Build your brand in the digital world!

This week on the communication class, I chose a topic for my “take a stand” presentation.  It was one of my personal hobby and I wanted to convince my audience the benefit of this hobby and eventually persuaded them to  keep it as their personal habit as I did.

My topic was  Build your brand in the digital world: personal website method. 

I personally wrote almost 600 articles/ over 1million words on my personal blog/website during the past 8 years, which means every week, I would write 1.5 articles. I  almost wrote everything, including people I met, place I travelled, the interviews I was conducted, the companies I worked, the project I did, the dream I made, the MBA schools I applied and of course the MBA life here at Anderson.  Yep, I kept recording my personal life. Or you can say, I sometime keep talking to myself in the deep night, when it was quite and only the inner conversation in mind. I love my little hobby.

I felt the huge benefit of keeping recording the daily life or some important moment of life, and want to share the benefit of the personal website, hoping my peers could also realize the benefit of personal website and benefit their life now and in the future.

Some main point of the presentation:

-Easy to own a personal website, three simple step: domain name, space and WordPress

-Under control: easily monitor, publish privately or publicly. choose publish time

-Keep memory and stories in a safe and lasting digital home ( Actually, this is my reason, and there were lots of benefit you can image if you have a digital copy of your memory. Not only for yourself, but for your son, daughter or even grandson, granddaughter if they want to know your stories or the family’s stories and where they are from….)

-Easy to connect with the social network

-Potential investment: professional brand, Google Adsense

Frankly speaking, I always was afraid to give public speech in front of people, even just only 9 people. I prefer causal conversation, and it would be perfect for me if it was just an 1-to-1 face to face conversation.  However, in business school, I gained chance,or was forced, to practice my public speaking skills, and I hope I would improve it through my two years’MBA life.  To tell myself the truth, I already felt a little improvement compared to two or three month ago. I attribute the improvement to my classmate and the professors, who made a class environment that I would never have the chance to know if I didn’t come to Anderson. Everyone seems so confidence in class, and the more important thing is that even I sometimes knew what I talked about was nonsense, but nobody would judge you and made you feel silly. People in the class were encouraged to speak out their ideas, whether it is right or wrong, as there is no right or wrong answer, there was just your answers. Then I become brave to speak out even sometimes I was not so comfortable or confidence in what I would say. ( Sorry….I always made the topic far way from what I wanted to talked about…..)

Back to the  presentation I made this Monday, I received some feedback from my peers. Shame to admit, I didn’t provide too much feedback to them as I am still not good at giving feedback to presentation, and I hope next quarter, I would provide my own opinion for my peers’ presentation.

Feedback:

Good/Strength:

-Great Visuals / Display of presentation/Prezi (7)

-Personal Story “Good Dating” (4)

-Very passionate and engaged

-Good persuasive argument w/appropriate main points

-Great logical persuasive

-Good Hook

-Good posture

-Data use

-Conclusion

-Benefits ( Excellent )

-Outline everything well

-good jobs keeping it relevant/ link some concept to business school (2)

Weakness/Improvement:

-It was fast and a lot of different points. Fewer points and more support may be better

-Didn’t understand why you choose 8 years w/ your original slide

– Maybe want to balance reasons in term of types varieties

-The ending might be stronger if it was more concise

-Slow down on speaking/Maybe speak more slowly so we can be sure to understand you perfectly (2)

-Make contact around the room

-Change of pace if changed from slow to fast

-watch pauses and pronunciations

– what are your trying to convince?

– Need clearer position +preview

-some slides are hard to read ( dark background + dark letter)

-you use mostly one type of evidence, need variety

Obviously, there were a bunch of good and strength for my presentation, but also had lots of place that I need to improve.  Two things maybe I did quite well. First, I use Prezi to make my presentation, which made my presentation a great visual. ( There were 7 out of 8 people pointed this), Two, I made the topic related to my personal stories, and made it a humor way. Two things I still need to improve. First, speak slowly. Second, speak clearly. ( Pronunciations)

UCLA run the L.A. We Bruins beat Trojans

A wonderful end of 2013. We finally beat USC Trojans. I watched the football game in a sports watching bar near campus. The bar was filled by Bruins, so I almost stood there for more than three hours to celebrate the last moment. It was an wonderful game!! I would remember the game and the feelings to be Bruins! It was my great honor to be part of this tight community!

PEERspective Feedback

Peerspective is a program that let 1st Anderson student met a new 1st MBA student in other section and talked with each other for half hour every week.  Then they gave feedback to each other. After several round, they will combine the feedback together, so you will receive a combined feedback, but don’t know which specific feedback from whom. I found there were lots of such kind of design to protect people that provided their opinion or choice.

Would they Intro You?

Some yes, some no

What reservations would they have?

Some communication was hard and they had a hard time understanding you sometimes.

What do they think you most valued

Recognition and Affiliation

First visual impression

Professional and well dressed. They’d intro you to their boss!

If you engaged their friend they’d feel…

Acceptance and Anticipation

Perception of your career interests and abilities

They think you are knowledgeable and have a good sense of direction

Would they go for drinks?

You betcha

Impressions from Emails?

Not much of an impression (no news is usually good news in this category)

If they could change 1 thing

Talk more clearly, work on your small talk, and try to be a little more personable!

B-school is like real biz world, full of exciting things and opportunities. you want to them all, right? who doesn’t!  yet you have limited resource, time, $, people.  so, find out your limitation, sort out your priority, and do the ones you MUST do, and learn to let the rest go.  many times, my role is not to pick what we should do, but to turn down the projects / meetings / trips, we don’t need. Same for biz school. –From a CEO friend who graduated from Stanford MBA.

真正的MBA生活已经开始三周了, 感觉匆匆忙忙, 日子过的越来越快，不知不觉一天，一周，或许一个月就这样过去了. 每天都是在各种日历安排下围着转，不需要仔细思考自己一天要干嘛. 学习，learning team, ACT Group, corporate event, Parker CMC, club, lecture, social event等等. 每天也都在各种邮件里转着. 把第一时间不考虑的邮件丢进分类目录，把要去的活动第一时间注册，备注在日历表中，把犹豫不决的邮件依旧放在收件箱。 每隔几天清理清理收件箱. 生活似乎就是在每天的各种选择中度过. 经常是同一个时间有不同事情overlap. 开始的时候便想着尽可能多的参加一些活动，多参加社团，社交活动，讲座，酒吧等. 不过不需要多久便会明白，什么都想要，什么都想抓是不现实的.

MBA 生活或许正入前人所说，不是要给自己做加法，什么都要去. 而真的是要学会慢慢的认清自己，知道自己要什么，慢慢narrow自己的想法，自己的选择，在相对明晰的大方向上，学会舍弃，舍弃那些并不重要或者作用并不大的事情。因为手里的资源有限，如何在两年时间里发挥最大的utility至关重要. 然而这却又是一个自我醒悟的过程，旁人的说教作用甚微，只有自己去尝试了做了才会明白. 有些人比较幸运，目标明确. 有些人比较折腾，或许要花很久，尝试很多次之后才会慢慢做出自己的选择. 并无优劣之分, 只是各自认知世界的方式不同而已.