It's been over a year since my last post. At the beginning of 2008, I basically burned out on blogging. My hands hurt, I developed other interests, there were too many blogs out there, and I needed to spend more time with my family. None of that has changed for me, but outside of those areas there are some things that have changed that are making me reconsider blogging again on a more regular basis:

Situation for consultant #1:

When I first started as a management consultant back at Pittiglio Rabin Todd & McGrath, one of the hardest things for me to grasp was the concept of "client facilitation". Many of the consultants I knew where eager to apply standard MBA frameworks like Five Forces (for competitive and profitability analysis), NPV and financial analysis tool, statistical regression, and the marketing 3Cs/STP/4Ps, but few talked about client facilitation in explicit terms.

I just ran across Kellogg's Post MBA Program, which is targeted at people that have MBAs that have aged more than ten years. This is an interesting market to target, and not one that I've seen before.

A more detailed curricula is outlined in their brochure, which is prefaced by text including the following:

Here Comes Another Bubble (for the entrepreneurial startup types)

Evolution of Dance (I wish I could dance like this)

Ford Harding has an interesting post entitled, "Is Selling Practicing Your Profession?" He takes the side of the argument that those who sell (e.g., partners in professional services firms, senior engineers) are indeed practicing their profession. But there are those that may argue (e.g., in the case of an engineer) that such and such a person is no longer an engineer because he or she now sells.

Close to two years ago eBay acquired Skype for $2.6 billion. Today I read the news that the synergies are not playing out (surprise, surprise) and eBay will take charges of $1.4 billion, most of which is attributed to the acquisition writedown. From Bloomberg.com:

For a snapshot of what I am sensing in 2007: