There seems to be a lot of information at the English Yellow Pages, including a section on accommodations with reviews. Let me know if you use it and if it works out. Safe travels this weekend (especially to football in Rome).

The strategy lecture note is posted on the website on the Syllabus page. This is another link to it. There is also a one page Strategy Checklist available for you to review before the visits.

Have a great weekend and meet me at the Santa Maria Novella train station no later than 8:30 on Monday morning for the trip to Santa Tea. You can come a little early and get a coffee at the train station, or even something from the McDonalds inside the train station.

On Wednesday we will stop for lunch in Viareggio along the beach after visiting the artisans in Pietrasanta (we will see marble, bronze and mosaics). The bus will leave to get us back to Florence around 3pm, but you will be able to stay out at the beach longer (if the weather is good) and ride the train back to Florence in the evening.

I am working to determine the time we will return on Thursday, but right now I am not sure. We should know more on Monday. Let me know if you’ve arranged travel for Thursday evening and we can make sure that your schedule is feasible with our trip to the marble quarry and trade show.

Here’s the article if you’d like to read it.

I would like for you to check one thing for me today: Can people in my class see if they can access the bios/pictures/phone numbers for the family business class student (BADM 2893)? And can the family business students see if they can see the same info for the students in OPIM 4893?

Send me a note or post a comment here. Thanks.

Another way to contact me is to go to one of the pages you can access and leave a comment. I have the website set up to alert me when changes or comments are made, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

I noticed some people have already been able to get to their journal pages and make changes. Some others have gone to their page and clicked on the “Add Comment” to leave a comment. That is fine, but I would also like you to click on the “edit page” link (at the top under page tools) and actually add something on the journal page itself, just to get practice doing that.

And thanks to the few of you that fixed your phone numbers on the “Particiapnt” pages. I have added others that were handwritten in class. Let me know as soon as you have a phone number, just in case we need to get in contact with each other.

Read Benihana and National Cranberry for our discussion on Wednesday. Let me know if you have other questions or concerns. You also have the option of leaving a comment here (in addition to comments on the wiki or email to me).

The Paris-Pisa flight is in and the students are on the bus to Florence, but stuck in rush hour traffic. I will head over to the train station to meet them, probably between 7:30 and 8:00. I hope it is not too much later.

They are in Florence, and here is a group picture of the students, with Santa Maria Novella in the background:

The Rome-Florence flight arrived on time and the students looked tired but fine. The Paris-Pisa flight arrives this afternoon, and I will meet the bus when they arrive in Florence to say hi. Orientation starts on Saturday morning at 8:25, and will be held in a nice place called Fiesole, on the hills overlooking Florence. Sunday, if it doesn’t rain, there will be a picnic in one of the parks in Florence (Cascine). Not far from Palazzo Rucellai.

Here are some random pictures from the airport:

The material you received from Palazzo Rucellai should have included the phone numbers for the school there, in case someone needs to contact you while you’re in Italy. After the first day, you will also have an Italian cell phone number that they can call with the appropriate international calling prefixes. As a final back up, people can feel free to contact me on my Italian cell phone. The local number there is 346-626-3146. From the US, the number would be

It is almost time to finish packing and get to the airport for the Florence summer study abroad program. There are answers to questions on the wiki, but if you have others, let me know. You can post a comment to the blog, a comment on the Question and Answers page on the wiki or email me directly.
I will take pictures of everyone over the weekend and update the participant pages (post your short bio if you haven’t already) and get them on the wiki so that we can all get to know each other more quickly.
For class on Monday, we will talk about how the course will operate (we’ll go over the blog and wiki a bit more) and we will also analyze (together) a couple of cases. I will post the cases on the wiki for you to read and will talk to the people at Palazzo Rucellai about hard copies. There may be a small charge for the cases and copying, but I’m not sure the exact amount yet. But there will be no book for the class, and the cost should not be very high.

All of the students that will be joining the program at Palazzo Rucellai should have received an email with instructions for accessing this blog and the class wiki. Contact me if you have not.

I am looking forward to meeting everyone next Friday. We should have a great time together in Italy.