Geeky Minds

We were tasked with preparing a presentation that describes constraints that I am experiencing in my business. The presentation must also describe how the application of methods/tools/techniques learned during the course will enable me to better manage this situation. This final week was very nerve-wrecking and very interesting for me.  It was nerve-wrecking because I have a severe speech impediment (a stutter) that may unnecessarily cause me to take longer than the other students. So, I decided to record my presentation to ease this process. It was also very interesting because I work in a very complex organization that is part of a very dynamic and international Science and Technology project that is experiencing but also addressing complex challenges. It was exciting for me to outline these issues and also providing my proposed solutions to these challenges. Background and Overview Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) was born out of the partnership of ...

Based on the previous topics covered such as Design Thinking and Business Model Innovation we were tasked with: Selecting an industry of interest; Defining a problem in a particular industry; and Proposing an innovative solutions to the challenges. What is the role of the new concepts in digital business? This task involved interacting and communicating effectively with business stakeholders. One of our group members presented an overview of her business. She proceeded to outline the challenges they experience within the Fast Consumer Moving Goods industry. These challenges include: The inability to maintain an end-to-end visibility of the supply chain; The conflicting KPIs that caused competition instead of cooperation; The inability plan and co-ordinate the supply chain effectively; The inability to understand the customer or to "hear their voice" that impacts customer-centricity; and The inefficiencies in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain.  We proceeded to us...

Preliminaries - Industry Analysis The industry analysis includes the analysis of Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal aspects that impact the industry we are operating in. This PESTEL analysis is part of business research and helps us to understand the market the organization is operating in. The factors involved in PESTEL are discussed below Political Government policy Political stability Corruption Foreign trade policy Tax policy Labour law Trade restrictions Economic Economic growth Exchange rates Interest rates Inflation rates Disposable income Unemployment rates Social Population growth rates Age distribution Career attitudes Safety emphasis Technological Technology incentives Level of innovation Automation Research & Development activity Technology awareness Environmental Weather Climate Environmental policies Climate change Pressure from NGOs Legal Discrimination laws Antritrust laws Employment laws Consumer protection Health and safety laws Ma...

Preliminaries of Design Thinking Design thinking as a tool to getting in touch with customers and users, to understand those segments we are touching through our products and services. Look at our innovations and productions, and what our customer needs Phases in Design Thinking - IDEO Source:  Design Thinking Inspiration Ideation Implementation IDEO made Design Thinking popular as they were involved in industrial design and product design, and they applied it to different areas Involves the intersection of the 3 areas that result in an innovative experience: Business (Viability) People (Desirability) Technology (Feasibility) Source:  Design Thinking – Human Centred Design Business + People = Emotional innovation (brands, marketing, relationships) People + Technology Phases in Design Thinking - Stanford University The IDEO process was further developed by Stanford University. Source:  Design Thinking for Everyday Life Empathize - this involves experience the problem from ...

Preliminaries on Business Model Customer segments The different groupings of customers based on specific things e.g. age, gender, interests and spending habits The customer segment are the people who we target It is fruitful to start by understanding the persona for each customer segment The value proposition may differ across these segments Value proposition This is the problem you are solving This would be the specific pain point you are relieving Customer relationships This is concerned with how business interacts with customers This is usually where the user journey comes in that clarifies the points of engagement between business and the customer, and the modes (touch points) used to relate to the customers Channels These are the avenues of customer interaction and becomes part of the sales cycle You consider where the customers are located and how we are going to tell them about the value proposition Key Activities This is the consideration of what the business does and what the ...

This session was insightful introduction into the future of logistics. I learnt that the the world of work is shifting. The corporate environment is slowly moving with the times and is increasingly digitizing. The employee is therefore expected to evolve into an employee that is able to: Work anytime, Work anywhere, Work on on any device, Focus on outputs, Create their own ladder, Customize their work, Share information, Develop into a leader, Rely on collaboration technologies, Focus on adaptive learning, and Learn on their own.  However, the lack of digital culture and training is hampering the logistics and transportation industry. More over, companies are concerned about various challenges that are impeding their ability to digitize their operations. Companies are concerned with data security and data privacy, especially with the increasing use of external data. What I also found insightful was the the high financial investments and the lack of digital strategy are other issues...

Background 2020 has marked the start of my journey into e-Logistics and this is perhaps a good time for me to pick up this blog again. My last blog was in 2014 when I was still employed as Research Assistant at the Digital Media Studios at the University of the Western Cape. I had left the Digital Media Studios (DMS) in 2014 for medical reasons. In March this year I met up with my former supervisor. We had a short but fruitful chat. I shared with him my research endeavors especially as it relates to digital technology in Higher Education. I subsequently shared my research article in Research Analytics. I must admit, I am extremely grateful to my exposure so early into computer software and media applications at the DMS. Where am I now? Six years on, I am still somehow involved with the University of the Western Cape but this time via the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA). IDIA was born out of the partnership of University of the Western Cape (UWC), Universi...

My first day back at work after 3 weeks of absentia (as I took an indefinite leave for medical reasons) seems to be going quite well as a matter of fact. Walking back into the office, I felt the energy that welcomed me here the first day I stepped in. My supervisor seems to be pleased with me back at work and I seem to be content with being back at the office. It has been a while. It is not uncommon among students that undertake disciplines that involve economic and management sciences to table the discussion of the current economic climate and the cause of such. Most will concur with each other this is a result of the chaos involved in the Auditing and Financial Accounting disciplines, but a few may even point out that this is a result of an information system that does address these issues within these disciplines. Moreover, more and more arguments are simple connotations that suggest how I.T. and Accounting disciplines should be aligned as to pre-empt, prevent or even avoid the...

Just one of those weeks when time seems to catch up with you, once in a while. I recently tumbled across a cool invention by Google called Google Sites. I went through the whole reviews of the service offered by Google electronically and I was quite impressed by the app. I think it would be quite useful to students who find themselves in a position where they need to get information from other students (a community notice board). It allows for the admin and whomsoever else will have relevant permissions to post on the sit to post announcements, advertisements, career information and so and so forth. If that's what you would like to have access to then you should try Google Sites out. Anyway, this week has gone by so smoothly that it is actually unbelievable that it is Wednesday already. Let me ride this week through on this tip that I am on.

This week started off slow rather than the usual fast-paced life or week I'd have in my life. I'm still much focused on the whole Digital Story side of things. I have my audio and my pictures together but the whole software is giving me a problem to say nonetheless. I am not a huge fan of using this type of software that is not really user-friendly. I am trying to piece in everything bit by bit, and I hope it does go down quite well. The week has been catching up with me, it's escalated to Thursday already and I have yet to finish this project. I will hopefully get it done by the end of the week. That's basically been my week thus far except the whole issue with vacation is really one that interests me since we are not really on vacation through out these holidays.

Today was my first shoot for the Digital Media Studios at Information and Communication Services (ICS). The event was part of the ICS workshop in conjunction with other departments in the university that would include various executives of the university. The first problem we encountered was with regard to the lighting in the venue itself. The sound was also quite a problem in itself but somehow Tosin and Andre had it fixed in no time at all. Another problem I faced was the fact that I was falling half asleep the whole time, and that can not be blamed on me in particular but rather the exams and the content of the presentation that was being delivered at the seminar itself. Apart from all that, the seminar did kind of help as I was introduced to various topics and content that related to ITS itself, so it was not totally a waste of time. I learnt a lot things though at this firs shoot.

This has been a week that started off on the right foot. After being away from my blog and work for the past week I am back and in full health and speed to take on this week and the following weeks to come. So far the experience at the Digital Media Studios have been enlightening and overwhelming at times. Having to juggle school, work and health is vitally important to me-with my health being of the most important of the three. My health has been acting up while I was employed at the DMS Offices (at times landing me in hospital or in the emergency room at weird hours of the morning) but my coordinator has been extremely understanding of my health issues that at times I feel as if my health tends to abuse this fact. School has been a priority more important than work to say the least since I can not be employed by the DMS if I am not a student here, but for the past 2 months I have learned to work on scheduled times and time tables (a lesson in time management I have yet to admit t...

Recently, my coordinator assigned tasks to us on Asana (a platform that I plan to reveiw on some other day) to tell a digital story. Well, the brief being that we must tell a story that would leave a lesson to whom so ever comes across it (but the brief was not in those words). The task has different phases and parts to it, so that makes the task easier to deal with and handle. I started off with producing a script for the digital story. The script is just a wording of what the visual story and the narration of the story will be composed of. I loved writing the script, pouring the lessons I have learned thus far into such a script was a good experience. The CMap was kind of tricky hey, having to draw a concept map that captures the whole concept of the digital story was very tricky. It was my first time having to produce a copy of CMap document that would be used for such purposes. I did not struggle at all with the Concept Map as much as I expected to struggle. Currently I am co...

Well, the University of the Western Cape in conjunction with the Cape Peninsula University fo Technology streamed the 2014 Summer graduation ceremony at the University of the Western Cape on  CPUT TV (UWC Graduation)  website. I had the chance to watch the live ceremony on the 19th of March 2014 of a few colleagues of mine graduate, it was extremely exciting and inspiring. But I struggled to understand why UWC could not at all stream the graduation onto their  UWCOnline YouTube Channel . I was debating the fact that the university has a full Digital Media Studios unit, with most if not all of the equipment necessary for the event itself. The personnel here at this unit are qualified and equipped enough to handle such an event, but what was the cause of UWC not using an internal resource? Events being streamed live can be one risky position and proposition to be in if the whole team has not planned it well. Viewers do expect an event that is well coordinated with no ...

Since I'm in an educational institution, I've always asked myself what technology could do to help make education better and innovative (that is the very purpose of the CIECT Unit). I am also quite young and I am quite active on social media. I am also a commerce student. I recently read up on the statistics with regards to Mark Zuckerberg and his creation of thousands of jobs that includes employment of app developers for games found on Facebook. Most university students, if not all university students spend hours on end playing games on Facebook's App Center. This App Center host hundred of thousands of games that could and would blow your mind. These games range from Arts to Business to Educational categories that keep the students or player glued to the screen, one of those games being  Pet Rescue Saga (Facebook App Center) . This particular is one of the most played games on Facebook with over +10 million monthly users. Why not develop such a game that would save a s...

Well, this week has been quite a beautiful week for me hey. I got to play around with a lot of amazing software that I went on to review. I also had the superb chance to look at Photoshop CS6. Adobe has been making absolutely good progress when it comes to developing their software (and basically taking over the world while they are at it!). The latest version of Photoshop I used in isolation without the assistance of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I must say: I AM IMPRESSED. Apart from the fact that one has to pay close to R9000 for the softwar and an additional R1200 for Photoshop Lightroom, one did get everything they paid for. It took me about a few hours finding my way around this new baby. Another 30 minutes trying to figure out how to use the baby was worth it. The User Interface on the software is so user friendly I have even considered dropping Instagram as a Photo editor and just sticking with CS6. I am not quite an expert when it comes to photoshopping but I am quite sure th...

I recently underwent a crash course in Concept Mapping. I've always been accustomed to CMap anyway, I started using it in my first year of my undergraduate Accounting degree. We were tasked by our Information Systems lecturer (Mrs. Lydia Kimani) to explore CMap by developing a concept map for some topic (I can barely even remember). My supervisor (Mr. Daniels) went over CMap with us again, and I decided once more to actually use the tool. CMap Tools (Home Page CMAP) The fact that CMap was not created for the purposes of brainstorming and mind mapping but rather for an in depth explanatory session of certain concepts that only an expert or a knowledgeable person may be able to explain. Even though its main focus is to provide a platform for easy conceptualization of ideas or concepts, it has a vast range of tools within the the platform. One would expect the platform to only be useful when it comes to text, and not in essence take over the work of PowerPoint or Keyword-but...

This week I decided to play around with iWisoft Video Converter, and I played around with it! iWiSoft (Free Video Converter) Well, I would like to commend teh fact that this software is freely downloadable on the link in the caption below the picture. It allows for various features for editing videos like converting video formats (including HD), audio ripping from videos, merging videos, trimming videos, adding watermarks/logs on to the videos, texts and cropping the video along with so many other features. Well it worked out quite well when I converted a playlist I found on  YouTube  that was uploaded by a fellow colleague. I decided to merge all of the videos, trim the videos at the beginning to create one synchronized video without it feeling like it's a series of 4 different videos. Well, it kinda worked out. There were a few a glitches and a few things that did disappoint me because I did not read the fine print. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR. If you paid nothing, you m...