Jason M. Hanley :: Custom Software Developer

Today we received the specifications for our first major group project — the Company Project. The object is to produce a written report (2500 words max) and 15-minute presentation on a potential export or expansion opportunity of a Canadian company.

The hard part is that you need to pick the company, but you are given a specific industry and an assigned country. These are distributed randomly. Due to some rather bad luck, we ended up with a difficult combination — A machinery manufacturing company with an opportunity in Tanzania.

Tanzania, as I’ve recently discovered, is one of the poorest nations in the world. They have recently undertaken a massive privatization program aimed at improving their economy. Our group is currently trying to identify some sort of realistic export opportunity. Then, we need to find a Canadian company that could take advantage of it.

Oh, and did I mention? The project is due next Wednesday — the day after 3 back-to-back exams next week. Yes, the fun is just starting…

Boy, things are just hopping along here. It’s 10pm and I still have a mountain of Statistics questions / readings, Economics review and Accounting reading to dig through. Looking at my calendar, I notice there’s only 1.5 weeks before our first 3 major exams – ironically, the same three subjects. Not to mention a major group project due a week later, and several assignments sprinkled in-between.

Looks like the pressure is starting to mount. I spent some time tonight organizing my rapidly growing pile of loose notes by subject. I at least feel like I’m in a position to tackle the remainder of work for the night. Better get back to it…

My apologies to anyone who has visited in the past two weeks and found, well, nothing. I can’t believe that two weeks have gone by already. This program is extremely fast-paced and I’ve been having trouble keeping up periodically. It has caught me a bit off-guard in some cases since I’m used to being able to keep up with things without much difficulty.

So far we’ve been alternating through four core classes — Accounting, Economics, Statistics and Organizational Behaviour. I was hoping it would be mostly review for me since I took one of more undergrad courses in all of these subjects, but unfortunately that only got me through about the first class of each. After quickly summarizing the basics, we quickly rolled on through to more strategic “big picture” thinking. In these two weeks, I’ve learned quite a bit, not so much from the class material in most cases, but from the discussion and points brought up by classmates with widely varying backgrounds and experience.

It is currently lunchtime and I have my textbook open for a new course we have this afternoon — Strategy. I’m really looking forward to this class, since it will take the “big picture” thinking even one step further. This will likely be the primary course to pull all of the other subjects together to the broad-ranging topics that C-level (CEO, COO, etc.) executives have to make decisions about every day. And thankfully, the reading was very light — only one chapter — a stark contrast to the massive amounts of readings that have been assigned in the other courses.

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.