CSN

My dad was in the army so we moved around a little bit during my childhood. I was born in CA but did not hang around for that long because my dad was assigned to Frankfort, Germany. The general time period an army soldier will spend at one base is 3 years. So after Germany we went to Texas then back to Germnay then back to Texas. The last stop Fort Hood, Texas my dad decided to quit. Why at Fort Hood, I’ll never uderstand his reasoning. But overall the experience of packing up and moving to a new place never seemed like a big deal to me. The hardest part that I remember about moving around was those crazy stomache butterflies you get when you go to a new school for the first time. So if we jump to today, I’m planning a trip to SE Asia and feel a little nervous but not too bad. Communication seems like it would be the biggest roadblock that I will experience but I guess only time will tell.

I’m really curious what the technology landscape is like in SE Asia. Most of the region is still very developmental, I wonder what technologies would they benefit from the most. How is this technology being introduced into the culture. What are some the pitfalls they are experiencing. Are there companies taking advantage?

Tomorrow is my last final ever as an undergraduate student at UT. The experience has been amazing and I’m extremely happy that I made it. Being the first one in my family to graduate is a great feeling. As much as they loved me and supported me, they had no idea on how to give advice. All the friends that I met here at UT were the ones that gave the best advice. And I am proud to be able to help my children one day navigate through the craziness of college. As I reflect on the time I spent here, I know that its about the experience and who you meet. Overloading your schedule to blast through college in record time is an incredible feat, but missing out of everything else is a hard sacrifice. My recommendation is to live it up and find what makes you happy. 

Blogs are a great resource. They are a place that allows people to express themselves pretty much anyway they want. It’s a piece of history recorded from someone’s point of view. So why isn’t it working for this class? Easy! I don’t really want to read all of my classmates point of views on whatever subject they care to write about. That stems a serious problem. If I’m not reading my fellow classmates blogs, then I’m not commenting on everyone’s posts. This can be turned around and used against me. Because no one will really read my blog and comment on my blog posts. If no one comments on my blog posts then I begin to feel like its worthless to write anything at all. Why record my thoughts if no one cares to read them. My own personal reflection? Absolutely not! Well not on this particular blog site because I have no idea where my blog is going to go after the class is over. There’s no sense of ownership. So that’s why blogs will not work for this class!

nFusion has a recognition program where they spotlight multi-department teams who worked together efficiently and deliver a successful client project. The latest VENN award that was given out to all team members that worked on the Chili’s To Go online order system. I was fortunate enough to work on this project by taking the system requirement specifications and converting it individual tasks for the development team. I monitored the tasks and provided additional information when the development team was not clear on the requirements. The development team was given short deadlines and required additional help. They contact my supervisor and requested that if I had additional time to help them code some of the web pages. After hooking up the SVN server to checkout and download the base code I was sent off to code a few pages. It was interesting to see the project from a management view and developer view. It really helps to have experience in both categories to help make better decisions and understand why certain things work the way they do.  

One of the VPs at work sent us the following link:http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135897

The article makes a nice observation about online shoppers being plagued by indecision to buy when online. If a person were to go to the mall with some friends and find something they might want to purchase. There is a good chance that their friends would encourage them to buy it or find something they think would fit their taste. Vans.com appears to take the physical-world interaction and develop an environment to help people overcome their lonely online shopping experience by allowing customers to collaboratively design shoes with their friends. One of the key features of this new experience is the chat option within the page through standard chat programs like AIM. This is an excellent opportunity for companies to reach out to their customers without being overbearing. More companies should invest into this social shopping idea. Of course this isn’t the silver bullet that will solve all online retailers’ problems but I feel that it will help consumers complete their online orders. 

During our last lecture, the guest speaker from Bazaar Voice mentioned that they were able to use twitter to find new clients. This new way for b2b connections was very interesting to me. Every Monday morning we have a small company meeting where we talk about project updates, company news, and new clients. Last week one of the updates included news about gaining a new client. One of our VPs made a recommendation to this client, located in somewhere in the northern states, through LinkedIn. Because they were located outside of Texas it would have been unlikely that the two companies would have started any business talks. LinkedIn provided a platform for this business to post a SOE question onto their site and a use, our VP, to respond with a solution. It quickly matured from a simple question into a business opportunity. Companies should check out LinkedIn as a possible testing grounds for other companies when they need a type of service. It can help build personal relationships into business opportunites. 

The project requirements bomb was released today…  (even though we should have known)

Cake PHP, StedFast Platform, CCSS, SSH, FTP, API, OOP, etc 

Sure I know what some of those are and how to use them but not even close to being an expert. That’s even what I’m worried about. Time is my biggest concern. Trying to fit in more things in my schedule is going to be tough. Learning the CakePHP framework will take some time. As much as I want to blast through all the fun stuff it has to offer, I still have other classes. Sure they aren’t the hardest classes but they still require me to do some activities outside of class. This is my last semester… not trying to burn myself out completely before I start working. 

Can we get a ModLab day where you guys can break down some of the basics. The traditional Hello World, the one we thought was so stupid but helps connect a lot of the dots on how things work. 

Thanks for having Jeff lead the class discussion the other day. It’s great to have successful professionals come into class and give their insight on what’s coming in the future. Yesterday’s discussion on what we thought about Dachis was great. The class expressed confusion on Dachis interest with “Web 2.0″ technology because he didn’t see how to monetize the technology yet he has invested time (possibly some money) into its future. Maybe he is just doing a “better safe than sorry.” I feel that he was correct by stating that the getting everyone on the internet was the first phases of the future of the electronic communication. Is social communication the next big wave for the internet? Either way, there is a lot of money going to be spent in this arena.

I’m currently sitting at work writing this up because a nice packet showed up on my desk this morning for one of our clients, “Interactive Marketing Strategy Social Media Listening”. The packet is presenting a pitch to answer the social media opportunities available. Some of the technologies they plan on utilizing include: Facebook, Twitter, e-mail. Their goal is to acquire subscribers to each of the technologies and engage “2-way conversations” and “micro-targeting”. Encouraging employee’s to start blogs was another topic that appeared in the presentation. Smaller companies are investing more resources into the “Web2.0” world. The proper metrics to measure the success of their efforts is still open for suggestions. 

quick intro… 

This is my semester here at UT and ready to start something new. Decided to keep my last semester a little easy by only taking 11 hours: Lying and Deception, Jazz Appreciation, Social Networking, Weight Training, Scuba (which I might have to drop if I don’t pass the swim test), and I work 6hr/week at the SWAT shop in the basement of the CBA.  I am also working 24hr/week @ nFusion, a digit-centric marketing company, as an interactive project management intern. Last December I signed with PWC in Dallas to work for their Investigations group doing IT forensics.

What do I expect from the class?

My only expectation coming into the class was to learn how to create apps for one of the major social networking sites. Now that I have a better understanding of the class, I’m excited that will be having discussions about the technology and future of this era in the internet. The programming environment you guys are offering appears to be a huge time saver to get our app across all of the social networks in a timely fashion. But at the same time I’m trying to figure out why you guys are letting us use your system for free, lock-in?

sorry for the late post… forgot my password, took me forever to get back in.