Time to Join the Family Business

The next couple of months are going to be extremely busy for me, and what better way to keep everyone updated on my thoughts, and get some feedback than through this blog!

The biggest thing going on now is my fathers business, Oblo Jewellery, is moving from the wholesale side into online sales direct to the customer.

So far over the last few months we have managed to get the store online and in about 3 weeks get our Facebook page up over 200 likes and growing steadily.

With my brother Andre Oboler having all the necessary computer skills to build the website, that leaves me to look after the Facebook Community. Up til this point none of us have had time to actually sit down and develop a real strategy of how we are going to build this effectively new company and start selling Jewellery online. Unfortunately that is most likely not going to change in the coming few weeks which is resulting in everyone doing their own thing without really talking to the other people.

A couple of early lessons on the Facebook side of things:

Adding a Welcome page for those that haven't 'like'd us before has been an extremely important addition to the Facebook page. The downside is we have had plenty of views of the welcome page, but not many people clicking through and 'like'ing us and wanting to join the community.

What are some good tips and tricks to get people to click past the Welcome page?

Interning at Google

So I have been luckily chosen to be the first ever non-software engineering intern in Australia for Google.

Not exactly sure why I was selected out of probably the hundreds that applied, but apparently Google believes in me as much as I believe in the products, willing to give me a few months trial and then probably never to be used again.

Thats not completely true, I mostly use Google products when there are choices out there, but enough about that, and onto the internship.

End of week 3 and I have been working on quite a few different projects. The culture of throwing you in the deep end at Google was evident from day one, when straight after my orientation I met my manager expecting to go have lunch and meet the team, only to be told that we had a meeting with an agency in 15 minutes. Having no idea what the meeting was about, or any preperation whatsoever I was in this meeting helping make decisions about products I didn't know anything about!

Over the next 3 months just assume that everything good that happens with Google has all been contributed by me, and anything negative had absolutely nothing to do with me!

Until next time, Google away!

Pearson Reader

I recently took part in a market research focus group for Pearson Education, a publisher of text books. They have decided to take education back to the basics and try to ensure that all students have access to textbooks, as we all know that no-one actually buys them anymore.

www.pearsonreader.com is their new 'library' where you can log in and view all the books in your personal library.

Essentially it is the textbook online. Its a hell of a lot easier to read, and means I don't have to spend 140 on a text book I will open probably twice.

The thinking behind the idea is fantastic, the only issue they will face is convincing the University to pay for all the students ... which isn't gonna happen, not at Monash at least.

The social side of clubs

Everyone seems to mess up the name, but it is the MMSS, Monash Marketing Student Society.

I will start by saying that I will no longer 'officially' be part of the club next year as being the real gen Y that I am, I followed the money and will be working for the student union next year.

At the end of my first year of uni I was studing for exams with a group of people of which i was only friends with probably one or 2. One of them was going to be the social director for the MMSS the following year and asked if we wanted to be on the sub-committee next year.

My initial reaction was one of "pft who the hell wants to be part of a crappy uni club" then about a second later i volunteered to do so.

Thus the process of getting involved was complete. The next stage was actually doing things for the committee, I learnt extremely quickly that it was basically a big family up there. Everyone wanted to help everyone with not just MMSS related happenings, but also with assignments and study and etc, everyone was extremely happy to help out.

That is the first part about why Uni clubs are so great. The simple social aspect of them makes it essential for everyone to try and get involved. The number of friends I made through MMSS has been amazing, and not just those directly involved, but meeting the friends of those in the committee, and the group just grows and grows.

Something I like about Uni

Alright, so a lot/most of my recent posts have been about how much I hate the way university's work and etc.

One thing I must say I do like is something which I have taken control of myself, and that is uni clubs.

For the past 2 years I have been apart of the MMSS, the Monash Marketing Student Society, and it has been probably the best thing I could be doing to seperate myself from other students who will all have higher grades than me.

The next few posts, will be a bit of information about what the MMSS is, what I have done in the past 2 years and why it is the best club at Monash University.

I'm a crammer ... what ya gonna do about it?

Studying for exams is probably the biggest waste of time for me right now. I have a project I want to start working on, I have about 10 grand I need to save by January (not gonna happen) and there is plenty of TV I need to catch up on.

Why then, over the past few days have I been cramming like crazy for exams? Because I need to pass them to get my degree.

BUT in the long run what will this cramming do? absolutely nothing. Everything 'important' in the subject has already stuck from tutorials and lectures, and all the little things that I need to cram in my brain will be forgotten about 2 hours after I walk out of that exam, talk to everyone about how stupid the questions were, and start cramming for my exam on Friday.

My parents are always telling me (well mostly my Mum because she seems to care about my uni grades) that back when she was in Uni she was studying for exams like a month in advance learning everything. Today cramming is a skill, and going back to my tests in year 7, the night before was always spent thinking about how screwed I am for the test, and then always pulling through with pretty decent scores.

Anywho I should probably get back to cramming for this Sports Marketing exam tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

That time of year again

With exams coming up, expect to see a couple more posts from me as I procrastinate like only Uni students know how!

Exams are another thing which annoy me in relation to Uni. Now I know that it is important in the academic world and exams are an easy way to mark where people are at and blah blah blah, but realistically they are quite crap.

This semester I have only received 1 credit, and that was for a group presentation, which we got told afterwards, if we had of mentioned the name of one of the particular references we used, it would have got us an extra mark, putting us up to a distinction, but that is all beside the point. 

I am not a terribly good student, in fact this semester has probably been my worst study/work wise with most of my time and effort going into the Brandstorm competition (which we came equal third in Australia, and I will talk about in another post). BUT I have still managed to receive Distinctions and High Disctinctions for every one of my assessments bar one.

But when it comes down to the exam, I expect to fail at least one of my subjects, because I can't write exams to save myself. Mainly due to the fact that I can't write essays too well, but given the time to do write an essay and actually think about everything I will be perfectly fine.

How does giving students 2 hours, to write as much crap as they can differentiate students all that well?

Thank god that employers don't just look at Uni marks!