A quick trip down project delivery and presentation lane

Once you've finished working on a project and it has been deployed, the next step is to deliver and present that product to your client. This is an extremely important step in which you will be selling and explaining your product. In this stage it is vital to keep in mind the audience to whom you will be delivering and presenting your project. Analyzing your audience will help you to decide on how you want to present your project and yourself. Some presentations will be better off being very informal and fun, whereas in more corporate and serious settings it will be necessary to be very formal.

As you prepare to present your project, there are some key factors to keep in mind with regards to both presenting the project itself and presenting to an audience overall. When presenting your project, it is important to keep in mind that you are the expert and this is what you were hired to do, as Monteiro (2014) puts it "Your client hired you because you are the expert at what you do. They are the expert at the thing they do." Be confident in your project, and also do not allow (in a respectful manner) clients to request or debate things that you know to be infeasible. It is important to leave the client with reasonable expectations. This may not always be an easy conversation to have, but if done respectfully is a productive one. During your presentation, be confident in your product and it's possibilities for the client. Owning the room and showing confidence will help to make the client feel that they can trust you and that your product is strong.

As far as presenting to an overall multi-level audience goes, there important tactics to keep in mind while preparing a presentation. Your audience for your presentation is taking their time to watch your presentation. It is important that you relate your presentation and product to them and make sure they know that it was not a waste of time and that your product relates to them. Additionally, keep in mind that your audience will be varied in understanding levels. It will be inevitable to have to touch on some more technical concepts that may be harder to understand, however they should be avoided or simplified when possible. It is important that you do not leave certain audience members extremely confused. For example, I went to a conference a few months ago and in some of the presentations I felt that they were much too technical for me and I would end up lost within a few minutes and lose interest in the presentation.

Overall I feel the three most important ways to make a successful presentation to a multi-level audience are as follows. The first one is to remember that you are selling your product, be positive and confident and sell it to your audience. The second step is to keep it simple, do not lose half your audience by making the presentation too complex, but make sure that you still are able to relay your message and sell your product. The last step is practice, most of us understand that "practice makes perfect" and it is important to practice all the parts of your presentation to make it feel natural. There will inevitably be curve balls thrown at you with question or scenarios you did not expect, but with adequate practice these will be easier to tackle.

Get up, stand up, and fight for your product!

It's important to be able to simplify your presentation, if you can't then maybe you should understand your own product better

References:

Monteiro, M. (2014, September 18). Mule. Retrieved November 25, 2015, from                                  http://muledesign.com/2014/09/13-ways-designers-screw-up-client-                                        presentations

 Gallo, C. (2010). The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Retrieved November 25, 2015, from                         http://melbourneangels.accountsupport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Presentation-                       Secrets-of-Steve-Jobs-Jan-2010.pdf 

Your Potential Employer's Top 5

You finish college and have a degree, but just like that you need to find a job. Interviews can be intimidating and hard to navigate even with a good amount of experience. Knowing what skills to showcase and what your potential employer is looking for could be vital to landing that job. In the technical field, employers will be looking at your technical skills as well as your soft skills. For those who may not know, soft skills is a term associated with a person's "Emotional Quotient" rather than their IQ (Intellectual Quotient).

So exactly what soft skills is your potential employer looking for? The first one is teamwork. According to Sharon Florentine (2015), "Candidates who can work well with others and demonstrate effective teamwork will always have a career edge" (pg. 3).  After having worked with a team on our project in this class, it's easy to see that teamwork is a soft skill that must be fine tuned and practiced. The second skill is decision-making. Employers will expect you to be independent and be able to make the best decisions possible on your own. Nobody wants to have to watch over employee's all the time and guide them through every decision. Employer's expect autonomous and productive workers. The third skill is communication. Communication is key, because in most job settings you will be around your team and co workers 8+ hours a day. It's vital that you are both able to get along as well as communicate efficiently and effectively to help finish tasks. As I have experienced in working with our group in this class, it can be hard to communicate effectively and efficiently while also juggling other responsibilities and priorities. The fourth skill is planning and prioritizing. Employers want someone who can manage different tasks and get them done as quickly and efficiently as possible by prioritizing and planning. The fifth skill is self-confidence, which is an important soft skill in all aspects of life. Someone who is confident in themselves is more likely to take calculated risks as well as take initiative to do things. Employers want someone who can do, not someone who 'maybe thinks that they might' be able to do!

So you have all these soft skills, but you also need technical skills because let's face it, you're in the tech field. The top 5 tech skills in today's day and age are: data security, big data, cloud computing, mobile computing, and project management. Today in the tech world big data, cloud computing, data security, and mobile computing are very big topics. Big companies are pushing new limits and working with both cloud and mobile computing as well as big data. If you can harness an understanding of big data and how to keep all this data secure as well as how to work with it on mobile or cloud platforms, then you are putting yourself ahead by a lot. Project management will always be a technical skill that employers look out for as it is vital to project success. According to an article on networkworld.com "Even more important is experience managing complex IT projects and delivering results on time and on or under budget". In technical fields especially, delivering working results on time is extremely important and being able to properly manage a project to achieve that is a vital skill when employers are deciding whether or not to hire you.

Decision-making is more complicated than solving mazes, but we can think of this maze as a metaphor for life.

I forgot to mention, but it's probably also important to have programming as a technical skill.

References:

Marsan, C. (2009, March 30). Top 10 technology skills. Retrieved November 9, 2015, from                                   http://www.networkworld.com/article/2265132/email-services/top-10-technology-                               skills.html

Florentine, S. (2015, April 2). Top soft and technical skills that will get you hired. Retrieved                                 November 9, 2015, from http://www.cio.com/article/2904751/careers-staffing/crucial-                         soft-and-technical-skills-for-a-competitive-it-job-market.html#slide1

How To Succeed Working in a Team Environment

Working in a team environment can be difficult for many different reasons. Team members can have disagreements, one person can end up doing more work, everyone can be on different pages, and overall it can be a disaster unless you know how to successfully navigate a team environment. It is a necessity to sustain a strong team environment to be able to succeed. The key elements to success as a team are: trust, communication, reward and recognition, positivity and proactive feedback. Without these pillars, it is extremely difficult to succeed.

Trust among team members is necessary, but it is also something that takes time to develop. There are many ways to develop trust within a team whether it be team building exercises or just having team members be honest about their concerns and worries and exchange ideas and constructive criticism liberally. In the end however, trust within a team will only happen if each team member allows themselves to trust their other team members.

Communication is vital. Every team member will have the own ideas, opinions, thoughts, and methods of doing certain things. It is extremely important that team members voice their thoughts and ideas, but it is also equally important that these ideas are heard and considered. If team members feel that their opinions, ideas, and contributions are not being taken seriously or considered then they may feel less inclined to contribute or lose trust in the team.

Reward and recognition is something that everyone enjoys. We can all attest to the fact that when we work hard and put time and effort into a project, we want to be recognized and rewarded for our work. Look around at all the hard work and dedication your team members are putting in and acknowledge it and reward them. Let them know that their contributions are valued and their work is not going unnoticed and they will surely feel more enticed to contribute.

Positivity and proactive feedback are the last pillar to success as a team. While working together it's important to give each other constructive criticism and help each other out where you think it is needed. As a team if you constantly give each other positive and helpful feedback you will be able to improve quicker in areas where you may be lacking. Combined with good trust and communication, positivity and proactive feedback will help propel your team further and further forward.

A word cloud with a large amount of words that really describe what being a team means and requires

Some important aspects in agile teamwork which are more specific to our current teams

References:

Llopis, G. (2012, October 1). 6 Ways Successful Teams Are Built To Last. Retrieved October 30,                       2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2012/10/01/6-ways-successful-teams-                   are-built-to-last/

Zoglio, S. (2001, August 20). 7 Keys to Building Great Work Teams. Retrieved November 1, 2015,                     from http://www.agileconnection.com/article/7-keys-building-great-work-teams?                                 page=0,0 

Architecting Your Perfect Online Storefront

From the comfort of your own couch you can now purchase anything you need and have it delivered to your front door the next day. Customers no longer need to get their keys, drive to a store, sit in traffic, and deal with all the hassle of physically buying items from a store. Due to this you can no longer rely simply on your store and your personable and charming employees to sell your product for you. As a customer, when you walk into a store you would only hope to be greeted by professional and polite employees. You would expect the store to be organized, be clean, smell nice, and overall make you feel comfortable buying a product there. The same concepts apply to your online storefront, but in an altered fashion. As a customer you expect the website to be accessible, easy to navigate, professional looking, and trustworthy. Building a good website to sell your products is essential to the success of your online business. Your website's look and feel is as important as the look, attitude, and professionalism of the employees in a physical store.

According to a research study titled Trust and Mistrust of Online Health Sites, 94 percent of people said the biggest reason they had for mistrusting a website was its design. Some of the major reasons they mistrusted a website were: 

• Busy or complex layouts

• Advertisements

• Boring web design

• Slow load times

• Small and hard to read fonts

For these reasons it is vital that your website design is good, or else you can lose customers within the first few seconds of them visiting your page. 

Wordpress has many different pre-made layouts that you can explore and test out until you find one that you think suits you and the style of website you would like. Wordpress website are highly customizable and it is easy to do so. As we continue to work together on creating the best website possible it is important that we do focus on concepts as I have pointed out above to ensure that any potential clientele is not scared away by a bad website design. Another important aspect is the actual content of any text on the website. Just like you would be able to do during an in person interaction with a customer, you should be able to build a connection and trust with the customer. It is helpful to have a section about the business or the owner to ensure that the customer can learn about the person or business they are buying from. Overall it is important that the content within the website is informative, concise, and relevant. Keeping these design points in mind and executing them well, will aid in making potential customers into actual customers.

A great example of what NOT to do when designing a website

Some statistics on importance of web design

References:

 Sillence, E., Briggs, P., Fishwick, L., & Harris, P. (2004, April 25). Trust and mistrust of online                      health sites. Retrieved October 12, 2015, from http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=985776 

 Understanding The Full Impact Of Web Design On SEO, Branding, And More. (2005, February 11).              Retrieved October 12, 2015, from                                                                                                              http://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhendricks/2015/02/11/understanding-the-full-impact-of-                  web-design-on-seo-branding-and-more/ 

Reliable Website Hosting With Amazon Web Services

When you are running your business on a website, you rely on your webpage being available for the public to see at all times. Imagine someone stumbles upon your webpage, the website is down and they cannot access it and see your products. In this instance, it is possible that the potential customer loses interest and never comes back. As a business owner this is the last thing you want to have happen. Amazon Web Services has become the front runner in the technology world for website hosting because of it's reliability and business owners can sleep soundly at night knowing their website will be running around the clock. Not only is it reliable but making the switch is fairly simple and Amazon provides a plethora of tutorials for beginners.

Another benefit of Amazon Web Services is the low cost. Amazon Web Services describes their service as a "pay for what you use" service, as opposed to other website hosting companies which will charge you a static monthly fee regardless of how much hosting your website is costing them. With Amazon Web Services, they will only charge you based on the amount of storage you use or the amount of viewers you bring in. This is extremely beneficial to smaller businesses that are not getting an enormous amount of views per day.

Overall, Amazon Web Services is a great tool to consider for hosting a website. Reliability is extremely beneficial to small business owners who want to ensure anyone who visits their site is guaranteed to see their product. The low-cost hosting allows small businesses to cut down on unnecessary costs in something as important as website hosting, while ensuring that they still have a quality experience.

• A simple infographic from Amazon's AWS Summit conference about the benefits of their services.

Blog Citations:

 Benefits of Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 2nd Watch. (2013, January 28). Retrieved September    27, 2015, from http://2ndwatch.com/blog/benefits-of-amazon-web-services-aws/ 

 C., C. (2014, April 9). 5 Reasons Your Small Business Should Be Using Amazon Web Services.                       Retrieved September 27, 2015, from http://blog.infiniteskills.com/2014/04/5-reasons-small-                 business-amazon-web-services/