Next Up....Do You Q?

For our last presentation I had ideas bouncing out of my ears. I felt that there were so many areas to help Make Mine Wine be a more successful publication.

But for some reason after meeting Mitch and listening to his Do you q? issues and goals I was some what flat lined on where to take his project. After having an article in the DM Register in late March about the game, he had gotten calls from both HyVee and from Barnes and Noble...or maybe it was Borders...but it was one of the two.

There were so many things that he was already doing, so many things that he had already done right, and executed in ways which I had yet to think of.

We have some great ideas to present to him tomorrow I just hope he finds what suggestions we have valuable for him in the end.

First Round of Presentations

I knew after last semester, when dealing with real clients with real issues, I had a feeling this semester we would be presented with the same sort of challenges as we had been with the non-profits last semester. And I have to say, I find this sort of project to be the most rewarding for both us as students and for the clients who come searching for answers.

Yesterday my group presented our ideas on how Make Mine Wine could quickly and effeciently gain more subscribers. Although our team was not dubbed the 'winner' by our client, I still felt like we had put together a very reasonable, creative and original package of ideas for our client to pick and choose what she may want to use in the future.

If I could do a project like this every semester for the rest of my education I would do it hands down. I like feeling like we have helped an organization. And as a learner and student I always feel that I have walked away with more valueable lessons when we are able to interact with a real life situation.

Thank you both Make Mine Wine and DSM Buzz for allowing us to brainstorm, and plan for your companies.

Next week we will be presenting to US Rodeo Supply and Do You Q?

Dress up Day

So lately I have been spending more time searching for just the right outfit for tomorrow than I have on my group projects.

We have a lot of good brainstorming going on, and we have all thrown out a lot of solid ideas for both of our clients, Make Mine Wine, and Do You Q? We are trying to increase subcriptions for Make Mine Wine magazine, and increase awareness of the product for Do You Q?. I am excited to present our ideas in a couple of weeks.

For role dress up, I had all my family members today help me brainstorm what I should wear tomorrow, I explained to them all four roles, and after the easter feast the ideas started popping up all over the place (I think it helped to think on a full stomach) I was beginning to worry about what role I would dress up as, but thanks to cousin Jill I am sold on the judge role.

Accidents...and letting them happen

"In order to be habitually creative, you have to know how to prepare to be creative, but good planning along won't make your efforts successful; its only after you let go of your plans that you can breathe life into your efforts."

After reading this quote toward the beginning of Tharp's seventh chapter, I knew she was going to teach me a thing or two about myself. I tend to be a planner...I like to make plans, whether its for a birthday, an event or just an excuse to get together I am the planner. When ever my friends want to organize a get together, I am usually the one left to plan it. And while planning and organizing is all fine and dandy, reading Tharp's opinion on planning and over planning really left me thinking about whether or not I am an "over planner" or am I willing to see the chances for creativity as they come my way?

I like her idea that "creative endeavors can never be thoroughly mapped out ahead of time"...you have to allow for the "accidental spark." It was this phrase that I was really interested in. The thought of letting things at work be more losely planned to allow for easier transitions and changes was an eye opener. It seems so cut and dry....if you just prepare yourself for creativity, for observations and spur of the moment changes things that I would have never imagined could be incorporated to my daily tasks and projects at work. I love the thought that, "You don't get lucky without preparation, and there's no sense in being prepared if you're not open to the possibility of a glorious accident."

Well if thats the case, I am going to plan on being prepared.

Judging....

My blogging has been subpar up to this point to say the least. It has not been my intention, but it has happened. Judge me as you may, but I am taking a stand right now...redeeming myself in all that is blog.

I am tuckered out after returning from a 5 day business trip to Phoenix, AZ. But thanks to delays and plenty of terminal taxi-ing, I had more than enough time to catch up on my necessary readings.

I know it may be hard to believe judging from my consistency in blogging, but the chapter, Curiosita was really speaking my language...I have this urge to continue learning, and continuing to grow, and ask constant questions. I remember when I was in grade school and my parents would come home from conferences and my teachers would always say something along lines of how willing I was to ask the, "whys? and the how comes" always looking for more than the answer that I was given.

I started keeping a journal the moment I could put sentences together on a page; I received my first journal on my 6th birthday, I was in first grade- It had a bubblegum dispenser on the cover- I had that journal filled cover to cover in no time flat. Full of sketches and random thoughts...which at 6 and 7 were incredibly random. I continued to keep diaries and journals, constantly asking myself questions about where I wanted to go to high school, then college, then my degree, studying abroad? graduate school? My journals were filled with more questions and poem like scribblings than anything else.

In relation to "How to Think like Da Vinci" I feel that my writings, scribblings and journals over time did bring more understanding to whatever question or issue was at hand. I have a fascination with human relationships/interactions, so many of my writings are observational situations that have happened during my day at work, or at a coffee shop while attempting to focus on my work. I am working on my top ten questions...

Go Team!

After our SCAMMPERR hunt on Wednesday night I was drained. We had a few bumps early on but managed to forge ahead. Some of our readings on team work, cooperation and group think related directly to feelings that I was having on Monday night. With not much time to plan, my group headed off to Merle Hay Mall where we ran into some tight laced mall security who told us we couldn't take any pictures in the mall. This initial glitch through us off our track, we slowly headed toward Target and ideas slowly began to hit us. It seemed at first that some of my group members had suggestions to make, but were hesitant to do so. After awhile it felt like we had already stalled out...we were all standing around in a random aisle waiting for something to hit us. We had members of our group that were much slower to speak their minds than others, which after reading more of Unstuck, made me think we maybe had a hint of 'group think' during parts of our adventure. At times I was slightly frustrated because I felt like a few us were tossing out ideas with out much criticism or response from the rest of the group. Toward the end of our hunt our team seemed to have a more balanced cohesion, it just took us a little while to reach a point where everyone was actively participating which made the entire experience much more enjoyable. You could say that we finally had the "right mix."

Growing up?

I really feel like I am going to start using this as a journal...I have kept journals for as long as I can remember; but this semester instead of scribbling out a few thoughts in notebooks I will be posting them on my very first blog.

This January has been much different than any other January I have ever experienced. And since graduating last May, I have experienced more "firsts" than I had thought possible. A fair amount of my friends finished in May, after four years of classes, parties and roommates galore we all started moving away from Iowa City throughout the course of the summer. One by one college was ending for each of us. My rent was up at the end of July, and I moved back home to Des Moines.

The fall went along quite smoothly, I was here with pleanty of warm weather and several friends, weekends were filled with tailgates and football watching, and I had the holidays to look forward to...meaning that everyone would be back on and off throughout the Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks. But once the hustle and bustle of the holidays slowed, January set in, heavy.

It all started on Dec 29th, when one of my good friends got married. She is the first of our group of friends...I had my high school graduation party with her, she now lives in Maryland. Another close friend moved on the 3rd to Chicago, the following weekend two more friends departed for North Carolina, and Florida, and just this pass weekend another good girl friend moved to Boston. In the course of 4 weeks some of my closests friends since highschool were scattered about the country. I am so excited for all of them, I want them to do well, and succeed at whatever they have set out to do, but it is the strangest feeling not to see these people every day. I was used to basically falling out my front door in Iowa City and being surrounded by people, friends and classmates.

Right before I graduated my boss at the time told me that the year after graduation was the most lonely she had ever felt. I did fine all summer and fall, but then came January and zapped the life right out of me. All also read recently that january has some how been proven to be the most depressing month of the year. I have never once considered myself to suffer from any sort of depression. But a nasty combination of freezing cold weather, snow, and friends moving away faster than I can count really did a number on me in the month of January.

February is looking better and brighter already. I have trips planned all throughout February and into March with many of my old college friends and I am beginning to find a bit of my own rhythm here in Des Moines...now I just need to save up enough money to move out of mom and dads.....seriously.

Diving in 1.31.07

After a few evenings of trying to remember how to sign on to this thing I finally got it figured out. I am not a first time blogger, but by how long it took me to get my act straight you may think differently. As an undergrad at the University of Iowa I had a Journalism professor who was a big fan of the Blogging, we had occasional things to post, and conversations to participate in, but I had trouble really getting into the idea of blogging. Any way, enough with my approach to the world of blogger....

I took this class for several reasons; I really enjoyed our project management course last semster, and after talking to several other students last semester they had many positive to things to say about the creativity in business class. This is the second MBA course I have taken, and since I am in the new MCL program I went on what I liked...It was a combination of your teaching style and students comments that had me sold on this course. Secondly, I am already really enjoying the text books for this course and the readings themselves are getting more thoughts racing through my head, more than it seems like I have had in long time.

As I started to read Unstuck, Step 1 it freakishly felt like the writer had possibly be following me around for several weeks. I haven't necessarily felt "stuck" at work, more or less I have been feeling stuck in areas outside the work place, and that stuckness, is/was turning into feeling stuck at work...sort of stumping the thought process in its tracks....but that is all about to change.