This situation is just another example of how “social” is changing the way businesses deal with the customer experience. For the last five years or so, the emergence of social tools like facebook, twitter, digg and the now-less-relevant myspace, has enabled people to have a stronger voice. All of the sudden people can voice their concerns, complaints and preferences to an audience that may or may not agree with them. This is the “new” word-of-mouth, same concept as before just faster, louder and therefore more effective. This kind of empowerment has increased people’s sense of entitlement. People feel more than ever that companies must treat them with more respect.

The question raised in class was whether the whole situation was to “punish” Boeing or just a publicity stunt by Harry’s father… or both.  I don’t think John (Harry’s dad), or the people involved in one way or another, want(ed) to put Boeing back in line per se. I believe that they expected a friendlier customer experience from Boeing, or any company for that matter. It’s hard to determine if John intended to use the situation as free publicity, but the situation sure fits what his company offers. He created content and engaged the community the right way to create a buzz, enough to get the New York Times interested in the issue. The way the issue developed definitely helped him promote his image and his company indirectly.

As for the other questions raised in class (would you change airlines? and would airlines boycott Boeing?), I don’t think they are too relevant. First, Boeing’s action wouldn’t make me or a normal people switch airlines to ones who do not use Boeing planes. I do not feel offended by their action and finding other airlines would cost too much of my time, more than my perceived benefits. Second, airlines have limited options when it comes to airplane suppliers, limited options means that there’s not much airlines are willing to do to “support” a boycott. Harry’s issue is trivial when compared to the issue of changing airplane suppliers; however it would be interesting to look at the issues again if more people around the world support Harry.

Whether we like or not, as consumers or businesses, the barriers separating customers from the corporate world have shrunken. However, we should understand that as customers we can’t get everything we want; and as businesses we can no longer treat customers the way we’ve been doing for the last fifty years.

Work

I resigned from my previous job on October 2007 and spent a little over 4 months unemployed.  In February 2008 Alienware corp. came knocking on my door asking if I wanted to take a temporary opportunity with them.  After a skills test and some interviews I was hired to start working right away.  The first week was very awkward since I wasn’t really told what my role was in the company, but after the second week I had a clear task which was that of working on a foundation for the new Alienware site.  By foundation I mean making templates, CSS and javascript for the new site based on mockups that they had.

After studying their site structure back then I decided to take the new site in another direction, I wanted to implement the use of both CSS and javascript frameworks.  My choice was met with skepticism but ultimately I was allowed to do a lot of the front-end development as I pleased.  After a month and a half of work more team members started working on the site as well, at which point, things started to get out of my control and although the end result is not exactly what I imagined, a lot of my original concepts made it to the end.

After the new site was launched my role with the company became a question mark again.  After talking with the director of our department and more skills test I was assigned the role of Flash UI developer as a full-time employee.  That meant that from then on I would have to work mostly on ActionScript 3, something I’ve never used before, but thanks to my computer science background I was able to pick up quicklly.

In my eyes the biggest accomplishment so far, at Alienware, was working on their new site.  The second biggest accomplishment was a little project that came out of one of our team meetings and its called AlienSurface.  AlienSurface is Alienware’s wallpaper maker which allows people to make wallpapers with Alienware assets right on their browser.  It was a project that took me a little over two months from the moment of conception to final release.  I wish I could be able to work on it to fix some bugs and improve it but unfortunately I have not been allowed to go back to it due to other projects on my plate.

School

After two years out of college I decided to go back to work on my MBA degree.  I started one of FIU’s MBA program in the summer of 2008 and so far I’m really enjoying the program.  I must say that It is not all good though, there are some things that I really don’t like but they are out of my hands.

The first thing is online classes, they really annoy me.  I feel that there is hardly any interaction with my other peers and the professor(s), I think that the whole point of an MBA program is to work in teams.  Working in teams is what a person would most than likely encounter in the real world, the lack of interaction really brings down the class to just a pass the exam type of mentality which is not good in my opinion.  The counter argument that the school brings up all the time is the lack of funds to have real classes (at least in the summer) which is a good argument.  But nonetheless I’m not happy with the decision of having online classes in the curriculum at all.

The second thing that really annoys me is the attitude of some of the students in the program.  I shouldn’t be judging them but there are some students who are just there to pass and “get a raise”.  I personally think they bring the rest of the students down.  Moreover when one has to work with them in team projects, they don’t contribute as much as other team members. I must say that most of the teams I’ve worked on have members who are eager to go far and beyond the task we are given, but I’ve had teams in which half the team doesn’t really care about the outcome.

Misc

In 2008 I also tried to get myself more involved with technology gatherings like FOWA Miami 2008, Ruby Enthusiast meetings and web development meetings.  However I definitely have to attend more of these events since the amount of talent in South Florida is growing and I want to be part of it.

What I Missed

There are some things I wanted to accomplish last year but couldn’t for various reasons.  One of them was getting a new car,  I already have a somewhat new car (’07 model) but I wanted a newer one (I’m so shallow, I know).  The second thing is that I wanted to develop a better source of passive income, unfortunately due to my busy schedule and some lazyness on my part I wasn’t able to achieve this goal.  These two goals are now one of the highest priorities for this year, so lets see what happens.  I think 2009 will be a very exciting year for me, at least it’s been exciting so far.   How was your 2008 and what are you looking forward to do in 2009?

I will be joining the MBA program this summer and I’m hoping to finish it by the fall of 2010. I spent 2 years working in different areas to gather up the necessary experience to apply to the MBA program.

I’m so excited and I’m looking forward to everything else this year has in store for me.