My CDE Experience

Working on a single project with a single focus can be intense sometimes. The sole goal is for me right now is to create and deliver (4) amazing webinars on the subject of QR codes, how they might be making a comeback and bridge the gap between online and offline in 2019 and beyond. With that goal, I've studied and researched for hours and hours on the topic of QR codes. I know a lot about QR codes, maybe too much. This webinar preparation reminds me of my early days as a budding musician. I'd be excited to learn a new song and I would play a recording of that song on a loop to listen to over and over. Each time I listened to that song and studied it, it became a little less exciting and a little less fun. Around the time you have that new tune rehearsed well enough to perform in front of an audience, a paying audience, you kind of hate it. All that time and effort, practice and study, but if I had to listen to that song one more time... Here's the trick though, I'd p...

It took most of my day, but I finally made it to Spark Central to work on my ShopWindow Webinar. Aside from participating in two internships this summer, I also run two additional side businesses. Gotta have a Side-Hustle and mine is fixing/ repairing fitness equipment at a couple of local Cross-Fit Gyms. Trouble starts when all of those schedules collide, causing priority shifts and unintended overlapping of time. I'm still working on these Webinars for ShopWindow and the Re-Birth of QR Codes. Having broken them down from one, massive presentation into 4 targeted and smaller webinars was tricky. What I had created originally was like a musical album to me. I made a bunch of 'songs' that I wanted to be played in that order. Like listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, in order is so much more engaging and encompassing. To break up the 'songs', they're still good, but not as impactful(IMHO). To split up the Webinar into parts, I had to group all ...

After writing and re-writing my Chatbot adventure, today I had to demo the prototype I created to the rest of the TechStak team. You can track to workflow below or play with the actual bot right here:  Provider Chatbot  Refresh your window to reset the Bot and your adventure! I received great feedback on this bot, everybody liked it! It can be scary sometimes to be an intern and not have much experience in these fields and then be asked to create something of business quality and present it to business grade people. I'm new at using this technology. I'm teaching myself how to use it and I'm doing okay. I'm kind of excited to create more of these chatbots and explore more of this powerful Drift technology. I learned a lot about User Experience in school, but to create a user experience utilizing chatbots is challenging and amazing; chalazing!?!

Today started out with my focus on building off my previous scaffolding with the Takeaway Video and fleshing it out into a full-blown, researched, in-depth webinar on the benefits of QR codes in today's digital landscape. What better way to generate content than a classic phone interview with some experts. After outlining my interview questions, I found a quiet space in a corner of Spark-East and prepped for my first call. It's called coincidence for a reason, as I set up to start my phone interview, my interviewee Tina, called me first! I'd left a message with her the day before, but never expected to hear from her so soon. I started the conversation, excited to talk all about the benefits of QR codes in today's digital marketing. Within the first 3 questions, I got the impression that Tina wasn't as impressed with QR as I was led to believe. So when I asked, "do you use QR codes yourself currently or with your clients?" Tina quickly said, "No, no ...

Balsamiq is a great program for industry standard, low-fidelity wire-framing and today I utilized it to create storyboards for my ShopWindow Takeaway video. Having this storyboard helps guide our future efforts in preparing for our video shoot. It is scripted out by shot sequence with scene setting descriptions and talking points all in one document. After creating the storyboard, I went to task on expanding the "Takeaway" video and transforming it into the scaffolding for my 1st webinar. After researching past & present implantation of QR Codes in business, I developed a slideshow to show Gavin & Nate my newly created Webinar foundation. They liked it! They said they liked it, so now my job is to add detail into the mix, specific areas of interest we wish to highlight and include some of the benefits of signing up with ShopWindow. In addition to ShopWindow, Bud made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I am now working double-duty, I'm also an intern at TechS...

At Spark East for another great session with Gavin and ShopWindow. Today started off a bit different, we were locked out of the building! Through no one's fault, circumstances led to our second session being held at the cafe next door. Good music, good food and an understanding staff made it a fine substitute for a Spark workspace. To start this session, we recapped our individual progress in our assigned Shop Window courses. I'm becoming more and more familiar with the usage of their technology. Gavin has given me access to virtual replica of ShopWindow, to learn, create and explore in. Once I have sufficient experience, I'm going to create a series of Webinars introducing new customers to the benefits of ShopWindow and helping current clients with any issues they may be experiencing. In addition, I've been tasked with contacting Template Designers, to start the process of integrating templates into the ShopWindow webpage builder tool. After Nate took us through so...