Last class!

So for our last class the presentations for okay. I especially liked the presentation that tried to use and integrate acting into their work. I thought it captured my attention more than all the rest of the presentations. I think I would like to see more acting and use of theater in the presentations however I don't think that some or most people think that its appropriate. I think they feel that sticking to more traditional methods such as the power point is more acceptable than anything else. This can make presentations boring and cliche, and it may not always keep the viewers attention. I've also noticed that some groups bride attention and possibly grades by giving out candy and cookies. I really don't think approach works to well either. I will just be eating something while NOT paying attention to you presentations. I'm not saying that you are doing a bad job or that you didn't put work into your stuff. But it is the last class hence my lack of attention towards everything. So with that I'd like to say that I was satisfied with this class and the information I learned while taking it.

Thanks

Chris

First impressions!

The presentations that I viewed on Monday were interesting and I think the one that peaked my interest the most was the Pixar presentation. The presenters had good form although their presentation was a little long I believed they did a good job in keeping the information relevant to the issue at hand. The BP presentation I thought was way to long it had upwards of 30 slides! I think that if you properly research and prepare your slide show should not nearly be as long. But they did come together in the end despite that fact. I'd like to talk a little more about Pixar and the company itself because it is something that interests me. Pixar is an animation company that depends on computers and cg equipment to complete its projects and movies. The process is an interesting one and it goes something like this. The artists start by drawing up concepts from a creative guide, often put together by the art director. This guide is the starting point for all creative tropes and ideas for the film/animation. The art then makes its way to the 3D modelers who model the two dimensional images in 3D space. The modelers then hand of the model to riggers who rig the model with animation features, such as joints, bones etc. They then texture the model and send it off to the rendering farm to render the full image of the model. This is a fascinating process and one that I was thinking of during the Pixar presentation.

Power, and the people that wield it!

So we have been speaking a lot about power lately. I'd like to take this moment to highlight some situations and people that may have power. I am trying to re-imagine power in the hands of the common folk. Taking action is one piece of power we all hold. This is my most crucial point I'd like to make. To not take action in a situation of opportunity is a waste to say the least, and at the most it is a waste of your own personal power to change and to act on your surrounds. I think people in general seem to minimize the power they have as a collective and seem to concentrate power in their mind on the upper class. Now that we have the internet one could even argue that the lower classes have more power since they have opportunities to come together and share ideas and power. This is unconventional wisdom of course and their is no evidence to back this sort of conclusion up. It is also my personal opinion and I realize it may not hold much water but I really do believe that sort of being chained and locked up I think we all hold some amount of power in society.

Business Exercise; Incompetence?

So corporate exercise was interesting and I thought it was overall a good experience to have gone through even if I thought it might have been mismanaged at some points. I'd like to offer a critique of this exercise and show some of my opinion in how I thought this may have been effective or not. The first aspect of this exercise I'd like to highlight was the SHEAR incompetence of the leaders at the top. This is of course from my prospective as an employee of course. The incompetence stems from the lack of communication and proactive action taken to make the so called corporation function correctly. I know I felt like the employees were tossed aside in favor of the managers and customer interaction with the top.This type of neglect is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE. Effective leadership would have included a more proactive stance to bring all the parties together to work out a deal that would have benefited everyone, and at the very least everyone in the fictitious organization should have at least been informed. Another words, if your given a game such as this and told you can make up and change rules their frankly should be no excuse to have your plan executed perfectly. This is just my opinion and I have been influenced and biased this week by observing a string of very INCOMPETENT people, so I am also ranting as well.

Free Radicals

Since we didn't get to have class this week I thought I would blog about the radical article that I read as part of the readings. It is an interesting article I must say, radicals come in all forms and have a large set of ideologies to go with them. Personally I don't think I like radicalism, and the reasons for that is because it drives away compromise and it doesn't leave room for realistic views to be taken into account. A good example of the I believe was broadcast on c-span not to long ago over the summer. The two houses of congress tried to get together and sign a bill that would help decrease the debt, slash government spending and raise the taxes by eliminating loop holes and making the rich pay more. Due to the radicalism of BOTH sides, the bill failed to pass and we were left in the dark with a slight credit downgrade. So that is perhaps one example in why I think radicalism is bad. Now I will discuss an argument for radicalism. Radicalism serves a interesting role in today's society, it can be good and facilitate conversations of different issues. This is one function that I agree serves a purpose in the greater nation. Again radicals I believe are not needed on the whole but in a minority grouping in any society they can serve a productive purpose.

Goates Dollars!

So our in class exercise was an interesting look into how a company functions and how important negotiation can be. I for one enjoyed the exercise despite the lack of organization and structure. I was a low level employee and I had to come up with slogans touting the importance of managers and how they "rule the world". I myself came up with three slogans that I thought no one else would think of and I believed I succeeded. My manager I thought lead the team quite well. She really took charge and told us what was going on even though she took a little while in the beginning. The only area I thought she could improve upon was the negotiation aspect of the exercise. I felt that she was not aggressive enough when negotiating out a deal. If she had been more aggressive I believe that we would have walked away with more money. In another aspect of contributing to the lack of money collected, I believe was our timing of the presentation. Some other groups beat us to the punch and captured the time of the executives more than us and some other groups. I believe we may have had the superior product but since other teams had more capable negotiators and were able to beat us to the "board room" that we got shorted on the amount of money we could have made.

Ethics of Managers

In this class discussion we took a look at ethics and the different ways for going about using ethics in a managerial position. Machiavellian ethics is concerned with self-interest, Lincolnian ethics is concerned with serving the boss, and Plutonian ethics is concerned with serving everyone's interest. I don't particularly like these choices. If I were to say that I am disposed to a specific area of these ethical codes, I would say that Machiavellian ethics strikes my fancy the most. I act in my own self interest most of the time, and in fact I am attending college for my own self interest as well. Most if not all of my actions have a facet to them of Machiavellian ethics. Although individually I am self interested and aligned, I do believe that a corporation with a lot of power influence and money, should have some sense of responsibility about it. It is impossible for a large corporations to have absolute responsibility over its stakeholders. It is at best responsible for half of the stakeholders, but lets not make this completely arbitrary. We should at least say that the company should be responsible for at most half of the stakeholders it would effect directly through policy and major business decisions. I am in no means a philanthropist however I do believe that companies should take a more proactive approach to responsibility and in the process accept a mixed approach in ethics when it comes to managing companies. I myself have learned to accept mixed ethics in my life. While pursuing my own self interests I have learn to put others before myself and have come to enjoy it, and benefit from it.