final pitch

This week was our final demo for our product. It was in Wednesday. We had our rehearsal pitching last Monday and our instructor fill up the gaps that we were not able to fill. We have a lot to change and improve and we only have 1 day to do it.

The pitching day, our team was the first team to present 9 am in the morning. We were all nervous since we were just 90% prepared. One member of our team was absent due to his mothers health. We were able to finish the pitching and luckily it was not that bad.

We were done in the final pitch but there are still requirements to comply. What we will gonna do in the remaining days will be video pitch making, final blog, business canvass model and etc.

We were not able to be in the top 10 but we are happy that we made it. hoping to pass the subject. I thank my team and our instructor for the things i learned.

Validating and Material Canvass

This week we were finalizing our pitch deck since we already have our new product. We were focusing on the design this week because floating pavers requires strength and durability to resist the weights of the person stepping on it. we are not yet done but we’re near.

We still finding vacant time that we can used so that we can validate our product to the people living in river side or near the river specially in Burgos, Balulang and Macasandig. Probably we can start validating again by Friday afternoon or Saturday. 

This week we are also canvassing the materials we will gonna use. The material we will gonna used is plastic but we need a lot of plastic since floating pavers are larger than ordinary concrete pavers. We are finding where we can get the enough supply of plastic so that we can already start making a sample of floating pavers.

Validation of  the floating Pavers

We did not have a lecture this week, Wednesday. We have a make up class this week in Saturday but we were not able to attend the make up class. We only met Tuesday this week and we were instructed by our instructor to double time what we are doing because the final pitching is fast approaching.

What we did these week, we validate our new product which is the floating pavers. We were not able to validate to the people near in flood prone area bit we were able to validate it to some of the civil engineers at the USTP.

We introduced our product to one of the civil engineer in the campus, which is also our instructor. He told us some of his concerns and gives us his opinions of our new product. We were informed by the instructor of some problems of the floating pavers and we can used it to improved our product.

Next week we are planning to validate our product to the people living near the flood prone area. We will also try to finalized the design of our product and we will conduct more research of the materials we will be using for the floating pavers.

business canvas model

last week, we all decided to change our plan. We were not able to discuss or had a meeting last week with regards to our new plan. Our ideal plan would still be in connection to our program, civil engineering.

This week we decided that our new plan will be the floating pavers. It is not common here in the Philippines. We chose this because its rare but we still gonna make some innovations. it shall be eco-friendly and click to people.

During our lecture this week, we made a BCM. we were instructed on what to do and luckily we were able to finished it. Our business canvas model was taken home by one of our member and we were just told to send the photo of it in the slack.

Our product was not yet validated. Hopefully by next week we will start validating it. We hope that our product would be acceptable. 

change plan

After the pitching, we realize that our plan was a little bit difficult. Sky way is a nice idea to eliminate or reduce traffic but we only have few time to finish the plan. Estimates is one of our problem, sky way is a huge structure and estimates will kill our time. The panel suggested on making an innovation on the sky way and we were having hard time how to innovate some material that will replace the common materials on a sky way.

This week, we come up to an idea of changing our plan. We plan to make another solution for a different problem. All four of us agree to change our plan. Our problem now is we still haven’t have a new idea. We are still thinking on what will be our new innovation that will able to solve some common problems in connection to our program, civil engineering.

Few weeks from now, finals will come. We will manage our time so that we can generate new ideas as soon as possible. Our lecture this week will also be helpful since we were able to learn new information about entrepreneurship. Our instructor gives us information on how to convince our client and to get their trust.

Next week, we will be having an activity and we were told to bring manila paper, sticky notes and marker. We will make our business model canvass and hopefully by next week we will already have a new idea.

Midterm week

This week is our midterm week. This week is a busy week for us engineering students since a lot of exams to be taken from Monday to Saturday. This week we were task to make a pitch deck since our pitching will be this Saturday. 

Honestly, because of the major subjects that we will be taking this week, we were not able to made a pitch deck. But, we have an idea what to do since we have a guide/ example to follow to. The 10/20/30 guide or rule is our basis towards making our pitch deck for the pitching.

A good news arrived, announcing that we will not be having out pitching this midterm week and probably it will be next week. We will be more prepared and will have more time to make our pitch deck presentable to the panels. We will start making our pitch deck maybe on Saturday or Sunday (January 26-27) since our last major exams will be on Friday.

We were all exhausted this week because of our major exams that we took sleepless nights to study and we think we deserve a rest. Next week for the pitching, we will be a little bit prepare since we took a little rest. The pitching will not be easy but we will do our best to finish it.

pitching week

This week was our scheduled week for the pitching. What we did this week before the pitching was making of our pitch deck. We made our pitching following the guide or the 10/20/30 rule. maximum of 10 slides, 20 words per slide and a 30 font size.

We encounter some problems while making of our pitch deck. There are some data that we were not able to find specially the estimates since we will gonna make a sky way. What we did was, we based our estimates in the sky way of manila since the materials and design of our sky way is just similar. By ratio and proportion, we already had our estimates.

Wednesday was the scheduled day for the pitching. A little problem we encounter was not yet so prepared since we were incomplete a few minutes before our turn to pitch and we haven’t finalized yet our parts. There are three panels and we must able to convince them about our sky way. Our presentation was smooth and i think we were able to finished it in the given time of three (3) minutes. 

There are only two (2) panels remaining during our turn. After our presentation, the panels throw questions and we were able to answered each of them. There are some suggestions that was given to us by the panels that we should consider. The suggestions of the panels were very informative and helpful and i think this will help us to our final pitching in the finals.

pitching

This week, our instructor gives us some lectures about pitching. Pitching is like making a case for the product, project or idea you intend to sell. Based on the lecture, there are three types of pitches; the elevator pitch, short form pitch and long form pitch.

So as instructed, we will be having our pitching next week through short form pitching. Short form pitching will just last for a maximum time of 5 minutes. We haven’t  finalized yet of who will be our main man to present since our instructor told us to choose one or two members on the team who will present. 

Since two members were not present last lecture, they were not able to get an information about pitching so we just told them what it is all about. I think we will choose our hustler to present since he is the most confident talking in front of people. 

We already have our idea but we were not able to make a model or prototype of it, maybe we can start doing it next week. Since our idea was making a sky way, for sure it will not be easy. But i trust my team, we can make it. Hopefully we can finish it before the pitching. All for one, one for all.

January 1st week: proposal

Last meeting last year Sir Bronson instructed that proposal will be presented first week of the new year.  It was a long christmas break but is done and we’re back to reality. We know proposal of idea is not that difficult since it was stated that presenting our solution to a problem should just be simple and presented on a simple ppt presentation.

Our idea or solution to the certain problem we chose to solve was presented last week, thursday. It was simple and organized but I didn’t expect some of the questions thrown to us by our instructor. Some of the questions thrown to us made me realize that there are still some point on our ideas that we did not clearly discuss or tackled. 

After the proposal, a little bit happy since our proposal was approved. But there is still something that bothers me but hopefully we can finalized our ideas on how we will do the prototype. 

The proposal was a big help to us since it gave us some questions that we, as a team, did not realize that there are still lacking on our ideas. We thank our dear instructors for some additional information you gave to our team through your curiousity that leads to your questions. next week we hope we can start doing the prototype/sketchup of our plan. 

week 5: re-plan

We only met once this week on our techno, and we did get another idea of what we should do. Our instructor, keeps on reminding us what to do and how to to do the thing we should be doing. He always keeps on adding ideas that enables our team to be more knowledgeable.

This week we were still not able to conduct an interview but we gathered and planned about the interview and when to conduct the interview. I thought we can start the interview this week but because of shortage of time we were not able to start the interview.

hopefully, next week we can start interviewing some strangers and ask questions that will help us or gives us idea on the problem that we chose to solve. Since next week, last day of class is on December 18, probably we can start interviewing strangers on December 19.

This is the last week we will be writing a blog but we were given a task during the christmas break that we should comply and present next year. I hope my team will cooperate so we will not be having shortage of time and get the things done during the two weeks break.

week 4: Unproductive

Last week we were able to conduct a meeting and agreed to finalized it this week. We were planning to conduct an interview and ask multiple strangers to get multiple feedback/ opinions so that we will be able to know if what were planning is effective.

This week is a busy week for us since we have a lot of quizzes in our major subjects. For this reason we were not able to conduct an interview on strangers and we were not able to finalized our idea. Aside from the reason of having a busy week, I admitted, none of our team really pursue on finalizing our idea/plans since we were all tired of this week.

Thursday this week, we have make up class on this subject and it help us on how to come up on an idea. Our idea is still raw since it was not yet finalized and our instructor gives us some lecture on how to come up an idea and be able to finalized our individual ideas. He gives us information on the proper way to do the planning on our idea.

Overall, week 4 for our team was unproductive since we were not able to do something for the team, not even having a meeting. What happened this week will not happen next week because i will not let that happen, I will make sure we will be able to have a productive week next week. 

week 3: THE PLAN

         One way to achieve a teams goal is to have a plan. Plan is a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something. A plan will be the guide of each team towards their goal.

          This week, we gathered and plan for what will be our product to be. We have our individual idea but two suggestions really stood up. The idea of our hacker (Justin) and the idea of our hustler (Aaron).

          The idea of our hacker guy is a program in connection to our program, civil engineering. The program is all about estimates, its function is to provide people, who wish to build structures, an idea of overall cost of the materials. The program will give and compare the prices of all construction materials. The purpose of this program is similar to online shopping in which buyers don’t go to a hardware store anymore just simply access on an internet and buy all the construction materials needed for a specific construction.

          The idea of our hustler guy is a reflective light. The difference of his ideal reflective light to a normal reflective light is that, it will be a multi-purpose reflective light. The reflective light will also help resolving traffic, it will stop the “buzzer beater” vehicles and it could trace the plate number of the vehicles that are disobeying traffic rules.

          We already have a plan/ idea and what we will do next is to go deeper research, evaluate if it is possible and ask strangers for their opinions whether its a nice idea or its already existing.

week 2: RECRUITMENT

          Making  a team is not easy, specially when finding the perfect members for the team. The more you want to have a successful team the more the members are hard to find because you will be very meticulous in recruiting every team member. 

          At the beginning of this week (Nov.19-23,2018), I started finding members for my desired team. Luckily, I didn’t have a hard time finding members to recruit since I have my friends. Justin Amarante, very skilled in programming which will be our hacker; Aaron Guimare, very capable of talking a lot which will be our hustler and Kent Labis, our fourth man who will help us in our daily tasks.

          We don’t have plan yet for our product since we have a busy week but we told each other to think in advance about a product which can solve real life problem and we will discuss it next week (Nov.26-30,2018). So we will have our complete plan in the upcoming week. Our product will probably be connected to our program, civil engineering.

          Recruiting team members is not easy but it will be worth it in the end if you will be meticulous in finding them. The team i have know is not perfect and I believe no team will ever be build perfect but i trust my team members. By working together with the same mind set and trusting each other,  we will be successful in achieving our goals.

MY IDEAL TEAM

          A team will never be complete without members because a team is composed of members. members built the team and members of the team will be the ones responsible for what the team will look like. A teams success will depend on how big the members contribution to the team.  

          If i join or make a team, i consider my self as little bit of an introvert member because I tend to get nervous and shy when talking in front of people, I tend to be silent and just listen rather than talking a lot, I tend to just observe and sometimes I tend to keep my emotions just hidden but these traits sometimes depends on the situation. I am artistic and a little bit skilled in designing, so I see my self as the hipster of the group.

          My ideal members are the hackers and hustlers because I am lacking in programming skills and i’m not into it so i’ll be happy to have a member that knows a lot in programming and hustlers because I am not good in getting the attention of the ones i’m talking and also, I’m not good in talking. 

          to sum it up, It will be great if i can get the ideal members of my team because, as I mentioned above, a teams success will depend on how big the members contribution but another factor that will make my team successful is trusting each other because i believe that no matter how skilled the members are, if they don’t trust each other, the team will probably collapse.