Welcome to the Fall 2008 Brand and Product Management blog! My name is Kyle Gore and I am a First Year student in the CBPM. My picture is not the best as it looks like I swallowed a ham, but that is neither here nor there. I will serve as the Blogmaster (not my choice of title) for 2008-2009. It will be my job to give you a snapshot into my experience at the Wisconsin School of Business and try to give you an idea of what makes our community so great. Let me start by saying that I won’t be the only blogger, which is good for you. Our goal is to fill the blog with different information from professor interviews and current class discussions to social outings and weekend excursions. Blogs are only effective if they are interactive so please post your comments or feel free to add insight, however poor it might be--just kidding.

To give you an idea about my background, I moved to Madison from Atlanta, GA where I lived for the past four years. My fiancée (we got engaged July 5th in Mexico) moved here with me as well and just recently found a job, which is good as we need the cash flow and she was getting pretty bored. I am originally from Texas, growing up in the DFW area. I graduated from Texas Christian University in 2002 with a degree in Marketing. My first job moved me from Dallas to Phoenix and then to Atlanta so I have been transient since graduating. What do those cities have in common—very hot weather. What does Madison not have—very hot weather. It is only the middle of September and it gets chilly in the evenings. Everybody tells me that it snows in Wisconsin, but I won’t believe it until I see it.

Let me bring you up to speed on where we are. We are in the third week of classes after two weeks of orientation so week five in all. I turned in my first paper of the year this afternoon. Granted, it was not a long paper and I had my fair share of graphs, but it was a paper nonetheless. When you aren’t use to writing papers, this is a big deal. I am big on metaphors so I would describe this time of year like staring out at the ocean as storm clouds gather on the horizon. The weather is nice where you are now, but you better enjoy it as it is going to get nasty pretty soon. That is what I feel like. Two weeks from now, I will be subsisting on Red Bull and prayer as group projects, mid terms, and research papers seem to be due at the same time. As the semester rolls on, I will give more details on classes and projects and my level of sanity, which is questionable to begin with.

Below are pictures from the GBA (Graduate Business Association or MBA Student Council) Welcome Back Party at the conclusion of orientation. The theme was The 80s so we dressed up in our best “Members Only” jackets, neon-colored polos, and mullets. The Brand Center took pride in winning both Best Dressed Male and Female with Brian Ward and Katie Daggett taking home the prize. Have to say that it was pretty fun to bust out the clothes I wore during undergraduate theme parties for this event. Bust is the operative word as I have apparently put on some weight in the past six years, but tight was in in the 80s, wasn’t it?
Tomorrow is a big evening as General Mills is taking the first year Brand students to Restaurant Magnus for dinner. Yep, you heard me. A company that all of us would like to work for is coming to campus and wants to take us to dinner. This is apparently pretty common as this will be the second dinner we have gone to and it is only week three. Magnus is a very nice restaurant so they aren’t doing this on the cheap either. Friday, I will give you a run down from dinner.

Time to hit the books as this has been a nice study break. Normally my entries won’t be this long, but I just wanted to catch everybody up.