Jason M. Hanley :: Custom Software Developer

Boy, last Friday seems like a long time ago. I’ve just finished getting caught up from today, the first day of “real” class. Now all I have to do are the readings for tomorrow… But in the meantime, I’ll finish up the Innersee experience from Friday.

In the afternoon, we did several more activities. The first one was probably my favourite of the day. There was a series of telephone poles with steel “tightropes” tied inbetween. Mind you, they were only about a foot from the ground, so there wasn’t much danger beyond spraining an ankle or something. The trick was that each of three lengths was successively longer, and you needed to get each team member safely across all of them. You had a rope tied to the final length that could be used to help steady yourself. Oh, and if any team member fell off, everyone had to start from the beginning.

I won’t give away our solution to the problem, but we managed to discuss the situation and come up with a great solution fairly quickly. We then managed to execute it on our second try. Jose gave us a hell of a scare when we were almost complete by running the first length unassisted and nearly falling off. I think the entire group would’ve mauled him if he’d actually fallen

Next we did the classic “trust fall” from a raised platform. There was a slight twist — The group stayed away from the fall zone until you turned around. Then, instead of waiting for the group to say they were ready, you simply counted 1-2-3 and fell. The group had to get in place as quietly as possible and catch you. You had to trust they’d get there in time. Nobody got dropped

Then we did a “filler” activity while we waited for another group to finish up the big finale event. It was called “trolley” and basically involved everyone strapping on two group “skiis” and trying to walk in unison. Our group has difficulties because of the number of people (including me) with large feet that didn’t quite fit in the straps. Luckily we didn’t spend too much time on this one.

The final event of the day was what we were all waiting for — “The Wall.” This was a 12-foot high sheer, wooden wall with no hand or foot holds. 12 feet didn’t seem that high until I stood next to it and realized it was basically twice my height. The object of this activity was to get everyone up to the platform at the top sequentially, however, there were several contraints. The first person only had help from the bottom, so he needed to be lifted high enough to grab the top and pull himself up on his own. The second person (me) had to be lifted, then helped by only one person at the top. The third person had help from the bottom and two people to pull them up. From there, however, the first person had to leave the top and not help at all anymore (except for spotting in case someone fell). Subsequent people up the wall had to leave in sequence until there were only two people left at the top, and a sole climber at the bottom. Nobody else at the bottom was able to help. At that point, there are two strategies — One, leave the second last person dangling and have the last one climb up. We tried that one, but it didn’t work well. The second idea was for the last person to take a run at it, jump, and grab the hands of the people at the top. We did this and managed to get it on about the third run.

Looking back at the day, it was a great way to interact with and learn about my classmates. I think it would be a beneficial activity to do in any sort of group that needs to work together closely. Besides that, it gets you out in the fresh air doing physical activity for an entire day, which is a nice change from the norm…

This past Friday was something called a “Team Building Day.” This took place in a big field about 20 minutes outside of Waterloo with a company called Innersee Initatives. We participated in a bunch of activities during the day that were designed to make us work together as a group, and highlight individual strengths and weaknesses.

We first played a game where we tossed various objects from person to person in a specific order but had to call their name out first. My group members were Adam, Ben, Brian, Jose, Neil, Shiv, Sonia, and Tom. Our instructor was named Tina.

The first real activity of the day was called “Communication Bridge.” In this exercise the team is divided into two, and situated on either side of a dividing wall. Each side has a platform with a gap between the ledge and the dividing wall. Each team is given a box full of about 30 random objects to build the bridge out of. The trick is that you are only allowed communication with the other team through one member, and this only happens three times. As it turns out, our group was a bit weighted to the engineering and computers side of things, so we ended up building and extremely simple bridge that only used 3 pieces (one of which was the box itself). This made the exercise a lot easier and we had it syncronized by the second communication. I think after this one Tina decided she needed to challenge us a bit more.

The next one was pretty fun. The group is blindfolded except for one person who is the leader. They are taken off to a remote location where they have to stand on a square and observe the others with binoculars. Andrew was our team leader. He had a walkie-talkie, and one blindfolded member had the other radio strapped to his chest. The leader was to give us commands but the group could not communicate back. The group task was to take a pole with a hook (looked like a swimming pool “people catcher”) and carry a bucket full of water through a series or markers, then hang it on a pole. We managed to do pretty well, although at the end people started to lose a bit of trust when Andrew started turning us back and forth, trying to line us up with the pole. I recall hearing things like “What the heck? I think he’s just messing with us.” and similar commnets. He mentioned it was very difficult from his vantage point because standing in one place, you have very little depth perception.

After this we did two activities that involved a “Spider’s Web.” The first had a series of ropes attached to a frame such that there were about 12 different-sized holes. The object of the game was to get the entire team of 9 to the other side without touching the rope with any part of your body or clothing. The hard part was that you could only use each hole once. If anyone touched, the entire team had to start over again. We planned it all out and managed to get 8 people to the other side — when the very last person ended up having a piece of clothing touch. I was surprised how well the group took it. We all just went back to the other side, confident that our approach was correct, started over again going through the exact same holes, and finished up shortly after. The second spider web activity was a three dimensional criss-crossing of ropes that the group had to put a rope through as many holes as possible. I didn’t really enjoy this activity much, but I think we managed to get it through 22 or so holes in total.

Next came lunch. I’ll continue on with the afternoon in my next post.

This was day 2/2 of “MBA-PD” (the PD stands for Professional Development), which is designed to prepare us for the actual work that will start next Monday.

In the morning we learned about writing techniques, and did a speedwriting exercise — writing for 2 minutes straight for as fast as you can. I ended up with 180 words in 5 minutes — on the low end of things. I suspect that number might’ve been slightly higher it the test had been typed instead of written

In the afternoon we learned about what makes effective teams and did some teamwork exercises. A lot of our assignments will be in teams, so this was very important.

At the end of the day, we found out what our assigned teams will be for the term — you are assigned 3-4 other classmates semi-randomly and do all group projects with them for the next 4 months. I was very lucky and managed to get on a great team. I’m not sure how the other teams turned out, but ours is extremely balanced in terms of age, experience, and subject expertise. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble working together and accomplishing a lot.

Can’t write anymore tonight.. Gotta get ready for the big “team building” event tomorrow — a “Survival”-style course with a bunch of crazy tasks (like getting your entire team over top of a 12-foot wall). Should be fun!

I was hoping I’d be able to write at least one entry per day. Perhaps that was a bit ambitious. Yesterday was orientation. It seems like forever ago, but I remember the pace was fairly slow. They served us snacks for breakfast and a decent sandwich lunch. They talked about all the services available, and told us how difficult and time-consuming the program will be. Then we did tours of the campus and library. We got to leave early, too.

Today was much different. 8:35am and we were down to business. The classes for first term will run every weekday in two sessions, 8:30-11:30 and 1:00-4:00. Even today, still technically orientation, they packed a lot of learning and activities into that time.

In the morning, we did verbal communication. The very first thing we had to do was get in self-organized groups of 4. Then, we each had to talk about a topic (chosen from a list of 5) for 2 minutes straight. After that, they mixed up the groups randomly and we went through the exercise again with 1-minute “speeches.” The rest of the time was mostly anaylsis, theory and advice about effective verbal communication skills.

Next came lunch. I was supposed to meet up with classmates Albert and Jon at Pita Pit, but had to make a side trip to the library to try and get my wireless Internet set up. Another fellow, Alfred, went with me to the bookstore. They set up the software and supposedly it will be active tomorrow. We’ll see. The network infrastructure at Laurier seems a bit shakey. After that, Alfred and I walked over to Pita Pit, but Albert and Jon weren’t there. We did run into another colleague who had decided to enjoy the fine dining experience of the Pit. Her name escapes me at the moment (met too people people in too short of time) but I do recall she worked for Union Gas and it sounded like a really interesting job.

After lunch, we delved into some case analysis stuff. We first worked in small (assigned) groups to come up with solutions to a short problem. Then we did some theory, which led into some speed reading techniques — namely skimming and scanning. From the class reaction, it seems like a lot of people have trouble reading and analyzing things quickly. This has always come quite naturally to me, but I did find the skimming technique presented was very effective — moreso than what I normally do. They suggested to read 1. the first paragraph, 2. the last paragraph and 3. the first and last sentences of all remaining paragraphs. For a well-written case, that’s almost all you have to do to get a pretty good understanding of the situation. Then, you can very effectively apply a scanning technique to extract any numbers or exact details you need.

All in all, a long, but interesting and productive day. My feelings towards the program and the people I’ve met so far are very positive.

I start orientation tomorrow at 8:30am. From there on, I have class every weekday from 8:30am-4pm. Now this might sound reasonable for a normal person, however, I haven’t been up that early on a regular basis since… grade 12 — 9 years.

I set my alarm for 8:30 today, and somehow kept hitting snooze until 9:00 — and I’m not typically someone who hits snooze. But at least this way, the 7:30 alarm tomorrow won’t be so much of a shock to the system!