Studio – Business Impacts of Social Networking

My reflective response on the “Business Impact of Social Networking “…

I found this article to be quite useful to me as a web designer because although I knew a lot about social networking in more of its’ executions – being a part of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. and especially with my current projects that seem to be centered around some type of social networking. – the article gave me a broader outlook on exactly how much social networking is effecting business practices.

It always seems that people have wanted to work from anywhere, right? No one ever really wants to go into work. They would rather conduct as much business as possible from their own home and only have to deal with the important things outside of from time to time. As it seems to be heading that way, social networking being used as a tool to increase overall business connectivity and communication and allowing employees to be mobile and conduct business from just about anywhere that would be convenient to the employee, the client, and the business. By practically bringing everyone to the same “page” or level of understand of what is going on within the company, we see a business where communication is key and can be referred to as needed.

Also, eveyone has their opinions and needs – for employees social networking gives them the opportunity to express their opinions, solutions, etc. that could benefit the company; as well, for customers it allows them to view what progress a business is making and therefore institute their needs as a consumer and in turn creating a level of inovation in the products for the business.

For those reasons, a business may see an increase in over all revenue because they will be more visible and accessible to its market because they would have an expansion of “‘reach,” marketing and advertising can become more dynamic, the costumer experience can be increased through “personalizing” their service needs with the company, as well as allow a business to find and address new markets.

Although there are a few challenges that social networking in business will have to face, the over all impacts do seem that they will or better yet…have made a significant impact and change in how we will communicate. As a web developer, I think I am starting to understand the idea of cloud computing a little more because of this article. If this, social networking, is the structure for such a thing as cloud computing, then I am more likely to accept the uses of such a concept.

In a new age of “change” – as the theme of this year seems to be going – we are starting to see a more “transparent” view of those things that we are involved with on a day-t0-day basis. By this, I agree that businesses will need to be ready to loose total control over their image, both to their employees and the public.

The outlook for myself a web designer, this could make a convincing argument for a different approach or more dynamic structure in design. To be able to allow and control things that are necessary, will prove to be a challenging aspect. Though, the road to inovation, as proven by track record, only seems to be limited to our imagination.

One Idea Mostly Figured Out…I Think…(Sr. Project Application & Defense)

Alright…so much thanks to the input and help of some people, I think I have one idea mostly figured out for one class (Sr. Project Application & Defense). Since this will be a very large project I figured it might be very good for a Capstone project. Plus, it is something of great interest to me, so that helps.

So, what is it? Well, I will go with a concept that will be basically a community and portal type site for all things that are Renaissance Festival related. I had actually developed the idea for this a while back ago, but I guess somewhere along the way I mostly forgot about it. Though I think now that by working on it, I may even be able to do more than I wanted to before.

Future outlook already tells me that there just might be a lot of back end kind of stuff, but that just might be the reason. I know that there is going to be a lot more that will be incorporated into this, but I cannot currently wrap my head around what but maybe a couple of them would be. However, the good/best thing is that I have a lot of resources in classmates and instructors for feedback. To get an idea of what I am talking about, the following links are the ones that kind of gave me my inspiration:

• The Scribe Network
• Faires.com
• The Crossroads Group
• Renaissance Faire
• Guild of St. Michael
• Renaissance Magazine

Unfortunately, I do not have very many resources as far as websites go (well Festival related anyways, though I do on an overall basis when talking about community sites), but I think you might get the idea of what kind of information I would be working with.

My idea springs to develop a more comprehensive site that really is more of a community structure (I am starting to see a trend in my websites), you know like Facebook or LinkedIn, but of course more geared to the Renaissance Festival/Faire crowds. It believe something like this would be very beneficial to a lot of people on the “circuit,” as it is known, to be able to connect with other Faire fold, keep track of each other, discuss things that are more related to the interest that they share in festivals around the world, and so much more.

Also, like many of the site above I want it to be a place that has all the information that one could need when searching anything about Renaissance Festivals and for that matter, anything relating to the Renaissance that might be useful for research in History, costuming, dialect, fighting manuscripts, and so much more. A place for those in this community to share their personal ideas and research in character development, tips and tricks, merchant exchange, and so on, instead of having to carry out these conversations on several different ‘Yahoo Groups’ for different topics, but rather perhaps have a forum area where all these things may be accessed.

Speaking of “searching” earlier, as you might have noticed in most of the sites above, not very many of them are easily searchable. In fact most of them just have a lot of words plastered all over the page that, to me personally and I am sure to many of you, could get to be quite overwhelming, especially when you are just looking for a particular bit of information on something. A listing of searched items would even be better than most of what I have seen in many of these. So I think a big part of this will be to make things less convoluted for the user experience. Actually, I have quite a bit of ideas that I would like to do with this website, but I will save a lot of that for discussions and development as things progress.

Whew! I am now a little less worried about what my project will be, especially since it will be something I will be working on for a while now. Now that I have that one figured out…I absolutely have no clue about what to do for my Studio for Interactive Media class. Go figure. *sigh*

A Dilemma For My Capstone Projects…

I’m having such a hard time on figuring out topics to do for either of my classes (Senior Project App & Defense and Studio for IM) for my Capstone Sr. Projects. I have two to figure out. One, I belive…as I understand it, is mostly just trying to put a project into the works and will be mostly reasearch based. The other, I actually have to build a website. I mean, to me this is pressing because I have to work with this stuff for the next few quarters that will be included in my portfolio.

Now, I have been doing so much research over the past few days, looking up trends, new developments and such. Though most of what I find interesting, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to incorporate that into a project that I could successfully have for my Capstone projects. Like, for instance….touch screens.  Now I don’t know about you, but until touchscreens become a lot more prevelant, a project that could incorporate that is practially impossible for a student with very little funding. Anyhow, I even found my old RSS aggregator that had a ton of stuff thinking that might help, but I apparently just don’t seem to be getting it.

I have researched every interest that I can think of: Martial Arts, Renaissance Festivals, Saving Polar Bears, Party Planning, Snowboarding, etc…all kinds of stuff, but I just cannot, for the life of me figure out what I would change or like to see done differently on any of them. Every time I do, I find things that have already been done and I can’t find any reason of why I would want to change it. If were suppose to have 20 pages or more, then definitely my ideas wouldn’t work, as those ideas just condense the amount of pages. I always thought that was the reason anyways…to make things easier, not have to go through so much to get to where you want to go.

I guess my biggest thing is that I’m always trying to figure out how they did something rather than what I how I could make it better. Doesn’t make sense to me why I would fix something that has already been done…a hundred times over. Just when I think I might have something, I find that it has already been done and so my idea would only apply to one website, where another website has already accomplished this ‘problem’ / idea. I really dislike this wording of finding a “problem.” A.K.A…a question proposed for solution or discussion requiring a solution. It’s really hard for me to pull something out of the air like this and I’m going to go nuts trying to figure it out. It would be one thing if I already knew what to focus on. There just seems to be so much going on out there and topics are so broad that I just do not seem to get it. How do people do it?

I was asked what my interest were and why I was taking web development and interactive media design. To be completely honest it really has to do with the final outcome of making a decent living. I’m going to learn how to do stuff, to be able to learn those things I wonder about so that I can have a library of knowledge to present my employer when “they” provide me with the problem.

A lot of my other interest really have nothing to do with web design really. I mean, they can have a place on the web, but I mostly use the web for email, research,  some social networking…and that’s pretty much about it, everything else is activity based. You know, actually doing stuff that requires moving around. I don’t really play games (the occasional Bejeweled on a small widget). I would like to, but one- I don’t really have the time, two-I can’t afford it.

You know, I really do not seem to grasp the whole concept of cloud computing just yet. The idea of my all my applications being online does not appeal to me at all. If my internet goes down (like it has been doing so very frequently in and out over the past few months) then I have no access to any of my applications or information. I don’t like that at all. Maybe if the online application was an addition to the application on the hardrive, then yes, I could most likely accept that concept.

Once upon a time I was good at innovation, but somewhere along the lines I have lost that ability. I am apparently better at helping people figure out solutions to things, but really suck at helping myself.
See my dilemma?  So, if you have any ideas or can offer any assistance, that would be great and I would appreciate it very much. Thanks for your considerations.

I’ll be posting more once I finally figure out what to do.