Team Work....TPM

I had the honor to be the leader of Team B, Enlighten Entertainment. We were a very supportive team and willing to give a 110%. The majority of the team members had the energy and the desire to win. Everyone volunteered for their assignments and did them on the scheduled time. The only one person who wasn’t as excited as the rest of the team still did a good job with his assignments.

On the first week we needed to come up with an idea for the proposal. I met with one of them at my place, another one via iChat, and there was one that couldn’t make it because of work. I understand the work situation, but at that point I didn’t feel he was committed to the team. I felt he was reading the e-mails and criticizing everything that we did yet giving nothing for us to grow. At that point I talked to Christina because there was a girl from another class who advised me that the class goes by fast and therefore I needed to deal with any situation right away. I did my investigations and I found out that two persons of the team were friends before Full Sail. Before knowing this information, I had asked another team member to be the team leader; I thought he wanted to have the power, and it turned out that he was one of the most supportive. Back to the point, the instant I was aware of this friendship, I told the guy in charge of the PTM Team Charter, I wanted to be the team leader; he answered “you’ve always been the leader to me”. After that we have been a consistent and solid team. We got the idea done via e-mails. 

The way that we managed was, first, I took over the leadership of the team. I was having communication with them every day. I wanted to make sure that this would work. Second I established that we needed to progress throughout the class as a team by having a meeting every week. Monday is reading day, and Tuesday at 5 pm became the perfect day to come with our respective assignments after a week of having worked on them. During the week, I would call them and text them just to know how they were doing and if they needed any help or anything from me, also we e-mailed every step we each did to maintain communication. I read every single one of them and their attachments.

The second week we tried to have our “virtual” meeting. (What a joke it was!) We spent a whole hour trying to figure out how to use iChat. We never got to have the actual meeting. The person from the group that wasn’t as excited finally connected to iChat the hour after and he didn’t even say hi. That bothered me, and I talked about this with one of the classmates and teammates. We finished the “meeting” and I finished out sending e-mails with the assignments that needed to be done. Then we got to an agreement for the next meeting to do it at my apartment and the student from out-of-state to be the only one on iChat. This program worked out perfectly throughout the other weeks. Everybody volunteered for the tasks that needed to be done. After we finished our tasks I met with one of the team members to outline the proposal. I went to his place and we got it running, and in about three days we had most of the proposal done. We collected more information that we actually needed, so that worked for our advantage. We had more than enough material to write. But for the “virtual” team the only suggestion I have is that Full Sail should have a class on how to master Mac in general. Just learning how to use the Mac has been a challenge by itself.

We just had our last meeting, Tuesday at 5:30pm. The no-desire guy didn’t have his part done; apparently, he didn’t understand what the chores where. He got confused, yet he “couldn’t” ask. Or maybe he didn’t want to. One of the responsibilities we had was read the e-mails, check them constantly. I wanted to have the first draft of the proposal done by Wednesday so we could send it to Christina on Thursday at the latest. I hope we can still have that done. Let’s see how this week ends up.

We where able to have it revised by Friday, but Christina wasn’t able to check it before we submit it. It was late when we finished it. We where able to submit it by Saturday and it is a really good project. I’m really satisfied with the final product, but this last week was hard work.

I didn’t know this but I’ve always been a practitioner of the majority of Carnegie’s principles. Any project I’ve been involved in I’ve always started it in a friendly way; this is my way to live life, by always trying to avoid arguments. I try to keep this as one of my priorities, by simply showing respect to others’ opinions; in this class I kept my practice. I believe in a sincere smile, be genuinely interested in others. I will always praise and will always give honest appreciation. I can’t stop using encouragement. I tried as hard as I could to make the other person happy about the things I suggested, that is in the case of the person that wasn’t as excited as the rest of the group. This book has opened my eyes about who I am and who I want to be. There is something about this book that makes me want to smile and be happy all the time. With a smile in your face you will make a difference on a lot of people without even having to talk to them. From all of Carnegie’s principles Smile is my favorite one.

I’ve gained many different significant teachings I can mention right now. Christina helped me throughout the whole process of it. She really got where I was wrong and made me understand how easy it was. For the other two; when I did the revision for the test on week two I did it by myself. I sat with the test on my hands, trying to analyze what was wrong. Let’s start with the fact that I never understood the wording on the test, so I did my own version of it. Then I saw that of course my checked boxes were going to be off… I am doing my own test! I did the revision and understood the concept more clearly and learned that it doesn’t matter if you have asked a lot of questions already, if you are not clear, ask more. My “ah ha” moment with my classmate was when I thought I was in my game, knowing all of the material, explaining it to him I figured out what I did wrong and how I could have fixed it. That was the only moment that it was like, “why did I submit the test already???” Well… that is part of life.

The team project was a really positive experience in every aspect. Working as a team I thought it was going to be harder, but it came out a lot better than I expected. I love the team, the experience and every single detail of the learning process. I think that the reason that I loved it was because I got the privilege to be in a team that everybody wanted to help each other and everyone wanted the best for each of us.  As the team leader I wanted to be on top of everything so it was a challenge to be able to communicate as often as I did and as I wanted to, read every e-mail with the attachments in order to talk and discuss their research and what was needed, and let’s not forget have all my personal assignments in time. It was a challenge I was willing to take and definitely I wanted to have.

These past four weeks have been a great experience, the challenges, the teamwork, the readings,  the teacher and assistant. It was, without a doubt, a challenging class, but it was worth every learning experience that I am taking with me. I hope to have the opportunity to work with this team again, keep growing as a human being, and most importantly I hope to keep learning every instant, every moment, just to live life in a way that we all can benefit from it…Practicing Carnegie’s tenets.

My live at Full Sail...BPD

Since I graduated college I understood that I was not done with education, I felt incomplete and I needed to get my masters degree. It took me two years after graduating from my bachelors to choose a university; my first choice was to get a degree on International Business at the Florida International University. I was almost ready to pay tuition when I decided that I wanted to pursue acting and that if I wanted to do this the correct place was Hollywood. I just packed my bags and moved to Los Angeles, CA. At this point my plans have changed drastically I knew I wanted to do my masters but I felt that I needed to try this first.

In August 31^st is going to be three years since I moved to LA. Every year I have been able to accomplish different acting goals that have made me very proud. Last year I was able to shoot a movie that came straight to DVD and made me understand that I could do my masters while I was on set. At this point I already had solicited information of the programs at UCLA and USC; none of them attracted me at all. I started searching online for a university that would do a masters degree on international business. On this search I went across Full Sail and requested more information; I was intrigued about the entertainment masters. It was just perfect that I could do my masters in something that I am really passionate about. It was then and there that I filled up the paper work and saw how I could get some sort of financial aid, loans, anything that would help me pay for the tuition; I had found my niche.

My first class was executive leadership; I loved the class and the readings. I really needed a class on how to use a Mac before starting the program; dealing with the change from pc to a Mac was a challenge by its own. Walt Disney is a great example to start on this new journey he inspired me to keep doing what I came to LA to do; pursue acting. I learned that anything in life is possible, we just need to believe on it. The team class was a challenge even though we had a good hard working team. I loved the story telling class, my bachelor is in public relations and this class and the books are perfect for public relations.  Finance was a challenging class but made me understood better where I wanted to go with my company. The class of international business was fascinating, it made me sit down and analyze how other Spanish speaking countries would be challenging to work with. That makes this business more fun. In the class of negotiating and dealmaking I learned that I am an innate negotiator, that the teacher didn't like my memo's that is another thing, that is why I would hire a secretary. I understand that my first language is Spanish and that I am not the best writing in English; but my inability to write memo's shouldn't have such a big weight in a grade. The only rewarding learning from this class was the opportunity to interview one of the few Hispanic sports agents currently working and with an impressive roster. Even though the teacher gave me D’s in all of my memos I know I could be a really good negotiator, after this class I learned two things that she discouraged me from negotiating and the program.

Product and artist management was an entertaining and fun class. I have to say that I loved my final project. I had to go from the Mac to the pc with the power point but it was worth it. I sent the presentation to the artist and they loved it. In the law class I learned why instead of a corporation I wanted an LLC. Since this point on I changed every document to LLC. Publishing media and Internet marketing made me learn what I wanted from the LLC and which search engines I need to prioritize.  I also learned the importance of the social networks for companies and how they could help Enid Collazo LLC grow. Mobile marketing helped me create a cell phone application that would fit the need of my clients while it could make my client list grow.

From each class I absorbed as much information as I could. Two classes that helped me enhance my creation of my business plan were mobile marketing and international business. These two classes made me realize that I could go beyond and break boundaries with an event coordination company. They made me realize that the sky is the limit. On the international business class I focused on the problems it would be to do business with other Latin cultures and how we could make it work. Dominican Republic is a great country to start expanding our company since is so similar to Puerto Rico and they have an established economy. This way we will go step by step and learn from the mistakes in a country near to us. The mobile marketing class helped me create one of the most important assets for my business plan and that is ‘Create your own event’ software and application. I knew I wanted to have a web page for the company, I just never thought out side the box and made me realize what would really attract people to my web site and the potential it has to grow all over the world rather than just Latin America.

The biggest challenge I found was that there is no information in event coordination companies. Everything that I searched for was on related topics other than my exact subject. I just joggled with information related to other businesses similar to mine and from there narrow the information down to what I needed. Another challenge was searching for doable dates for things like the LLC when I am really not getting this done. I just searched the laws in Puerto Rico and how long would it take for an LLC to be legalized. Another big issue was getting the numbers for financials, for the pro forma I actually went to the accountant to figure something out making sense and not over doing it. This is of course in addition to my writing issues.

This master’s degree has been a whole new experience for me. Beginning with learning how to use a Mac computer to how to do a professional resume. It was because of EBMS that I had the opportunity to meet the head of development and current programming at mun2; they were hiring for the summer and he emailed me giving me the position. It was a great experience and it was hard to just work for the summer. I have always said that with this master’s program I would like to be an executive in a network and just being able to put a step in and taste it was an amazing experience. If they have had the budget I would have kept my job, since this was not the case, the great experience ended. Also when I go to acting auditions and they ask me tell me about you I always answer, “I’m doing my master” that is a great subject to talk about. I have grown with this program in many ways and the reason is that we got to taste the real life, and made me realize exactly where I would like to focus, what I prefer to do for the rest of my life that is if acting is not my future. 

Welcome to my life…

I have already talked about my move to Los Angeles. My dreams of pursuing acting how I started with music. Hopefully you went to myspace.com/marielworld and heard me singing. Linked on mun2 and saw Annie ;) dancing and calling Joey out…wow! Seriously…that was funny.

http://www.holamun2.com/candy/el-show-shorts/chica-vs-papi-granny-panty

http://www.holamun2.com/candy/el-show-shorts/dances-of-the-americas-reggaeton-annie

I also talked to you about guys, love and how we all have a “Mr. Big’ (Sex and the City). The most important subject right now is another milestone in my life, my masters degree. Since I’ve already told you how I picked Full Sail, now I want to give you an inside scoop on each of my classes and how each class influenced me, whom I interviewed and what I learned. Each of my interviewers are Latinos because I want to learn from them how each one of them made it to be who they are today.

Welcome to my life. Thank you for being part of it ;)

Mariel

Searching for more… Full Sail University

Coming from an artistic family it has been my dream to move to Los Angeles and pursue acting. I started following my passion by singing since a really early age in my life. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico; I make this note because that has everything to do with me pursing a career in music first. When I realized that acting could be a serious career I packed my bags and this is where I am now.

Since I graduated college I wanted to do my masters, I just needed to find the right moment and place to get my degree from. Currently I am doing my Entertainment Business Masters at Full Sail University. It was a really hard task to find a University that would give what I needed, when I needed, where I needed, Full Sail gave me exactly that. The experience has been amazing. Since I started the program I understood that this was a challenge and I feel really good about it… it is with great pleasure that today I can say that in October 2^nd I will be graduating and accomplishing a personal goal.

I just can’t express the joy that fulfills me today, the satisfaction I feel. Now I need to start my search again. Find what am I going to do now. What is the next project, the next mission… I will be writing blogs more often and letting people know how I feel, what is new and what is happening in every aspect. School is over Sunday and I already volunteered for a charity event Saturday 3^rd and I am organizing a small shoot with a friend. Monday we will start writing a script, the goal is to shoot a short film that we can also use as a pilot. Let see how that new project goes. It just sounds exciting! The most important goal after graduation is to finish one really important project…soon I’ll say the name and the details ;)

I love every step I take, it doesn’t matter if I fall I know that I am strong enough to get up and keep going. I am not afraid whatever my future is; that is what I am destined to do.

Hear me sing :

www.myspace.com/marielworld