Assignment 1-4

Week 1 of my first graduate class is ending and I’m supposed to reflect on things I’ve learned. Probably the biggest “new” thought that came out was transitioning my thought process from using the word networking and moving towards the phrase social capital. While one is not necessarily the same as the other, social capital entails a lot more. In our class discussions, it was likened to a bank account. You put capital into your social network, and at some point, you take capital out of that network. I also took an inventory of my current schedule. What I found was a need to become more structured if I am going to survive the next 17 months of pursuing my MBA.

In reviewing my notes from the week, I see a few areas already where I can apply my learnings. One is in my professional development. I really believe that I will be able to become more effective as a leader if I start organizing my life better. I’ve often thought that I have adult ADD, although never officially diagnosed. My brain never stays on one item very long. Forcing myself to capture more events into a structured format can only improve my ability to focus on what needs done.

I think that a lot of these changes I’m working on implementing will help my work environment as well. By using my time more effectively, I should be a better employee to my company. I can hopefully find ways to be more proactive so that when the reactive moments occur, my time is readily available to deal with the crisis at hand. Having to read a lot more in the business world periodicals is also expanding my knowledge base, which is a definite plus.

There’s also a “coach” element to my MBA program. I am currently working on getting someone who will work in a mentor role throughout my MBA journey. One of the questions I intend to ask my coach when we begin meeting is how he manages to keep everything in order. Maybe it’s a good administrative assistant? Maybe it’s just good time management. We’ll see.

I’m not sure if there’s anything I would add to my portfolio yet. Perhaps my new calendar plan. It’s a creation that I’m truly hoping will help me use my time wisely going forward.

That’s all for today. Hope to see you next time in my MBA journey.

January 25, 2007 | Filed Under GRAD 701 | Leave a Comment 

Revamping the website

I decided that I’d be daring and upgrade the base for my website.  I originally had it programmed via PHPNuke, but that program has a lot of security holes.  While I never experienced an “attack” on my genealogy site, I did get hacked on another one I was running in test mode for a friend.  I decided to switch to Joomla as the base and so far, I’m very happy.

I have to figure out how to integrate my blog and forum over.  They both work, but they are not tied in at this point.  There are bridges to integrate them, but the first one I tried ended up locking things up.  I’ll just leave them as separate entities for now.

If you want to build a database driven website allowing you to change content easily, Joomla is an excellent option.

January 19, 2007 | Filed Under Personal Ramblings | Leave a Comment 

GRAD 701 – Learning From Experience

So I’ve successfully navigated through my “Orientation” class geared to get me back in the mode to research and study. It’s been nearly 14 years since my last college class. I think I’ll do OK. Now comes GRAD 701, my first “real” class. Lots of readin’ and a-writin’ looks like it’s coming my way. Not to mention having to maintain a blog.

Here’s some of the light reading for this course…

January 11, 2007 | Filed Under MBA Journey | Leave a Comment 

New and Improved?

I expect it will be. I started working on my MBA this winter at Franklin University. Tells you how far things have come since I last graced the halls of a university. I now will be keeping a “learning blog” for my classes. So much for spiral-bound notebooks!
Since I had some issues with my other blog software, I decided to switch to Wordpress. I like it so far… seems to be more secure at least. That was my big problem before… too much spam and such. We’ll see how this works.

The only downside is that I can’t transfer over my data from previous ramblings without a lot of effort. I’m not too worried. This will give a nice clean start.

Feel free to read along with my MBA journey. If you’re interested in online schooling, hopefully I’ll be able to share some insights along the way.

January 11, 2007 | Filed Under Personal Ramblings | Leave a Comment