CAPSTONE!

You Are Smarter Than You Think

First of all, I would summarize this week's work. This week, our team have done a lot of work for our project. We finalized our client's video, sent emails to potential clients, finalized our website, and the presentation. Tomorrow morning at 9:30,we will present our work to our client. We hope our client would satisfied with our work. Definitely we do our best!  The report is still on the way due to some editing work. 

Secondly, I would like give some advice to future Marketing Lucky Students. You will feel so lucky to have Drew Boyd, our director in your whole journey in Marketing study. He is always there to help you out! Also, I want to tell you that the Capstone will definitely change you a lot in many ways: your thinking, your behavior, the way you speak, the way you do things. When I talk to my friends, they admired at me because I could have a "Class" to learn how to get in touch with real clients in real world. It is something that you can not learn from classroom study, it is a real world learning in your life that you will not forget. It is also something that you transfer from what you have learned in class to what you could provide in real project. 

Last but not least, I would give you three advice. 

1. Contact your Client more frequently than you need. I would suggest that you and your team should call and meet your client many times during the process of the project. You need to know what your client think and what they want to change in any time so that you could have an updated information from your client. You never want to miss out.
2. Work Closely with your teammate, it doesn't matter whoever you work with, you should trust them all the time. If you are an international student, do not be afraid to discuss and give an advice to your client and teammate. You are an important element in your team as well. Do not step out from your teammate, they love to work with you! If you are domestic student working with international student, I believe that you could work with them well, sometimes if they do not discuss with the team is because they need time to think about things, give them enough time, they would surprise you! Be a little bit patient to listen to what their ideas are.  
3. Work Hard but in an efficient way. Know what you need to do whatever step you are standing. Write down things that are valuable to your project, not everything. You need to think the overall situation, not just a small part. Do and Choose the best way to your client. 

You will be surprised when you finished your project! You are smarter than you think!!!! Believed in yourself! 

 

On Being Single – Advice for Myself at the Beginning of The Capstone Experience

On Being Single – Advice for Myself at the Beginning of The Capstone Experience

No, I am not here to give you relationship advice – at least not in the romantic sense. Instead, as I look back on my capstone journey I reflect on the opportunity for personal growth that I chose to take out of the experience.

My advice? Before you begin your project, step back and assess the resources you have available. No, I don’t mean the number of Post-its you own (although I do love Post-its). Instead, take a moment from the rush of the day. Sit down and take time to assess yourself and your network:

What are your current strengths? On which tasks do you have to work harder than others? Are there any skills you know you want to refine? What are your biggest fears? What patterns have you demonstrated in previous projects that you want to kill or embrace? What about the task at hand looks the most challenging?

You, just like any other business asset have limits and strengths. Why not be honest with yourself and embrace what you bring to the table with self-transparency? Embrace the nuances that make you, you. Forgive yourself when it is something you anticipate struggling with. Instead, embrace you own quirks. Then, pull in a self-built team of individuals and resources to fill in those voids. Doing so will allow you to move forward strategically.

Next, whether you are or are not on a team, take a moment to assess what people you know bring to the table. How can you find outside resources to fill in the gaps between where you are and where you need to be to get the job done?  Your team does not have to just be your peers. If you work independently, it is important to build out a purposeful team along the way. Your team members already include Professor Boyd and your peers. However, you can build it out with industry experts, future mentorships, or other researchers.

As the Capstone experience closes, I am thinking forward towards future projects. For the next one, I will start with a mind map featuring myself at the core surrounded by individuals and topics of study – a glance at the expanded knowledge network that goes far beyond what one individual can provide. Taking the time to build this visual will remind myself how to strategically plan when to step away from my own rumination and gain a new perspective. If you are hard on yourself like I am, planning how to be the best, single individual and strategically ask for help will be a great skill, and one I look forward to continuing to build beyond this project.

Only Few Steps Left

WOW, it is only two weeks left for us to finish the project. Time flies, right now we have done 90% of the project. The video editing will be delivered today by noon, cannot wait to see how the video is. This week, we would contact the client to schedule an appointment later this week, our team wants to make sure everything is on the right track before the presentation. Additionally, we already sent some direct mails to the potential fitness trainers and executive coaches about our client's service. Furthermore, we already establish a website for our client's service, it is a simple one, but in the further process, we could suggest that the client should build a real one with a professional web developer. The website would be a little bit difficult to build up due to the confidential  thing with our client's service. It would be a special one to make because we need to create one that without any browser history, name, phone numbers, locations, and etc. For example, when a potential client visit the website and call, the phone number will no shown on the phone and no location track. It would make it a dynamic variable to the potential client to keep his/her feel secured. 

We would have a class today, and it is the presentation prep, we could like to see what we could do to make a better presentation. Check out my next blog!

Putting Together the Powerpoint

I am excited for class this week because we will learn the right format in how to put these PowerPoints together. I feel that I have so much information that I want to put it all on the PowerPoint anyways I know that's not what you are supposed to do. I just think this topic is very exciting to work. My hope is though that since Braxton is now moving in a direction of doing more with their coffee we are not to late to capitalize on this new product development/innovation tools project. We still want to wow them and show them their are a lot of ways still to increase the tap room sales than just trying to do it through a beer approach. As for class on Monday, I am excited to see how the other students put their PowerPoints together in my class because I feel I need some real guidance in this area. Then I could also take a chance to ask them how they are putting the paper stuff together. Anyway, it will be good to see everyone and see how the projects are coming together.

Drawing from Analogy

Do stock markets and movies have something in common.Well initially it seems they don't, but when your think from the perspective of our project, then it makes sense. This analogy was introduced to us by Drew in our last project review meeting and he gave us a different perspective on our project. We are researching more as to how can we incorporate it for our clients use and are also planning to meet Finance Professor in this regard.This will give an interesting perspective for our project.

Well, on the data and model side we have finalized everything and feels really good having gone through it all and finally having something that has been approved by our professor. Reaching this point had many challenges on the way. So, finally now we are putting everything together for the report and presentation and are looking forward to finalize the presentation date.Time seems to have gone by so fast with us working on this project.Anyways looking forward to the final lap.

 

Putting things together

As now we are approaching near our final phase of our capstone project, its time to put everything together for the client.There was some feedback sessions from our data analytics professor and looks like now we are now on track to finalize everything. He seems fine with our approach and work, now its also time for the second project review.I am looking forward to sharing the updates with Drew and keen to have his feedback.

So, post our our review with Drew we are looking to finalize a presentation  date with our client, and then put everything together for this last and crucial phase i.e. the delivery.It looks exciting as well as intimidating.Looking forward to put in our best in this final phase.

Finishing Research

This week we are finishing up the research and pulling together the PowerPoint. Excited because the more I do on the this project the more it grows and people provide different ideas and different directions that this project can go. Honestly at this point if I can provide the research I wouldn't be surprised if someone picked up this project and explore in a big time company. Only because the industry I am currently working in is on a huge explosion point right now. I can't wait to present the ideas I have with back up research! Glad I got put onto this project and I wish I had more time to take it straight to market.

More Data.More Analysis

The theme for this week was mostly data and analysis. After the meeting with our Data Analysis professor and his review, he suggested that we add some more data from the middle ranges of properties which we had missed out on and then perform our analysis again.So, it was again time for adding more data to our set and performing analysis.After testing the data rigorously with almost 35 tests, we have something that looks good.So, now again we have to get it reviewed by the professor.So, if all goes well with this review then looks like we are very close to final result.

Also, on the survey side we completed the responses and moved on to the analysis of the results.So, from there too we have some useful insights coming in which looks good.Hopefully, everything will fall in place and we will deliver something of value to our client.The coming week looks crucial and we aim to finalize everything and get set on the report and presentation part.

Growing Up

I think I learned a lot in this past week about myself and this project. I think I finally understood so much why they are being so hands off as a client and I just had to accept that I'm a full adult now and someone holding my had in any way, event a little, is not going to be there anymore. They except me to deliver a project in something they "don't know" and show them how it can benefit their business. They want it to be innovative but at the same time aliened with their core values. I think we are onto something great and the research is panning out so far in our favor. So just need to keep plugging away and hoping that everything comes together great!

Its Survey Time

This week was mostly about developing the survey in the tool and rolling it out.So apart from our analysis of the properties based on IMDB and Rotten Tomato ratings, we are looking at the customer decision process side to understand the factors that trigger and influence the buying decisions. There was some more work done on the model too, some of the questions have been answered while there are still some to be answered.So, today we have a meeting with our data analysis professor to get his feedback on the model we have worked on.Looking forward to the meeting today as we can fine tune our work and finalize it based on his recommendations.