ICS 691 News 2(2)

[Philip Johnson <johnson@hawaii.edu>]

ICS News, Week 2, Issue 2

In this issue:
* VCommerce Companies vs. Presentation Groups
* Minor company membership adjustments
* Abbreviation vs. Email Address
* Order of company display in VCommerce website
* Homework Assignment for this week
* Help me!  I'm freaking out!


---
VCommerce Companies vs. Presentation Groups

A student emailed me with a message indicating confusion about
whether the groups formed into companies are the same groups for
presentations.  The answer is no, and I apologize for not making this
more explicit.  Each of you is assigned to one group for your
VCommerce company and a different group for your presentation. To
make this somewhat clearer, I "renamed" the companies as A, B, C, ...
Q.  To see which company you belong to, click on the "Company
Assignments" link at the home page.  To see which presentation you
are responsible for, click on the "Schedule" link at the home page.
Each person should be assigned to exactly one company and exactly one
presentation group. If you're not assigned to one of each, or if
you're assigned to more than one of each, please let me know!

---
Minor company membership adjustments

As anticipated, I have already had to make minor adjustments to the
members of companies B, H, and M.  Follow the "Company Assignments"
link at the home page to see the current assignments.  I hope to not
have to make any further adjustments. 

---
Abbreviation vs. Email address

A student emailed me to request that I "fix" his abbreviation (listed
in the online resume index page) to correctly represent his email
address.  Note that these abbreviations are used only to support the
assignment of people to presentations in the Schedule page.  They do
not represent email addresses (except by accident). To find the email
address for a person, consult their online resume directly.

---
Order of company display in VCommerce website

A student emailed to ask what order the companies would be displayed
in the VCommerce website, because he believed that companies ordered
near to the top would receive more hits than those at the bottom.
He's absolutely right, which is why we plan to randomly re-order the
list of companies each time a user enters the website. 

However, note that this tendency to click on the first company can be
somewhat overcome by designing an "interesting" name or logo to be
displayed in this list.  Just like the real world.

---
Homework Assignment for this week

A student emailed me this morning to say that he didn't turn in the
Pizza Portal evaluation on Friday, but blamed me for not making it
clearer what the assignment was at the web site. 

Well.  Just to keep the record straight, the assignment was listed in
the lecture slides from the first session, second lecture (Business
Plans).  All of the homework, including the Pizza Portal analysis,
was then repeated in ICS 691 News, 1(1), which was emailed to you and
archived at the web site.   But I do understand that a great deal of
information is being thrown at you, and that for some of you, this
course is demanding more organization and online efforts than you're
used to from your previous courses.  Again, I believe that this is
part of the educational value of this course and crucial if you want
to be successful as an Internet Entrepreneur. 

Anyway, I will continue to re-publish the homework assignment and
upcoming events in this ICS 691 News.  Hopefully as you get used to
this approach, you'll start to feel more comfortable and on top of
things.    Here's a review of what you should be doing for this week:

* Everyone should begin meeting with their fellow company members.
Each company will present a 3-5 minute report on Friday concerning
(a) Name of company and members, (b) Internet domain name (must not
be currently allocated. See prior email on 'whois'), (c) Overview of
product/service idea, and (d) Initial market research results. You
should summarize your progress in a one page report, and email it to
me before class on Friday.

* Those presenting "online business models" should meet immediately
and come to me for hints on how to proceed. 

* Those presenting "introduction to networks and the internet" should
meet immediately and come to me for hints on how to proceed.  On
Friday, you will present to the class a list of 3-5 online resources
to be read before the start on class on Friday, 2/4, along with a
brief homework assignment to be completed and turned in before class.
The homework assignment should take only a few minutes to complete
once the online resources have been read. 

* Those presenting any other topic should meet to start getting
organized and meet with me to get hints. You can and should start
researching your area immediately. Don't wait to meet with me before
getting started. 

---
Help me!  I'm freaking out!

A student has emailed me for advice on how to cope with rising levels
of panic surrounding this course.   My answer is that I strongly
believe that all of you can succeed in this course, as long as you
don't fall behind.  Try to devote about an hour a day to this course,
at least at first, so that you feel you are making consistent, steady
progress toward getting "on top" of things.  You can spend the time
learning about ASP, or website design, or doing market research, or
generating product/service ideas, or outlining the components of the
business plan, or investigating online resources for your
presentation topic.  Particularly at this point, don't tell yourself
"well, I can't do anything yet until I meet with my company or
presentation group members."  My advice at this point is to put as
much time as possible into ALL of the aspects of your company and
presentation, so that when you meet with your group, you come with
ideas about how to proceed in all the various areas.   At least at
first, view yourselves as "loosely coupled", and definitely do not
attempt to "divide and conquer" by assigning member A to figure out
the product/service, member B to do the market research, member C to
generate the website, etc.  Why?  Because if you do that, and if
ANYONE fails in their task, the whole effort fails.  

The other thing you should know is that I've designed this course to
require a lot more work at the beginning of the semester than at the
end. If you can really get on top of things now and get your
companies and websites running smoothly, then at the end of the
semester when other courses are requiring more of you, you won't need
to do much for this course.  This first month, in particular, is
designed to be the most demanding month of the entire course. So,
keep up your spirits, remember that the things you are doing and
learning here are intended to be quite practical and relevant to your
career, put some time into this course EVERY day, and it will all
work out.  

Cheers,
Philip