Social Media Project

      
Social Media Project link : http://ism3004.wikispaces.com/Sprint


         The social media project was a project that took quite a while to complete. It was a different type of project from the other ones because the one requirement was to work with a few other people as a collaborative effort. At first, I thought it was going to be very difficult considering this is an online-type class, but it turned out to be easier to communicate than I thought. Using a combination of email correspondence and the discussion board, I think we effectively created a detailed wikipedia on the social media effort of Sprint. 


       We decided on Sprint because one of the team mates worked for Sprint and had some background knowledge into their social media efforts. Doing my part, which was researching and typing the YouTube, Wikipedia, and other social media, I learned a lot about Sprint. They had a much more extensive campaign than I was aware of. They use YouTube to market their 4G network and allow for viewers to respond positively or negatively about it. They also categorize individual phones that are on sale at the Sprint stores so that potential customers can read reviews or post one. 

wikicommons

     The Wikipedia portion involve describing the details of the company and how it evolved as a company, but it only gave the cold hard facts. I don't think wikipedia is one of the better forms of a social media outlet just because as an interactive encyclopedia, it's important to stay objective. Other than generating interest by participating in the research, I don't see how this would be a great place to advertise. 

simplyzesty

       Twitter was a great area that Sprint excels in. The @sprintcare was a great idea to take care of individual problems while allowing other people to see the resolution. One of my team mates, Burton, wrote about this and said that he saw many more replies when @sprintcare was used than when the @sprint was used. Twitratr was a problematic part of the project, because I think it didn't accurately reflect Sprint as a corporation. Many of the people that tweeted were tweeting about negative problems with their phones because they were seeking out service. 

Project- Microsoft Access

Microsoft Access is a very useful tool in the business environment, but one that I have never had a lot of experience with. I think this project helped me learn many things that I can take with me in my future career. It wasn't an extremely complicated project but one that made me go through the general aspects of Access so I could understand how all of the data are connected. The table activity showed me that I need to be aware of different "date formats" when trying to modify it. I realized the dates for "Date Left" were all in text format when they should've been in date format. The form creation taught me about how forms are created for the common person to enter data and how it should be made as easy as possible as to avoid confusion. The Query activity showed me that you can pull a very specific set of data and organize it as well. The report activity required me to take the query that I created and make a report out of it. This showed me the obvious reasons access has been vital to a company's core record keeping, because the information can be obtained and organized easily. Further, it can be put in a format that is easy to understand for people who are in charge of making decisions within a company. 


Maybe some additions to the database would include a form for exit memberships. In the instructions it was shown that the date for the end of the membership wasn't necessary because you can't fill out information on someone who is signing up and include the date they ended it as well. I do agree with that but there needs to be an easy way to modify this information about an exiting member through another easy-to-use form. Maybe include some other information on the exit form such as the reason they decided to leave. Another modification is to include more information on the new membership form. Simply filling in a postal address doesn't seem to keep up with the times. It would be nice to have such information as an email address or a phone number so these people can be contacted through other ways than regular snail mail. Another category could be "How did you hear about us?" this can be used for obvious reasons so that marketing decisions can be made to possibly increase membership. 

Excel Project

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Excel2007.PNG

This week I dedicated to completing the excel project. It started out with completing the scavenger hunt which was filled with answers to questions about the basics of excel and also detailing some of the more advanced functions. At first it wasn't clear to me why this "scavenger hunt" had to be done, but as I started on the project itself, that paper I completed became much more useful.




The Project!
The first part of the project required you to download the master excel file from the e-learning website. I was relieved because I had an excel project in my head that I had assumed we would have to supply our own data. As I opened the file, I realized there were TONS OF NUMBERS!

It started out easy enough, manipulating the font and changing the alignment. I did come to some trouble with freezing the panes. I found the button to actually freeze the panes, but could not figure out why it would not freeze the panes I selected. After doing some googling, I found out that the selector on excel had to be on the area BELOW the panes you wanted frozen, simply highlighting the panes to be frozen wouldn't work.The entering the functions went smoothly. I could do the absolute and relative 
functions with ease. The area I ran into some trouble was the "IF" function and after an hour or so of rereading the instructions and seeking help elsewhere, I figured it out. After that I had to manipulate the workbook to print exactly as the instructions said and I figured it out quickly (Thanks to the videos!).


The Pivot tables were easy as well, it simply involved taking the raw data and presenting it they way the fitness center would like to see it.


What I learned
I knew some background of excel before coming into this project, but I also learned a substantial amount I think I can carry over to other classes and more importantly a future career! I vaguely knew about the conditional and relative functions, but I was stumped on how to deal with them. It simply involved inserting a "$" in front of the row and column you want to keep absolute. So Easy! The pivot tables were another thing I had no idea about. I liked the ease at which Microsoft Excel was able to recognize data and words and be able to allow me to categorize which data I wanted and filter the ones I didn't need out of it.

Screenshot taken by Brad Amidon

Here is the screenshot of my pivot table of the average percent increase in heart rate from start to finish. These were grouped in to age groups (by decade). 

Project- Presentations

Presentation Projects


Self-Critique 

Overall, I think my presentation was a good representation of what was in the rubric. There was several hours that went into this project and I hope there will be a good grade to come of it. I think there was a logical flow of content and the information flowed smoothly. It could've been improved by not going into as much detail about their efficiency strategy, but I felt like that really had to hit home with the viewers of the presentation. I think I anticipated questions the viewers might have had and I think they were placed correctly. A good example is talking about how they do compete with larger supermarkets and giving examples how they make the profits to compete. 
As far as grabbing the attention of the audience, I think I could've done a better job at that. I did mention how many stores the chain had and I thought the amount was pretty amazing. Somewhere I thought I also lacked was asking questions that sparked curiosity. There could've been more of that but, honestly, there are so many other creative ways of engaging the viewers interest instead of asking a question. 
The conciseness of the presentation I had trouble with at first. I could not get the time below the 3-minute mark and realized that I had to reorganize my entire presentation because there were just too many superfluous details. After reorganizing it a bit, I think I really only spoke about the core of Aldi's strategy without getting bogged down into the details too much. 
I think I did a good job of validating the claims that I did have. One example would be the low prices Aldi has, I used a survey from MarketForce which is a very reputable organization. I executed all of this without making any spelling errors, typos, or unbelievable claims. I did mess up talking a little bit, but I blame that on my nervousness when speaking into the microphone. I avoided clutter as much as possible, trying to keep my slides concise and to the point without requiring too much reading on the audience's part. I contrasted the colors very well and went slow enough to understand. I also ensure readability by using animations to highlight the area I was speaking about as I was speaking about it. 


Looking at the other presentations and evaluating them, I realized that I didn't have to do a complete talking presentation. I should've tried to convey the message other than just speaking about it. Possibly through though-provoking pictures, and shorter concise messages to convey a larger meaning. I thought too many animations and other media would negatively impact the signal-to-noise ratio of my presentation. I could've chosen to make my own presentation but I liked doing the case study on Aldi. I chose Aldi, because I was in one not too long ago and thought their strategies were very unique and "bare-boned" and it intrigued me. 

Presentation Aldi: Value through Efficiency