WEEK 1

CONTENT SUMMARY

Competitive Advantage: A situation or circumstance that places the individual or company at a far more superior position compared to their rivals.

First Mover Advantage: It pretty much means being the first on the market with a new product or technology that usually creates a new and first product category of it's kind.

CRM: The abbreviation stands for, customer relationship management. This is all dependent on how well you know your target audience so you can better cater to their needs.

PEST: Pest is an analytical tool which stands for political: did it become political? economic: was it created to make money, or was it due to the economical climate for a need? social-cultural: did it affect the thoughts and behaviors of certain cultures or societies? technological: Did it change the way we do everyday tasks (like learning).

Hard & Soft Skills: Hard skills are teachable, specific and technical skills that you may require for tasks for certain employment etc. Soft skills are your interpersonal and intrapersonal skills you develop over time to communicate and interact with others as well as yourself, such as communication skills.

Legal & Ethical Issues: This can pertain to questions such as, what needs to be considered ethical? What legalities need to be considered? What legal and ethical issues will you face. They are factors that need to be considered at every step of the way during the building of the company. From the conception of the idea all the way through to the finalization of the setup and then some.

Group Dynamics - Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing: These are all stages of group development to help identify what causes change in team behaviors which in turn can help with improving the group's productivity and processes. Forming is usually when the group's spirit is at a high and are usually excited about what's to come. As the group progresses through they may get frustrated as their spirits decline. Hopefully if the team has overcome the storming stage they will usually resolve their differences and become more flexible. This stage is when they have belief in the group and are able to share personal thoughts; they know each others strengths and weaknesses.

POST CLASS REFLECTION - INDIVIDUAL PROGRESS

There wasn't much that I was confused about, more so on how everything was supposed to be laid out. When we paired up and picked our topic, it was somewhat confusing how we were going to answer and present the project questions on the topic we had. This also translate and progresses on to the two other upcoming projects that all relate to each other. Kieran, Bryce and myself have worked in a team together all through our first trimester and we have managed to overcome circumstances like this with creative problem solving.

We delegated the points that needed to be addressed for the project between the four of us and because the question "how did it affect or was it affected by the PEST environment of that time?" is more sizeable than the other points, I decided to research that one. My other group members divided the remaining points between each other taking two to research.

This was not exactly what I was expecting from this unit, but I am interested to see what the remainder of the trimester will have for us. It's pretty reassuring to know that SAE has a unit like this for us to have a competitive edge when we finish our studies and go into the work force. I found myself asking internal questions about the industry that I had never thought to ask myself like,

• How am I going to excel not only in the audio field but in the creative industry as a whole?

• What can I do from a business stand point to shake up the industry that will keep me relevant and sustainable for years to come?

• How am I going to combine my creative and technical skills in audio with a business idea.

Starting a business and or developing some new type of audio tech to leave my mark/legacy in this field has been a lingering thought in the back of my head since I started here at SAE.

POST CLASS REFLECTION - GROUP DYNAMICS

Returning from my AUD175 class Kieran and Bryce are back as my group partners again but...as Peter said, as we progress our projects will become multidisciplinary as will the groups. Therefore, we grouped with Jack who is a film student.

Auto-Tune is the topic we chose due to it's significant impact it has had on the music and sound industry as a technology. The tricky part is that because it isn't just a single piece of tech or a company and is used in so many different ways by so many other companies and artists, this could be hard to answer certain questions outlined in the project brief.

We are very much in out forming stage as there hasn't been much resistance at this point. Like previously noted, Kieran, Bryce and, myself have all previously been in a group together throughout trimester 1 so we are aware of how each of us likes to work along with our respective strengths and weakness which would've put us in the performance stage. It's because of that, we allowed Jack to voice any ideas or concerns he had at the beginning as he comes from a completely different course.

Personally, I am hoping Jack brings some new insight and ideas into the group as a film student. As this is only week 1 I think the forming stage is totally acceptable and I wouldn't really expect us to be progressing further through the stages at this early in the trimester. We were all given the points to research but Kieran also recommended Bryce, Jack and, myself to watch a Netflix documentary, This Is Pop, that has a plethora of information regarding auto-tune's creation, timeline and other key factors that will help us with our research. I am hoping we will start to progress to the storming stage by the beginning of the next session if we all research the point's we were assigned to.