Soliciting Fame

I attend the University of Alberta. I’m 3/4 of my way through a business degree. One of my required courses is Management Information Systems (MIS) where we are taught about project management and database structure and information flow, etc. etc. For me it’s quite dull because I have a lot of experience with this stuff already. I am learning a thing or two though, so it’s not completely useless.

Our latest project requires us to develop a single web page using Microsoft FrontPage that includes an Access database we created last week. This is worth 10% of our course mark.

Microsoft discontinued FrontPage in 2006, two years ago.

I emailed our professors asking why we are being taught to use a non-standards compliant, outdated and discontinued pile of junk. The response I got back was that “the school of business has a contract for support with FrontPage until the end of this semester.” Apparently the university is using our tuition to strike deals that are in effect for years after they are useful. Smrt.

I’m meeting with one of the profs tomorrow morning to discuss it. I realize this isn’t entirely his fault so I hope he helps me fix the problem. I intend to make sure the school of business knows about this sort of crap. This would make a great article in the Gateway (our school paper), and it would be something for our Business Student’s Association (apologies for their website) to get their fingers into.

You wouldn’t pay $468.60 for a math course using slide rules, so why should we pay to use outdated software?

I have been involved with a small team of like-minded students where we were pitted against numerous business case studies in preparation for a province wide competition at the end of June. Needless to say we took first place and joy and happiness gushed forth.

After school was finished we were asked to essentially be “guest advisers” to one of the consultants that helped us during our competition. We spent our regular amount of time preparing a presentation for this small company run by two young entrepreneurs much like myself. Unfortunately we (read: I) made the mistake of being over confident in my knowledge of the industry and therefore my team didn’t do a proper amount of research on key points.

Making recommendations without properly researching your audience is a bad idea. For starters, chances are they know just as much as you do, especially if they have gotten this far.

Essentially I ended up getting grilled about my knowledge of blogs and the superstars who surround them. While it’s good, I’m not quite an expert yet.

In the end they really enjoyed our point of view and many of our recommendations. It was the one little slide that hung over the room like thick fog.

There isn’t much to say now other than I live and I learn.

Lessons learned include:

1. Do research
2. Know your audience
3. Do 1 and 2 until you know your shit

Remember kiddos, if you’re going to say something, back it up.