about me...
mit-bred engineer turned wharton mba...
now a product manager at google; proud owner of very cute guinea pigs, barney, and jubi...
former radio show host still loves chinese popular music.
adrenaline-pumped night at pub
this crazy week wrapped up with the follies auction at pub last night. we started the evening with live performance on guitar from follies cast member, tony magrogan.then the auction kicked off with tony, boris siperstein (follies head writer), and matt zaklad, a follies alum who left work at bcg early and took the train from nyc to be our auctioneer. the legendary follies auction is an amazing phenomenon that you have to see to believe. matt (dressed in a leopard suit) has one heck of an ability to sell ice to eskimos (granted, they're drunk).
we call the stuff we're auctioning off "priceless," which means they can be bid up to exorbitant amounts by drunk MBAs who will wake up the next morning and say, i bid THAT much for THIS??
at the big night, the auctioneers took center stage, and my job was to keep accurate tally of the final bid and bidder's name so we know who to hunt down for the money.
not exactly easy in a jam-packed pub and among the high adrenaline bidding/selling. auction crowd
mba's are one of the most conservative demographic groups, but not when it comes to follies. highlights of the auction:
- a week in rome at my auction teammate's apartment went for $900
- peter degnan (head of career services) served a beer funnel to peggy bishop lane (our vice dean) for $70
- classmate ian monsod (who's also on follies cast) performed a 30-second sample of his serenade onstage.
it went for $100
- a wine tasting event offered by a classmate's dad who's head of ritz carlton food wine went for $1200
- professor diamond's 3-hour negotiation seminar(the professor's mba negotiation class goes for over 8000 auction points) went for $2400
- matt somehow managed to convince our initially reluctant mystery dates to do crazy stuff, like take off his pants on stage. 8 mystery dates collectively sold for almost $1000
- a spot on the sold-out quantico leadership venture went for $500
- dinner with legendary financial markets professor siegel went for $675
matt and the follies producers
by the end of the night, we had topped $10,000 in the live auction. add in the ebay-style online auction and raffle ticket sales, this year's auction had brought in a whopping $15,180, blowing away last year's record by 63%.
truly the result of team effort from everyone who pitched in and amazing follies luv.
announcing that we topped $10,000
follies luv
raising money (i hate begging people for stuff), selling ideas, and rallying a crowd had not been my forte. so in fact i did get more out of this than i put in - proved that i could do things i thought i wasn't good at.
it's exactly what i came to b-school for: finding ways to stretch myself, discover new horizons, and have a ton of fun.
despite all the praise for organizing a record-breaking auction, i didn't feel as celebratory as i thought i'd be. it's probably a combination of adrenaline withdrawal and sheer exhaustion.
now that the auction's over, i really need to stop talking about it :) the work's not over, however. we now need to collect those $15k. hmm.
.. where can i find a few big guys with baseball bats?
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