Digital Frontiers

I first signed up for this class because I accidentally thought I had to take another honors class for my honors requirements, then found out that wasn’t the case.  But I kept the class anyway because the first day Adam and Nikolai certainly made the class seem intriguing.  Several weeks later, looking back, I can say that this was one of the most interesting classes I’ve taken at UF.  Not because I learned a great deal in an academic sense; because honestly I haven’t.  But I don’t think I was supposed to, because this class was supposed to be different.  So what exactly did I get out of this class?

For one, this class was pretty inspiring.  Each time I left class I had the feeling that I could conquer the social media world, until about a day later when college apathy caught up to me.  But nonetheless twice a week, I got something more than what I got from any other class I’ve taken at UF: a sense that what I’m learning is useful (unlike Man3025).

But I already mentioned that I didn’t learn that many tangible facts.  I mean, I learned how to make Facebook fan pages, but I could have learned that on my own time.  What I did learn was that as technology changes, I have a unique opportunity to take advantage of that.  I already know that I can navigate Facebook well, but it dawned on me how poorly other people, particularly businesses, do.  And its more than Facebook; thinking outside the box is something that our society, especially corporate society, sometimes lack, despite the fact we’ve been pounded over the head with the idea since childhood.

And that’s what’s so surprising.  I always assumed that I would not come up with the best ideas, because everyone was trying to be daring and creative and as a result there wouldn’t be any opportunity except for the extremely lucky ones.  But after taking this class I realize this is not the case.  As shown by the principles of crowd-sourcing and wikinomics, the best ideas come from anyone who bothers to come up with them.  You don’t have to have an ivy-league educations or be a millionaire in order to do it.  A regular Joe can have better ideas than a large corporation, and that is probably pretty common.

So in summary, this class was pretty successful in what it set out to do.  It was meant to be an “outside the box” class that did things differently than most courses.  And it did.  I wasn’t taught too many facts (nice change), but more importantly I was taught different ways of thinking about the facts I already knew.  So bravo Adam and Nikolai.  Now let’s hope I remember the lessons of the class past the next couple weeks.

For my last picture I will post Hugo Ball dressed up as a Magic Bishop.  It has nothing to do with the Digital Frontiers, except that Hugo Ball is awesome, and so was the class.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Now that this semester is coming to an end, I feel comfortable divulging my feelings about this course, the “Digital Frontier”. If you’ve kept up with my posts, you would have noticed that I lost motivation somewhere along the line. Just look at the contrast of tones from my first post, Who is Jeff Goetz? (click to read more), to one of my last, Conversion Marketing is a Tool for Tools. You may have also have wondered why I chose to discontinue my weakly posts, earning zero credit for the remaining assignments.

What happened to Jeff Goetz, that optimistic honors student, that young man with the keen desire to learn from others,  who enjoyed extending the learning environment beyond the classroom?

Well, my readers, I am right here.

I stopped posting  because I learned, through this course, that it is not worth my efforts.  James,  from Campus Talk, taught us that if we have no passion to write a blog post, then don’t write it. I listened.

To the course instructors, I lost my enthusiasm when I saw our contrasting motives for the use of social media.  Our view points differ not in the power of marketing with social media, but in how we ought to use that power . We learned how a business can use viral marketing, user generated content, or web analytics to increase their profits. In my opinion, this is  malarkey. I believe it is unscrupulous to use social media as a means of gaining more customers, and if this your goal, then it will fail in the long run. Just look at the marketing results of the Gainesvillains, whose only successful marketing approach was the one that provided value to already existing fans. These students learned that an increase in Facebook fans or Twitter followers is not mutually exclusive with the result of  increased business. I hope this is something we’ve all learned as a result of this course.

To my fellow bloggers and classmates.  It was a pleasure working with the you to make this course a unique learning experience for each of us. I encourage you all to take the time to reread our user generated content. Our footprint goes much deeper than you may realize.

And finally, to my readers, thank you for taking the time to read my blogs and share you feedback on my content. Some of you my still not know how to pronounce my last name; but one day, you’ll meet me in the real world, and it’ll all make sense. My next endeavor is to blog my experiences as a first year dental student at the NYU College of Dentistry, and to hopefully, contribute valuable content to both my fellow students and to my instructors (sound familiar?)

But until then, I’ll leave you with one final question:

did you solve my puzzle?

Popularity: 2% [?]

It’s amazing how much one can learn from old teacher who simply lectures you for 50 minutes on mind-numbingly boring Powerpoints. You can learn how text under your desk without looking at your keypad, or even how to draw a multitude of different crude drawings including this s-shaped phenomena.

Then, after four years and tens of thousands of dollars you will be able to achieve almost anything. Anything that isn’t important or actually tied to your career that is.

The single most important lesson I have learned in my college career (all four years of it) is that what you do outside of class is more important than how you score on an exam. Practical knowledge and experience will never let you down in a boardroom meeting.
Say you are in a meeting with a client and they turn down your pitch are you going to spit out the 4 P’s of marketing and any other junk you memorized in your classes, or are you going to roll with the punches and adapt.

I hope you make the right choice.

On a more specific note, the most important lesson from the Digital Frontiers course is to hear what people want, listen to it, and adapt your message/product to fit.

By using social media, like Facebook, Twitter, blogging sites, and other such platforms, you can reach just about anyone you could think of. The important thing is what to do once you reach them.

Fortunately, there is a precise model of communication that will fit every possible consumer. You can tell any one of them the exact same message and it will work. You CAN please everyone all of the time.

NOT.

There is no formula. So you must trust your instincts and be able to listen and adapt.

Overall, there are a few golden rules:

1. Trust your instincts
2. Get out there and get experience
3. Adapt, adapt, adapt
And the most important rule:
4. There are no rules when something changes and you are faced with a challenge

Oh, and when it comes to presentations, use Prezi.

Popularity: 2% [?]

This whole semester, I’ve been sitting in this digital marketing class that my buddy, Shaan, convinced me to take. Since I didn’t have anything else to take and I wanted to take a class that was relatively easy, I thought to myself: “Sure, why not?” So here I am, 18 weeks later and I can honestly say that for a class that I took just to satisfy my credit hour requirements, I may have learned more interesting concepts and done more cool things than I have in 99% of the other classes that I’ve ever taken. So in the interest of simplifying things, I’ve decided to limit the seemingly endless concepts floating around in my head to a list.

This guy already took my idea. I guess he must've taken Digital Frontiers

Things Donnell Has Learned

1. If there is anything that is more important to success than networking, someone please tell me. I’m all ears. It’s okay. I’ll wait….Oh, really? Nobody. That’s what I thought…You see, you can have the best ideas in the world but if you can’t get anybody to get behind them (more importantly, if you can’t get the right people behind them), you won’t get anywhere with them.
2. SCHOOL IS FOR FOOLS!!! Now that I have your attention, I only halfheartedly meant the previous sentence. If we look at some of the world’s most successful people, many did not complete college. Instead, we learned that sometimes it’s better to devote 100% of your efforts to the thing you are passionate about than to go 75% with fall back plans. Like the creators of Grooveshark said “What’s going to be there in 4 years? Your business idea or college.” I’m looking to “Get Rich or Die Tryin’.”
3. If you are broke and you have no name, there is still hope for you. For example, there are simple ways to market your product or services without paying for an expensive mass media campaign. Instead, you could implement social media into your campaign. As an aspiring rap artist, I have seen the success of other entertainers such as Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em launch successful careers via viral marketing on sites such as Youtube.
4. Many times it’s important to build a culture around your organization using an online presence. For example, a blog can do wonders if it allows for public interaction, keeps people informed, and most importantly, keeps people interested. The way to keep people interested is by understanding your public, catering to their interests, and updating the website with interactive content. A great example of this is the blog called Spine Magazine which is updated with videos, podcasts, links to free downloads, news, and reviews. People interested in hip-hop music can delve deeply into the realm using this website and can even interact with the writers by adding comments.
5. Bad ideas are not always bad ideas. Sometimes a bad idea just needs a little tweaking in order to make it a good idea.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The main reason why I registered for Digital Frontiers was that none of the honors classes seemed interesting/useful to me. Foreign languages are too much work, calc and physics weren’t even fun the first time and magic classes shouldn’t be on the list.

I was surprised with how much material we ultimately covered in the class. While a lot of the materiel overlapped, it was generally new material for me.  Compared to all the other classes I’ve taken, Digital Frontiers has been by far the most effective. Problem Solving with Computers took a whole semester to teach me a few shortcuts I could have learned in less than five minutes. Man’s Food and Micro Econ taught me that it is best not to watch lectures because Smokin’Notes will teach you a month worth of material in an hour or two.

Before this class I was a skeptic. I thought Twitter was a completely useless adaptation of the Facebook status update and that social media was a way for people to be unproductive and burn time, kind of like WOW. Now i can see the value of Twitter and how social media can be used for something other than growing crops.

I was most surprised by the quality of the speakers we had. They are all legitimate success stories and some of them are so successful that they were kind of intimidating. A few times I even felt bad that they were there. As if we weren’t worthy of their time. I liked the idea behind Second Life even though it looked really primitive. I think if the developers can make it more visually appealing they will see a lot more growth.

I took Warrington Welcome last semester but I think Nikolai did a better job of explaining  to us how to succeed in college and life in general. I started writing down my goals and giving each a deadline and it has helped a lot. Not only is it more difficult for me to procrastinate but now I don’t forget my short term goals either.

Popularity: 3% [?]

We live in a society where we stress knowledge, but spend very little time learning how to be successful. We spend nearly a quarter of our lives filling our heads with information that we could just as easily access on demand. While facts can be helpful, it is most often experience that teaches us the most. Digital Frontiers is different from most courses in that it doesn’t teach facts, but instead it imparts success strategies through experience.

Instead of teaching us what marketing is, we instead learned how to market. We learned that it is social interaction, not one sided advertisements, that drive consumer choice and that most often, when it comes to marketing, our customers are our best employees. We learned how to leverage sites like Facebook, YouTub, and Twitter to foster conversation and used tools like Google Analytics to monitor trends and adjust our approach. We stood on the shoulders of giants like Scott Brady and learned from their experiences and teamed up with Gainesville businesses to gain experience of our own.

Further, the course taught valuable success strategies like the importance of goal setting and exposed the class to one of the most powerful books ever written, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. In the end, we learned far more then any business course could ever teach and are all better off for our experience.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Wow. It’s been an entire semester, and I can’t believe this amazing class is over now. Just thinking about it makes me sad. I’m going to miss the openness of the class, from class discussions to a wide range of guest speakers, each bringing in their expertise on social media marketing and how it affects the business world.

————————————————–

Lessons Learned

Some of the things I will take away from this class, aside from using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services to promote your business and get your name out there, is that you can’t ignore the bad things people say about you or your business on the Internet. If you have negative reviews about one of your products/services, you have to respond. Deleting bad comments or ignoring them will only hurt you more, and customers will think you do not care about them. For example, the Best Buy Facebook Fan Page allows customers to post comments on the wall about their buying experiences, and not all of the comments are good, with some leaving scathing reviews. However, instead of ignoring them and deleting bad reviews, Best Buy strives to respond to every comment, even the good ones, asking how they can make the buying experience better.

————————————————–

Surprises

Something that caught me off guard was the fact that businesses are using Facebook Fan Pages as more or less their actual web pages. For example, One Greek Store uses a custom made Facebook Fan Page tab that shows most of their home page, including a tab for deals and discounts. Clicking on an organization takes you to their website where you can order items.

————————————————–

Paradigm Shift

This class has shaped how I will use social media to promote myself. I am currently developing apps for the iPhone, and already have a successful app in the store already, Formulus Free – Formulas for Calculus, and hope to create another popular app. This class has shown me how important it is to interact with my customers, as the only interactions I have right now are email correspondence with those few people who email me with suggestions and errors to be fixed.

Over the summer, I plan to create a Facebook Fan Page to promote myself as a developer, and hopefully increase my “brand” awareness and possibly get internships, freelance jobs, a real job, etc. I will put my portfolio on the fan page so that others can see my works, and comment on my apps and give suggestions on apps they might want to see created.

————————————————–

All in all, this class was a very refreshing break from the daily grind of Computer Science and general education classes. The unique structure of the class allowed us to learn things as we discovered them, instead of following a rigid structured syllabus. There were “guidelines” on what was to be discussed, such as learning about crowdsourcing, brand awareness, customer service, but the manner in which we learned these lessons was what made the class unique. In what other class would the instructors send you off onto campus for a class period armed only with a stack of Post-It notes?

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is it. I am not long for this world; welcome to my last supper. Please grab a seat and dine. I have a few regrets and a few secrets to tell, but I want for nothing more than your audience. What can one do at a last supper besides pray, eat, laugh and cry? [More]

Popularity: 2% [?]

After a semester of studying the use of practical use of Social Media in business, I can now say with almost certainly that your job will involve Facebook.

Now, not necessarily Facebook itself, but now that we have jumped as society into participatory marketing there will always be an element of the consumer interacting with the producer.

Of course, how this affects your career is up to you, because this new interaction between personal life and business life has helped end a few careers as well as begin them. If you’re on the fence about jumping in, do it, but remember that at a certain point in your life social media becomes a form of personal marketing. Not only to your friends, who make great process, but to the people who are goingto Google your name to get an idea of what image you put out the internet.

I for one welcome this new facet of American market capitalism, however I’m sure some out there believe the whole thing to be overhyped silliness.

To which I would respond,
When has any amount of marketing ever not been overhyped silliness?

That’s what makes it great.

Think about it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I signed up for Digital Frontiers on a whim at the last minute because it sounded interesting. Coming into this semester, I never thought that I’d learn so much. Books like What Would Google Do, guess lectures form Gainesville business leaders, the Innovation Challenge, and the class project of planning a social media marketing scheme for a real business all were innovative and creative ways for us to truly learn.

My favorite aspect of the class was the attitude. It was laid-back, and allowed for more student involvement. Blogging instead of homework assignments. Guest lectures and student run presentation instead of boring lectures from the same teacher everyday. A real world project that allowed students to gain valuable experience in marketing. This style allowed for a much better grasp of how this new business world works.

The main lesson that I took from this class is that nothing is permanent, especially in the business world. Things are always changes, with new inventions and innovations, so everyone has to stay informed to keep up. Although this constantly shifting world can be overwhelming, it is still possible to succeed. All it takes is creativity, persistence, and dedication. There will always be ways to be untrue to customers, but the Internet almost always exposes frauds, so it’s always better to be as transparent as possible. With these values in mind, the sky is the limit.

Popularity: 1% [?]