#fullsailgrad

The Data Visualization and Creative Reporting, class, is my second favorite class out of the Business Intelligence Program. The first week we created an infographic and charts that described who were.  I found this to be a challenge;  it is always hard to talk about yourself. The second week was also challenging, we were given options for movies and had to explain their plot using only visualizations.  I chose a favorite “The Sound of Music”, even though I knew the movie, it was still hard trying to gather data to put into visualizations.

Week three was the most fun for me, we created a super hero dashboard.  I chose Iron Man, I created gauges and boxes like schedules and text messages that would be useful for Iron Man’s everyday life.  I added in innuendos from the recent Spider-Man: Homecoming movie and turned my dashboard into a presentation with the “I am Iron Man” theme song. Lastly, week four was the most challenging, but most important, as we were taking everything we have learned over the month and adding it all together to create visualizations and dashboards for our working companies.  

The biggest take away for this class is understanding that data visualization is important and being able to express the data visually can be more impactful than just plain graphs/charts.  The analogy that I learned in this class (during one of our video/reading assignments), is that data is like a cake, it can have layers of information, if those layers are not correct or don't contain good ingredients, it doesn’ t matter how much frosting and design you put on the cake, it's still not going to be a good cake.  If the layers of the cake are correct or have good ingredients and there is only a little bit of frosting, the cake is going to be good, not great but good enough to eat. Having the ability to serve an audience a great piece of cake will be more reliable and impactful, they are more likely to understand the data/message being communicated.   

Spending eight years straight I am due for a break, I am a bit sad because it was announced that the Valedictorian and the Salutatorian recipients will not be announced at graduation due to how the course is ending after graduation.  So enough about graduation problems and now focus at the month on hand.

The Plan:

This was the month for us to turn in our Internet Marketing Plan, this was given to us 10 months ago, however, a few students mentioned they had not started on it at all, I started mine in January, and then took some time off. I was smart enough to reach out to the professor ahead of time and begin to ask her questions and work more diligently on it as the class opened up I was already ahead of the game.  While the first week was relaxed it was to give us time to add the final touches and fine tune our IMP.  While a few of us struggled we helped each other get through this.  

Discussion board Week 1: This was all about marketing campaigns, while I feel a couple of students did just enough to get by, overall a few of us did a great deal of research and gave positive feedback, and helped each other grow, I am going to miss this class!

Week 2 Assignment:  This week we had an assignment, this is one I worried about but had to get all of this work done before leaving to Atlanta for five days, however, I got a 100% on it as it was conducting innovative ways and it was a fun assignment.

Discussion board Week 2: If writing about marketing campaigns was not hard enough, implementing them was a challenge and explaining them was just as bad if not worse, but the one thing I have learned is that just because you have a monthly budget of $100 K does not mean you need to spend it.  I find dividing it up and spending a little here and a little there, and putting some in a reserve fund for emergencies.

Here we are into the third week, a lot of us are a bit overwhelmed some started new jobs, others just felt that an assignment on top of the last week to finish up our IMP was way too much pressure, and then the lack of an instructor who did not show up to live class ticked a few of us off.  Overall, after looking over all I can and running my paper through Grammarly, I submitted my IMP on Friday, June 21, 2019, now I have to stress on waiting on the grade of this paper.

Discussion board Week 3: Persuasive presentation, this is now putting it together, in persuading someone or our target audience to accept our plan, again not enough input from certain students, but yet those who thought about their post, and did the research shared what they learned.

Week 3 Assignment: Pitching the presentation this is one I planned on doing and keeping it simple, some would say that it is the safe way out, but not everything has to be heavy duty work, why not keep it simple and easy and of course to the point.

With Week four being all our brand, it is now time to put this education into my own business, and see how I can rule the online digital world, one business at a time.