What a day @ Dublin Web Summit

Dublin Web Summit, for those uninitiated few, is europe’s biggest technology conference and also one the largest in the world. The third edition of this phenomenal event saw around 10,000 delegates and 350 speakers. This event has always on my radar in the past years but didn’t materialise for one reason or the other.

This year, since I am in Dublin, I thought this is too close to be missed. Given the scarcity of time in an intense course and no better way financially to be part of this event,  I signed up for volunteering.  After half a day’s of intense volunteering starting early morning from 6am until the afternoon, it was only around noon that the actual event began to sink in for me – The RDS was literally flooded with the best of best in the technology industry. Great startup stalls from around the world, small stages for startups to pitch to VCs & big stages dedicated for various popular themes like cloud, digital marketing etc. For renowned speakers this was all meticulously planned and well executed. Hats off to the organisers, there was a great buzz and a nice informal atmosphere for chatting on ideas and getting inspired. It was a surprise and a pleasure chatting with the folks from Atlassian, great product company providing nice, intuitive tools for online collaboration and agile, which we used in my last organisation.

On the speakers front, one of my favourite speakers was Bonin Bough from Mondelez international who mesmerised the audience with his energy and insights on mobile marketing.  It was a revelation to know “more than 24% of media is consumed on a mobile device but only 1% of the spending happens through it”.

A highly recommended video – http://new.livestream.com/websummit/DigitalStage2013/videos/33544191

Incase you missed, the following are some great online repositories to view these exciting speakers –

Digital stagehttp://new.livestream.com/websummit/DigitalStage2013/videos/

Theme stageshttp://new.livestream.com/websummit/

So, looking back, how did I feel about the event. Oh well, it surely was great craic!!!























Sundaresan Balasubramanian,

FT MBA 2014.

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Beginning of a new journey.

Every once in a while, I look back on the journey in life so far and look ahead to what the future has to offer. One of those introspective trips planted the seed of thought of changing the status quo.  I could feel a void that a change in job/role or internal organizational training couldn’t fill.

The business side of a venture has always interested me and I felt that an MBA from a world-class institution would lay a strong foundation to build a career upon.  Having lived in Ireland for almost six years now, the UCD Smurfit MBA was at the top of my list.  A bit of information gathering over internet, talking to alumni and attending a breakfast lecture session helped me make up my mind.

As I’m gearing up for a change of direction, here is my take on the expectations from the MBA @ UCD Smurfit.


  1. Experience a world-class business education.
  2. Learn from diverse peers both inside and outside of the classroom.
  3. Build a good network of people with shared interests.
  4. Get a wider perspective on business to enable my transition to more commercial focused roles from my past operational focused ones.
  5. Have a bit of fun and form great friendships for life.


So this is me, Sundar (you may try Sundaresan Balasubramanian for a tongue twister), a Full-Time MBA student with nine years of global work experience in telecom with the likes of Ericsson and Verizon, looking forward to an amazing journey ahead.


Sundaresan Balasubramanian,

FT MBA 2014.