Wrapping Up the Semester

So, over all, this semester has been great! It has been super crazy with all my school work and hard exams, but I still had a blast. If you recall from my first blog post, I finished my mission on New Year's Eve last December, so it has been really fun getting back into school. Even though I have had large amounts of work throughout the semester, I have also been able to have a great time! Here is a link that will pretty much sum up my winter semester; skiing :) I love to ski, it is my greatest passion and I was fortunate to be able to go many, many times! All the footage in this video was taken by my GoPro on a family trip to Snowbird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9kPXNV8FfE&list=LLNu05zssET63ZquMogrqkiQ&index=2 

First Experience with Qualtrics

So this week I decided to try out Qualtrics. I have seen a couple surveys made through their site and they are really cool! I made my own survey two days ago, and to my surprise, 55 people have already completed it! It is way cool to mess around with it and see how it works, and of course the best thing about it is that it is free :)

Here is the link to the survey if anyone else would like to take a look:
https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8CvbXa2tU55yXOd

The cool thing about Qualtrics surveys is that it also shows reports. Here are the links to the report given by Qualtrics and also the report that I exported into a Google Doc
https://qtrial.qualtrics.com/CP/Report.php?RP=RP_9LxR57cYVhSlRHv 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uG0dcEprvRraE-AQM5iDqiX6itbpmwq0jLkJvfNHOic/edit?usp=sharing

I thought that all these things are super cool and I will for sure use this again in the future.

I Guess Blogs Can Work....

I just wanted to write a quick blog post testifying that blogs actually can be successful. I never really understood the importance of learning the basics of blogging because I never really thought that it could make a difference. I was wrong :) One of the topics in the mini conference is about blogging and how it can be used in a business manner and not just recreation.

What really proves this to me is my sister's blog. About 4 years ago she started a very simple blog with just some creative ideas of things that she had made for her home and her infants/toddlers. So many people liked her ideas that she began to sell clothing patters for children and some house decorations. Now, she has professional models she makes tons of sales and makes lots of money because of the simple blog that she had started.  Here is a link to her blog if you would like to check it out!

http://www.peekaboopatternshop.com/

I'm Starting to Feel Professional!

This was a very fun week in MCOM. I got two see two different styles of presentations that I enjoyed very much. Even though they were two very different styles, they both communicate the purpose in a very clear and effective manner.

The first style of presentation that I watched was a very formal consulting presentation. This style of presentation involved a very professional PowerPoint and team participation. Each team analyzed multiple complaints for a company, wrote a formal report with recommendations, and presented this information to the ‘board of directors.’ There was a very professional feeling in the room while each time was presenting.

The second style of presentation was a conference presentation using a flip chart. This presentation was especially interesting to me because I have never used a flip-chart, or even seen one before. A flip-chart presentation, even though without a very organized PowerPoint, is a great way to present information in a very friendly and effective way. I was surprised at how well this style captured my attention and how easy it was to understand and learn the topic that was being presented.

 I have already presented my formal consulting report, but am yet to present at the business convention. I learned a lot about formal presentations and working with PowerPoint and am excited to see how I do working with a flipchart. I am sure that I will learn just as much with this style as I did the former. I am sure that I will be applying the skills that I have learned/will learn about presentations in my future work career.

Good Work Team

Man, am I glad that this week is over. I really enjoyed doing the team consulting project and presentation, but it was so much work. I have never met together with a group so much. Our group, Brethren Consulting, met up on Saturday mornings and late at night; we even got kicked out of the Tanner Building because it was so late that the building closed. Even though it may not have been so enjoyable working so much, I feel that we worked very well as a team.

We presented on Thursday and we rocked it. Our presentation went really well! After doing all the work on this assignment I started to feel like a professional :) One thing that is cool, is that we did so much research about our topics that we really did become 'professionals' in that branch. When questions were asked at the end of our presentation, we were able to respond with a clear, concise answer.

Even though we finished one presentation, there is still a big one coming up! I will be presenting my five-minute masterpiece in a couple weeks. I really like presenting, so I think that it should go well!

Professional Networking Event (extra credit)

Today I attended an event of the BYU Management Society. It was located at the clubhouse of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Orem. I thought it was super awesome and I learned a lot. Also, lunch was included : )

The topic of the meeting was about innovation; DNA of an innovator. It was interesting because the speaker, Jeff Dyer, talked about many things that I am currently learning in marketing and in MCOM! It was really cool to see how some of the things that we are learning actually apply in the real world. In this post, I will talk a little about what I learned at the event.

The first thing that I learned is that innovators love to challenge the status quo. They like to think outside the box and do something that, sometimes, is not completely normal. However, it is by this way that the next billion-dollar idea can be brought about.

Second, the speaker emphasized that we are all more creative than we think. Part of our creativity is genetic, but we can develop our creativity. We can do a couple things to help spark a creative thought. One, we can modify things that already exist. If we do this, we already have a HUGE head start. This gives us a strong basis to follow. In addition, he explained that creativity loves constraint. It is hard to think of ideas when we have no constraints. When we have such a broad topic, it is hard to narrow down on a solution. If we have, however, specific constraints, we will develop specific answers.

The last thing that I really liked was the idea of acting differently. Sometimes people believe that innovators need to think differently. However, innovators need to act differently, and this will lead to a different thinking process.  

Overall, I loved the event and I took many notes. I plan to apply all of these things while I am here in school, but also later in my future career.

Go Team!

By this part of the semester, we have moved on to doing less individual work and more teamwork. I really enjoy working on team projects because I feel that this is what I will be doing most during an internship or my future career. The assignment for the team analysis project was introduced to us not that long ago and we have to write a multi-paper consulting report and present next Thursday! It has been a little stressful trying to get everything done, because we are far from it, but we have been working together very well as a team. Multiple times already we had met together to plan the next step and work on our report.

For our project, we chose to research and present a consulting plan to Vivint. We decided to select this company because they are a relatively new company and they still have many things that they need to improve to have better customer satisfaction. What we overlooked, however, is what kind of solutions we could possibly develop. After analyzing many complaints for the company, we realized that it will be a challenge to develop plausible solutions. Many problems deal with ethics which is a hard thing to change. The best solution is to replace management, but that is not really something you can do. By meeting together and planning, we were able to develop some logical solutions that will fix this problem.