Toooo bad

I am so sorry. But, remember - there is more in life than soccer.

Spam problems...

As you most likely will figure out, there are number of spam problems in the blogosphere too. Some of it is taken care of by the blogging services/applications (e.g. with CAPTCHA:s).

By now six of you students have informed me about your blogs, and all but one have registered in the Bloglines user aedbe. One problem I have had is that on three (3) occations your mail servers (typically corporate gateway stuff) have refused to recieve my replies to your mail-ins. So far I have either re-sent the mail (slightly rewritten) or put a comment on your blog. From now on I do not have time for such extra work.

So, if you expect an e-mail response from me and do not get it, one probable cause is that it got stuck in your spam filters. That is your problem - not mine.

Have a niiiice weekend.

Borys has registered - leads again

OK, so Borys was the first one to register his blog at our Bloglines account. Well done! And he managed to Skype me as well. I am impressed.

He, and some other early class bloggers, pointed out that they could not find the instructions for how to register. That has been fixed now and I thank you for letting me know about the problem. You still need the password, and if the MBA office have not sent it to you (I asked them yesterday) you can e-mail me (or Borys).

Borys and Bogyslaw are in

Just around an hour before midnight on Monday, Borys quickly followed by Bogyslaw (nick names) were the first two students to get their blogs up and running. Both choosed the Blogger service. That choice, combined with that Borys linked to AE DBE blog in his blog roll, made Technorati to figure this interblogging out (follow the Technorati "Blogs that link here").

Now we will see who will be the first one to take step three and register his/hers blog according to step 3 in the assignment.

Well done so far!

The assignment blog structure

By now, as I have travelled from my initial idea of having a blogging assignment, to the current setup, I realize that it's structure may need some explanation. It will most likely be difficult for you the first time you try to get sense of the following. But, when you have completed the assignment it will be crystal clear - proof that you have learned a lot of new things!

This blog (AE DBE blog) is where I blog as your teacher. Here I inform you about the assignment, course materials, and when important events unfold.

Each one of you will create your own blog. The following explains how we keep track of all the blogs created throughout the assignment:

1. Everyone may visit the specific teacher/student blogs in order to read and comment them. This will of course be cumbersome as the number of class blogs grows.
2. Everyone may personally subscribe to the teacher/students blogs using a feed aggregator (also called news readers), for example, Bloglines. The feed to the AE DBE blog is available under "Subscribe & Aggregate" header in the right hand column here.
3. The Bloglines user "aedbe" will contain a subscription of this blog and all of the student blog's feeds. The latter are organized into folders according to each student's work group. Every individual student is responsible for registering her or his blog on the Bloglines account aedbe@bat.se. This allows me to keep track of all blogs. All of us may visit the publically available subscription list at http://www.bloglines.com/public/aedbe.
4. I highly recommend you to at least subscribe, using a news reader of your own choice, to AE DBE blog and the blogs belonging to students in your particular work group. In this fashion you will conveniently monitor the information most important to you as you work with the assignment.
5. (update June 13: I will not provide any aggregated feed using FeedDigest).

Good luck - you are about to enter the blogosphere!

Handouts available

The handouts (images from my lectures) are now available as pdf-files.

• Friday slides
• Saturday slides

p.s. The Marketing Communications material from December last year is available on my (old) academic web site. d.s.

The deadline and grading

The final deadline, when I go about to grade your assignment is September 24, 2006. Please note that the sooner you start blogging, the greater are your chances to learn and get a good grade.

The better the class works with the assignment, the more difficult it will be for me to give fair gradings. That is, the more the class's blogs contain, the harder it is to monitor all your activities. But, generally I will be able to quickly sort you into fail/pass/excellent. In any case, if you take the assignment seriously I am convinced the true reward will be valuable knowledge.

Of course, later on if you think my grading does not reflect your work - please let me know!

When you have questions

You will learn more when you go about to find the answers yourself, instead of just getting one from someone who "knows". Furthermore, you are one of the many students in the class - and I am only one teacher. Therefore, it will be really difficult for me to answer all the questions that may arise.

Here is my advice on how you should get your qestions answered:

1. Make an honest attempt to find an answer on your own. The information you need might be in this blog, in Wikipedia, Google, the course literature or elsewhere.
2. Ask a fellow student, either in person, by phone, e-mail or maybe in one of the class blogs.
3. Ask by commenting an appropriate post in the AE DBE blog. This way the whole class could potentially learn from your question and the answers that pop up.
4. Contact me. My e-mail address is in the "About Me" section of this blog. If you want to speak to me the MBA office has my cell phone number and Skype name (I do not want to publish that information on the Web).

If that does not help - scream :-)

The assignment

The main objective with the assignment is to deeply explore tools for Digital Business Enhancements (DBE) and document that journey through active blogging. This imples that you will also get useful and personal hands-on experience with the blogosphere - a wonderful entry into the brave nEw world...

Identity and openness

First, a brief note about personal integrity and confidentiality. Blogs are typically regarded as more valuable, and trustworthy, when they highly reflect a personal viewpoint. In this case, because you are graded individually, the blog is yours and not any organization's. Even so, you may choose to use a nick name instead of your real name. Furthermore, you should consider how much of your company information/situation is appropriate to share in the bloggosphere. Sharing a lot of information implies some risk taking and vulnerability, but also a number of advantages. These include that other actors are better informed when they support you, share valuable advice, and provide useful feedback.

Six simple steps

In sum, these are the steps you should take:

1. Pick a business problem/opportunity where DBE could be useful
   
2. Start a blog, in which you will document your assignment
   
3. Register your blog among the class blogs
   
4. Search for appropriate DBE tools
   
5. Continously blog your activites
   
6. Interact with your group members

One, the problem/opportunity

Identify a business problem or an oportunity for a company (e.g. the one you are working for). Of course there are many possibilities too choose from. Just pick one that you from the start consider to be useful to approach from a DBE perspective.

Two, start your blog

There are a vast number of blogging solutions available on the market. Most of them support a number of languages, including Polish. Even so, you should write your blog in English. The AE DBE blog is hosted for free on Blogger, one of the major blogging hotels. It is very easy to use, with one major disadvantage - it has no built in support for tagging (categorizing the entries). Another widely used free hotel is Wordpress, which is based on open source software. In any case, you may choose any blogging tool you like.

Three, register your blog

[Updated June 06, corrected the instructions link] In order for all of us involved (me the class teacher and you the students) we need to inform each other about the blogs existence. We will do this by registering, or rather add each student blog, to the Bloglines user "aedbe", see the detailed instructions for this process.

After the registration, do no forget to send an e-mail to richard.gatarski@bat.se with your name and the blog's name in order to make sure that I know that your blog is up and running.

Four, search for tools

The course literature is full of tools and E-business concepts, for example, buy-side, CRM, tagging, ERP, etc. Now is a good time to browse the literature in order to assess what E-business encompasses. Use this assignment as a method to more deeply dig into one of the DBE areas/tools/concepts.

Five, blog your activities

In the old days students handed in their assignment by means of a written document (paper/thesis/etc). But, times are a'changen, and this time you should continously document whbat you learm, see, think, do, etc., by posting entries on your blog. It is up to you to decide upon how much to put into your blog. First, consider what you think is an appriopriate amount to best approach your chosen business problem/possibility. Second, remember that your blog is what I grade you after.

Six, interact

You are many students in the class. You can both help, and learn, from your peer student by following their blogs and comment their postings. In fact, you are required to at least interact in this fashion with at least the members of your working group. That work is part of the assignment. If nothing else - until you have taken an active part in inter-blogging you have not even begun to understand what blogging might be all about.

Remember, "we" are greater than "me"

Use blogging as a way to help your fellow student to be at their best! A group is not at its best when each individual student strive to perform at her or his maximum. No, the group, and every individual within it, excels when the members skilfully play on every others unique capabilities.
(a point I stress, inspired by the director Juri Lederman).