And so it begins...

Welcome everyone! It has finally happened – I have broken down and begun the slow decline into virtual social network participation that will undoubtedly overtake my personal life. Well… okay; maybe that was a little strong. Still, it has taken me some time to dip my toes into the virtual water. To be entirely honest, the water is pretty warm. I’ve got a domain name and reconfiguring my DNS settings only took 15 minutes; ten to read enough about what DNS was and five to alter my settings! With an updated profile on facebook & linkedin, a new blog, a resurrected Skype account, and above all, mobile twitter, I feel readily equipped to disperse my interests, thoughts, and reactions, and into the digital world. But thoughts about what, and dispersed for what reason?

Perhaps I should start with the why first, and work backwards to the what (as quickly as possible of course). I am under two trimesters away from graduating from RIT with a BA in Management, and my dual minor in Philosophy & Marketing. I’ve always been drawn in broad directions, was interested in behavior, perspective and needed to work with people. For this reason I quickly left computer engineering as soon as I had entered, and settled down my second trimester at RIT into the management major. My new curriculum provided me a broad perspective of organizational behavior, accounting and finance, market forces, etc. However, I missed the creativity and off-center mindset that was lacking in so many courses, and had been active when I had been formerly crammed in a computer lab for hours, trying to unravel a piece of simple coding logic. I hated having to regurgitate vocabulary - I loved concepts, and the combinations of their application on diverse environments. Concepts were gray and they were messy, but most importantly, they were real. Concepts could be applied outside of academic walls. Management felt right for a lot of reasons, but it wouldn’t be enough.

My interest in marketing became an outlet for creativity, vividly available after my semester spent in London. Yes, there is still research involved, and it bonds quite well with my administrative major, but there is another side to marketing that is not available in other curriculum. Marketing has the ability to combine emotion and creativity with real market application. You can make a product, you may even be able to run a business, but if you cannot create value in the minds of consumers, everything before was a waste of resources. While overseas, I was fortunate enough to take a creative advertising class. Joe Videan, an American who had settled in London years before, was our professor. We were tasked with creating short creative pitches for a multitude of products and brands, and later presented them to a handful of intimidating (at the time) and impressive (upon later contemplation) individuals within the advertising industry. It was nice to exercise my creativity, as it grew to complement my administrative training. I am astonished at what an impact that unique experience had, and continues to have on my life today. But, before I use up all of my later material, and spend the rest of the night rehashing London adventures, I should get to the point – marketing is my passion, should have been my major, and will be the subject of my masters degree.

This brings us to the current trimester, and my latest marketing course – Commercializing Virtual Worlds. Taught by Neil Hair though the Saunders College of Business at RIT, CVW is the catalyst for my recent posting frenzy and my newly developed carpal tunnel. The topics covered in the course will be novel in terms of current material and student contribution to the learning experience. Contribution in this case implies work, and a lot of it. Part of this effort will be to document my experiences throughout the trimester in CVW in a variety of digital forms including (you guessed it!), this blog. My hopes are that the class related posts will help to complement the rest of the blog, dripping periodically into the pool of random expulsions of personal interests, including the novel forms of communication creative marketing is forging between consumers and products through innovative combinations of art, music, literature and all forms of human communication.

Phew! Keep and eye out for some less introductory and more interesting material coming soon. Thanks for reading.