAD AMJAD ALI KHAN
Friday, 2 April Lecture: 6-7pm, Lerner Hall; Concert: 8pm-10pm, Miller Theater
For ticket prices and info, visit: http://heymancenter.org/events.php?id=179.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and the Committee on Global Thought

PETER BURKE
“The Republic of Letters: Survival or Revival?”
Monday, 5 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

DOMINICK LaCAPRA
The Annual History and Theory Lecture:
“Historical and Literary Approaches to the ‘Final Solution’”
Monday, 12 April 8:00pm
501 Schermerhorn Hall
Co-sponsored by Consortium for Intellectual & Cultural History

SALMAN RUSHDIE, GEOFFREY STONE & LEE C. BOLLINGER
“Free Speech in a Globalized World”
Wednesday, 14 April 6:15pm
Low Rotunda
**Registration details forthcoming.
Co-sponsored by Committee for Global Thought, Center for Global Governance, and University Programs and Events

ERIC SUNDQUIST, Respondents: Kenneth Warren & Glenn Loury
The Lionel Trilling Seminar:
“Obama, King, Ralph Ellison, and the American Dream”
Thursday, 15 April 6:15pm
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center

JOSEPH STIGLITZ, NANCY FOLBRE & GEOFFREY HEAL
“Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up”
Monday, 19 April 4:00pm
Altschul Auditorium, 417 International Affairs Building
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought
Registration required. To register visit: http://heymancenter.org/events.php?id=173.
Unclaimed Seats will be released at 3:50pm.

JAMAICA KINCAID
A reading followed by an interview with Saidiya Hartmann
Thursday, 22 April 6:15
Davis Auditorium, the Schapiro Center
Co-sponsored by The Africa-Diaspora Literary Society and Caribbean Students Association

CATHERINE GALLAGHER
“Telling It Like It Wasn’t: the Actual History of Counterfactual History”
Monday, 26 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

M.H. ABRAMS
“The Fourth Dimension of Poetry”
Wednesday, 28 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Co-sponsored by the Department of English

GLENN MOST
“Four Ways to Misunderstand Euripides’ Medea”
Thursday, 29 April 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

LINDA COLLEY
“Writing Constitutions into British and Global Histories”
Monday, 3 May 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities
Co-sponsored by the Committee on Global Thought

DAVID BROMWICH, NICHOLAS LEMANN & ALAN BRINKLEY
“Henry Luce and the Future of Journalism”
Thursday, 6 May 6:15pm
Second Floor Common Room, Heyman Center for the Humanities

Fact I am posting this a week before Spring midterms gives you a sense of how over-scheduled CBS MBAs are.

First term at Columbia Business School was intense. That’s what everyone says when speaking of their MBA experience. Still nothing quite prepares you for it. Academics plays only a bit-part in the experience. The rest encompasses recruiting (probably the biggest time-drain), extra-curricular (clubs etc) and socializing (cluster etc).
It is possible to abstain from much of the non-academic side but few MBA students do, it’s an integral part of the experience and the learning.

Core & Cluster.
Columbia divides the incoming class into clusters of about 60 to 70 students each. It also mandates a core set of subjects that everyone must take (or test out of by taking exemption exams). Both of these are controversial parts of the CBS experience. My cluster (G’11) seems to have an awesome collegiate comradeship going and an impressive social calendar of events (although I am not particularly active in cluster life). Friends have spoken to me of other clusters with much more friction and a more competitive culture.
Core classes include Corporate Finance, Accounting, Leadership, Operations, Statistics, Strategy, Economics and Marketing. Most of the professors have been incredible, a few have been shockingly disappointing (in my cluster, this came down to professors either being new to teaching or bored of teaching).
The unpredictability of the experiences and the lack of choice are what make these controversial topics at Columbia. I still think a core curriculum makes sense as part of the business education but wish more diligence was involved in selecting the core professors. Students rightly feel they are paying a lot of money and are not happy when forced to take classes with uninterested or unready teachers. As for the cluster, it’s the only way of organizing 700 students and allows for a more intimate setting to get to know your peers. The flip-side is it tends to produce silos making it difficult to connect with peers outside the cluster.

Having said that business school can be incredibly social with lots of (non-recruiting) events to choose from most nights. Most of these seem to revolve around alcohol although there are also cultural / sporting happenings too. Alcohol is a big part of school. We received an email a few months ago from a non-drinking prospective student asking whether it would impact his experience. A qualified yes was most people’s response. I have a couple of friends at CBS who don’t drink or drink very lightly and they have had great times but at times have felt a little left out. The mercurial will leave CBS having met the 700 classmates (the super mercurial will have also met most of the 2nd years and in their 2nd year, the 1st years too). Almost everyone will have learnt about new cultures on others sides of the world via the overstated but still relatively international student body.

Community.
I recall reading the BusinessWeek forums when applying to business school and seeing the oft-repeated reputation of CBS as a commuter school – one where people come to class and leave, lacking the community of more secluded non-NY schools. Nothing can be further from the truth. Community is taken very seriously at CBS and the students are for the most part very involved in the school. This is obvious from day one when you are greeted by crazy energetic 2nd year peer advisors (who take time out from their holidays to introduce 1st years to the CBS experience and who are all legends in their own rights).
Combined with the school’s infamous happy hours every Thursday (free beer for all!) and all the extra-curricular activities at school, there is an amazing spirit of community that I love.

Finance.
CBS has a reputation for being a finance school. Proximity to Wall St, impressive faculty and of course being the philosophical home of value investing ensure this. It is more true than you might imagine (CBS also brands itself to varying degrees as a great school for Media / Retail / Luxury / Social Enterprise / Entrepreneurship). It is an overwhelmingly finance oriented school. The supposed vilification of Wall St the press harps on about definitely bypassed Uris Hall. The enthusiasm for careers on Wall St is everywhere and Goldman Sachs is still the Golden Catch. Some of the really smart ambitious kids seem more interested in Private Equity, Venture Capital and Hedge Fund opportunities which nevertheless are not easy to come by.
The finance focus paradoxically creates a strong outsider community for those students interested in non-finance careers.

Media / Tech.
CBS is rightly proud of its media ties. Again the NY location is key and the school makes the most of it. The Media Management Association is one of the larger and more active groups on campus. The focus though is on old media (again a reflection of NY businesses). There are some great media faculty and electives (Jonathan Knee, Sharad Devarajan etc) on offer and lots of amazing lunch talks.
It’s probably not so strong on the techier side of things or even on the new media. Boston or the West Coast probably have an advantage here.

Entrepreneurship.
I am not sure how this compares to other schools but CBS seems to be a place people come to to land a corporate job rather than start a company. The Lang Center are very active but the CBS culture doesn’t feel especially entrepreneurial. Having said that the weak job market does seem to be encouraging CBS MBAs to explore entrepreneurship. Applications to the Greenhouse program were at a record high this year.

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Speakers include Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures; Ron Stern, Marvel Entertainment; Bob Guccione, Jr., SPIN Magazine; Derek Sivers, CD Baby; Gavin McInnes, Street Carnage, Vice; David Cho, The Awl; John Sloss, Cinetic Media; Dennis Crowley, Foursquare; Jay Rosen, PressThink; Richard Tofel, ProPublica; Steven Brill, Journalism Online.

Gavin McInnes’s panel should be fun!

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