Nina Huang- Final Blog

If I had the opportunity to do over my project, I would researched different startups that are already in the market so that it could give me a better idea on what a startup is. Then I would have tried harder on thinking about what country, nation, or city I would want to brand and look at what startups are already there. Even though we had sample presentations from past students, I was still confused on what a startup is and how to rebrand a nation. My group mates and I had some ideas on what we may do, but most of the ideas did not fit into the assignment requirements or did not work as a startup. We just took the easier route to sticking with our original idea and changing it to fit the assignment since we wanted to be done with the assignments that were due each week. If we talked about our ideas more and have it confirmed earlier that our idea is good and works in this project, we would not have to redo the first two assignments.

Besides that, I would have tried harder on the group project assignments if I knew what we need to have in each assignments. Most of the assignments did not have specific guidelines, so we did do much research and just tried to answer the prompt with our ideas alone. For some reason, I thought we had to put all the assignments into an essay format for the last assignment so that I thought that is when we would edit our answers and cite the sources from assignment two. As a result, I thought we answered the questions well and would get a good grade on each assignments. I now know that we need to cite outsides sources after the second assessment so that we would have other information to support our arguments. Moreover, if we communicated better and divided the assignment equally, each person would have done equal amounts of work for each week. That way, each of us would know exactly what we have to do to finish the weekly assignments and how to answer the prompts better. It would also help us generate more ideas and make us put more effort on each assignments.

Kristina Nguyen -- Final Blog

If I had the opportunity to start my project over, I would have firstly changed my approach of how I was going to do the project. Instead of doing something community based, I would have tried harder to think of a nation that could use a re-branding of (and I really tried to brainstorm of another nation where I could focus this re-branding theory to). Secondly, I would have made sure that everyone in my group was on the right page and that there was not a miscommunication among us with what each individual person had to do and that everyone should have put in the same amount of work. For things that I could have done more of, I could have researched a lot more and I feel that our group could have also been more on top of things with deciding what we were going to do. I felt that we changed our approach and idea many times in the beginning because none of us had an idea that met the requirement of nation re-branding, so we did what was easiest for us to understand and stuck with community-based re-branding instead. Regarding the actual project itself, if I had the opportunity to start the project over again, I would have put more time and effort into researching. Reading the requirements of the group portion due every Friday made me believe that all of our ideas are pure speculations. If I had known that we had to have at least 2 sources to support the prompt, I would have definitely researched more. That being said, even though my group project did not answer national re-branding, it is still a project with good intentions that focuses on trying to re-brand a group (Southeast Asian Americans) and make them more independent from the "Asian" group that includes all Asians and groups everyone as being Chinese or that we speak the same language.

Nancy Bui: Final Blog, Reflection

Answer this prompt: If you had the opportunity to do over your project, what would you have done different and/or more?


If given a time machine, I think I should've reached out to previous presenters and asked for feedback as I was still developing my app idea. In the early stages, our idea kept changing (which isn't bad) but it did delay and limit the possibility of how extensive our research could've been. I feel like talking to Vy or Shannon could've been very helpful in the development process (of just generating ideas). 

Another thing we could've improved on was the actual "re-branding" notion of the start up. Whilst our app did have good intentions, we should've narrowed down and focused on the current image of our chosen nation/population and worked around the realm of re-defining it. It seems as though we went backwards in our thinking process, where we came up with a startup and then found the problem. 

The last thing could've been working on the financial feasibility as denoted by James during our final presentation.  He denoted to research more on the actual possibility of our financial plan and execution. Considering that I did/do not have any type of background in Finances, I could've gone contacted an economics professor or meet with them in general about questions in reference to things like ROIs. Or I could've bought more text material to utilize as reference. This aspect would've been helpful to reach out to Dinh (the male presenter you brought in) in regards to execution plan to make this app become a tangible and feasible investment. From the mentor's involved at the Big Bang, I could've also emailed Karen Harding to see if any judges would've been interested in working as a consultant with us in the development of our financial execution plan.

I really enjoyed the different approach towards the material and the development of skills that aren't part of a usual lecture style class. Granted there were some curve balls such as the way Mr. Bui decided to cut out 10 min pitch to 50 secs, it really forced me to think on my feet and help develop my critical thinking. I was also very grateful to learn about the re-branding/history of different nations such as Vietnam, Korea, and China. 

Week 5 Blogpost -- Jaselle Abuda

Jaselle Abuda

Professor Valverde

ASA 189F

8 December 2017

Denmark elevated its aesthetics by proactively and collaboratively working onto build the furniture super power that it is known for today. Reconstructing the structure of the Danish furniture industry by implementing modern and personal connection to the consumers. Tactics that Denmark utilized were using stories to connect to consumer buyers for them to better understand the furniture products that Denmark produces. Heavy influences from networking and advertisements greatly benefited the production and commercialization of Denmark’s furniture industry. To become more relatable and “in” with the era of “minimalism” and “modernity”, Denmark really pushed their goal into the manufacture of more modern and sleek furniture products as to accommodate to the taste of the buyers.

Lessons that I can draw from this article when thinking about my own project is the commitment and efficiency of Denmark’s use of resources to be the super power furniture industry that it is now. Because our project is completely and solely focused as a youth program, we must be critical in utilizing the resources that we need for the community. In order to reach this goal, our program must be economically stable to be able to assist and distribute resources to the community.

Question: Are there other major products that Denmark produces other than their furniture industry?

Image source: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jun/17/ikea-generation-buy-antique-vintage-furniture

Citation

Grahame, Alice. "Can The Ikea Generation Buy Into Vintage Furniture?." The Guardian, 2015.