While working on the Social Media Project, we came across many obstacles. First, the company we chose was already taken, then we chose to do another company, after working diligently on the project, it came to pass that our company was already chosen again. So, mid-week we chose our third company an began working on it. We finally got our company, Gatorade. We all chose what sections we wanted to work on and began.
I initially just chose Wikipedia and Google Alerts and found sufficient information on both sites! As the week went on, it appeared that there were only a few members working on the project I began to get stressed out a bit. Finally it started to come together and members began to start posting or at least contacted me about working on the project.There was two members that I didn't hear anything from, and decided to fill in and get those sections done myself.
The project helped me to understand how companies use different ways to promote their products and how they use social media to connect with potential customers. It appears that some companies are more involved than others' and I think it just depends on the prestige of the company, whether or not they need to allocate additional resources to social media to improve their marketing.
The Database Project was a nice little project, I used Microsoft Access to do my project since I use a PC and not a Mac. I learned so much from the project being that I have never used Microsoft Access before the project. It was real intersting to see how you could import data from an Excel file and turn it to a nice readable table. The project gave me a sense of understanding on how to create a simple report or query, it also showed me how easy it can be to organize data once the database is created for the purpose desired. The only part that I think I will have some trouble with is remembering formulas and such to make validation rules and such.
"Images created by Christopher Ondrako, 2012. Permission granted to reuse with
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Thinking of ways to enhance the functionality of this database, I thought that we could then export the information back to Excel to create charts and graphs to see trends. These trends could range from Profit, length of membership, what part of year are people joining or cancelling. Another thing is that we could run the report, and those that cancelled, send surveys and offer promotions to return. The survey would give the company an idea on what is going right/wrong and we could adjust accordingly. It would also offer a sense to see if we would need to hire more employees for a certain time of the year or not.
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In my ISM3004 class at the University of Florida, I was required to complete an Excel project which included formatting a worksheet by creating formulae and Pivot Tables. The project was pretty easy for the most part. I had to use "Freeze Panes" to lock rows to be displayed at all times while scrolling up and down the page. I also had to create formulas for Maximum Heart Rates, Target Heart Rates, Highest Heart Rate Achieved, and to find whether or not the target was achieved. Most of this was pretty basic and nothing new to me except when I had to use the "IF" function, it was a new formula which I had never used and wanted to learn how to use. This function is real useful when checking whether a condition is met or not and is real useful.
The second step of the project was totally new to me. It involved creating Pivot Tables based on the Raw Data that we had. This manipulation is still somewhat Muddy to me, but with practice I am sure I will become more familiar with it and use it more often. The process of creating the Pivot Tables took a lot of trial and error and reviewing of lecture videos to get right. But having the ability to have data summarized and sorted in such a manner is very useful and convenient especially when dealing with a large amount of data. This project was extremely useful and informative, I can't wait to use this information in the Business World!
"Images created by Christopher Ondrako, 2012. Permission granted to reuse with
attribution."
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It was easier said than done. The Presentation project seemed easy enough and fun. When it came time to choose a subject, is when reality set in and I realized this was not going to be a cake-walk.
Preparing the ideas and creating the storyboard was the second obstacle I had to overcome as I have seen these for movies and such, but never paid any attention to them and were turned off by them so for me to face that alone was pretty difficult, luckily there were plenty of resources to gather information about creating a storyboard and I was able to put one together. After the storyboard I had to get down and dirty and start looking for images and other information that I wanted to use in my presentation.
Like I said this project seemed fun and easy from the beginning. It was one of those "Don't judge the book by it's cover moments." I mean, I did have fun creating the presentation, I just wish I had better hardware like a better mic and better software like garageband or something to easily create background music or something. Overall, with what I had to work with, I feel I did a good job, not great, but good.
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I feel that my presentation did flow well and I answered questions to how I would make the changes that I brought up. After watching my presentation a few times, I now feel that my introduction could have been more interesting, something to intrigue the audience or capture their attention. I didn't have any real data to validate any claims, it just seemed more common sense type of stuff that we should do to make these changes at my employer. Also one fellow classmate mentioned that one of my slides was hard to read and after reviewing it, I have to agree somewhat, it was a somewhat cluttered slide, kind of on the edge of being too cluttered I think. But I didn't want to make any changes because any changes to the slide would have made it feel more cluttered and expanding the information into two slides would have been too much. Also I feel that I did flow very well with the presentation, as I rehearsed it many times and had recorded the slide lengths in order to focus on narrating it at the appropriate time.
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