It was instruction at a level that I had never been exposed to. I had come across some truly great teachers in my prior life but this whole relationship driven, hands on learning approach was the new new thing. The professor was not a professor, the course was not a course. It felt like being let loose in my favourite warehouse at Amazon.com, there was so much on offer and so little time. And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world…
Three months later, the class project that later became Avicena was born. A year later the class project became reality. But then greed, ignorance and arrogance in equal measure conspired with the downturn and something truly innovative that Don Sexton had inspired on a late evening in early spring, withered away and died. And broke the hearts of the six individuals who were both involved and committed in Ken Morse terms. The experience left memories that were strong enough to sneak out as a 200 page e-book that refused to die and was finally released in print late last year.
On the 11th anniversary of the month that saw the concepts.com paper come into being, I went through my backups looking for the content we all wrote for Avicena. It was written to help others get over the pain of learning corporate finance and share some of the wonders of learning I had been blessed with at Columbia Business School. With the help of Fawzia and Talha Izhar we were able to recover portions of it.
On another late evening in early spring I put together the necessary evil parts of word press at the new Learning Corporate Finance blog and published the first complete Corporate Finance course at 4 am on 26th February 2010. The primary course authors were Ashar and Sharleen Zaidi (both at Intel Pakistan) with a little contribution from yours truly.
When Fawzia first recovered the back up and sent me the CSV file, I told her that I would probably end up with tears in my eyes when this decade old material would finally land on my blog. And so I did, just a little. I hope you enjoy this glimpse into the venture that you have heard so much about from me on this blog, through Blue Screen of Death and Reboot. Enjoy.