Weekly Report #28: 04/06 - 04/13

Final Presentation Invitations

This week was focused upon final presentation aspects, such as invitations and guest lists for the event. To begin with, the invitations were created and drafted through a website, which allows for the creation of invitations with visual appeal through clipart and word art. Overall, this website provided me with the ability to create an attractive invitation to provide to my peers, an invitation which will hopefully induce the desire to come to the event within the recipients of the invitations. My invitation was founded upon a standard foundation, with a technological feel, due to my topic of study being software engineering. Furthermore, I also created a guest list to decide who would be receiving the invitations for Final Presentation Night. This guest list mainly includes peers, family, relatives, friends, school members, and other individuals who I feel will participate and enjoy the presentation provided to them on that night. Holistically, the invite list is increasingly important, for it is this list which will create the constituency for my presentation audience. This list will ensure the quality of my audience, providing me with the responsibility and power to control how my presentation is perceived and experienced to a certain extent.

Weekly Report #27: 03/30 - 04/06

Final Product Organization Finalization

This week was focused on Final Product for me. During these past seven days, I partook in two different paths of work for the product. The first aspect was the individual brainstorming. This brainstorming consisted of the mapping out aspect of my product, which included me mapping out the various steps in my program. Within this, I had to consider the various aspects which are inherent within every single type of communication possible in this world. Such universal characteristics were the driving force for my mapping out, as I was able to dictate and assign essential values and variables to these necessary facets of communication. The second part of this mapping out process which occurred this week was my discussion with my mentor. During our conversation, Mr. Christianson was able to point out numerous ideas which I could implement within my program to ensure its display as a more holistic perspective of communication. Most importantly, however, was the discussion over the final product itself. We decided to make a large change to the overall structure and purpose of the product to ensure that it may impact and have a broader scope upon a wider range of society. This change will now allow my product to be much more significant and impactful than before.

Weekly Report #26: 03/23 - 03/30

Final Product Construction and Call Analysis

The majority of this past week was focused upon my planning and brainstorming for my final product. I had a mentor visit earlier in the week, on the Monday, and I was able to converse with my mentor upon the next steps and my progress within the process. Overall, the discussion went extremely well. We were successfully able to delineate the necessary steps to completion of the project, including the progress completed so far. This would allow me to have a strong structural foundation for my path of Final Product completion, as I would understand how and when to complete each aspect of the project. As of now, I am in the organization/brainstorming stage, in which I am simply mapping out the program which I will be creating for situational communication. Though the programming itself will take time, the organization and mapping aspect of such will ensure that my time spent programming will be constructive and well-directed in creating code which will initiate desired and structured results. The progress so far has been astounding, and I hope to continue this path into the bright future which I see ahead for this product.

Weekly Report #25: 03/16 - 03/23

Analyzing Corporate Organization

This past week, my focus was upon analyzing my experiences listening to my mentor’s pipeline call. This analysis provided me great perspective into leadership as a whole, both on a corporate and on a personal level. A pipeline call is simply a call done every two to three weeks, in which all team members are connected to. Within this call, the leader of the team, who in this case was my mentor, will facilitate discussion in various aspects. He will discuss the overall goals of the company, the future of this team, and how the team members can successfully reach the desired epitome of success marked by correct utilization of their individual potential. The effectiveness of such a call is solely dependent on the team leader, for if he or she lacks the capability to reign in the team’s focus and aspirations, then the team loses its unity and camaraderie, thus intruding upon its effectiveness. My mentor, in the pipeline call which I listened into, was extremely effective in how he portrayed the necessary information in a personable, yet productive fashion, a manner which maximizes the efficiency of each team member, and thus allows for the team to be more capable of reaching long-term goals. Overall, this call demonstrated the various aspects of leadership, and how such can be aggregated and utilized in a powerful spectrum of success.

Weekly Report #24: 03/02 - 03/09

Understanding Management and Leadership

This week was focused on my mentor visit. During my mentor visit this week, I was able to converse with my mentor for much longer than the usual hour allotment, as this week, the mentor visit was for two hours. This visit consisted of two different activities: listening into his calls with his team members, and discussing final product ideas with my mentor. To begin with, I listened into various calls which my mentor was leading with various members of his team located across the nation. These calls demonstrated numerous aspects of his leadership and management capabilities and requirements within his relationships with his team members. To begin all of his calls, he began on a personal note, a simple discussion of how the other member was doing. This small talk was a necessary prerequisite to developing a positive relationship with all of his team members, allowing for increased satisfaction, camaraderie, and desire to work well for the team as a united team. Next up, my mentor continued on the call by focusing on the member’s three biggest clients and his or her progress in each respective case. Overall, the attitude in which each client is discussed, combined with how the progress is displayed, provided my mentor with great input on holistic progress of the team, while also providing him with a successful assessment of team success. Furthermore, my mentor and I were able to discuss my Final Product by mapping out the idea which we would utilize. This was essential in how it allowed me to understand the path for the future, and therefore follow it accordingly.

Weekly Report #23: 02/23 - 03/02

Reworking the Blog

This week was focused upon a singular entity, which was ensuring that my blog is up-to-date and presentable to viewers. I focused upon ensuring that all of my assignments were posted correctly on the website. This included my research assessments, interview assessments, evidence of learning assignments, speeches, and mentor information. The purpose of such was to allow viewers to follow my ISM journey through my blog. They should be able to understand all that I have been able to accomplish and what I am on track to complete as effectively and efficiently as possible. Holistically, this will not only allow for critiques for me to learn and change my path through, but also, it shall provide me with a secondary perspective through which to witness how I have grown and matured throughout this journey. Overall, this blog will serve as an everlasting memoir and record of the work I have done this year, allowing me to reminisce upon the past in the future. Furthermore, this everlasting aspect of the blog will force me to ensure that my work will be as perfect as possible, for the motivation of this project never being deleted will ensure that I put in my best work at all times to make sure my work is not embarrassing, Holistically, this project serves as not only my marker for my progress for my journey, but more importantly, it will serve as an impetus for my success in this path.

Research Speech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4sk9qc44uw&feature=youtu.be