sunschaine15-blog

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Success Don’t Happen, You Create Them

Building something out of nowhere is just like catching a star, it seems impossible. Because it’s not just creating something but also unleashing expression, connection and potential, making a solution and meaning. Thinking about the achievement of what our team considered as success, I remember the feeling when we finally reached the summit of our own. That feeling when we felt like we can conquer anything. But also, those difficult times on the way to the top should never be forgotten –the days when we just wanted to give up and try something easier.

Before all things started to settle, our team experienced ups and downs. Those moments when determination seems to fade. And it is a good thing that we didn’t stop, we rested but didn’t give up. It is a mixture of stress and happiness upon remembering where and when we started. And it is so ironic thinking how we were so persevere to end things but just right now, we are missing everything, the process, the journey we went through.

For the last week, our team spent the remaining time on interviewing a couple of adopters and some random people for different perspectives and ideas. Also, we set the week on preparing for the demo presentation. The team members were assigned each of different tasks. We had some issues and problems upon the preparation but still we went through it. That feeling of almost giving up was not new for us anymore, all we had to do was embrace those challenges and fix what needs to be fixed. Being part of the 7 finalists for the pitching competition was unexpected, for the fact that we started making our startup just for compliance and that we think of it as no use at all. We were so glad that our idea was appreciated with a reward of being one of the finalist. Our team gained determination to compete upon receiving the information. On the final day, I was sure that we did our best. But then after the panels threw questions and critics, we realized that we should have widen our idea. After witnessing our pitch deck competitors, we lost hope for they are all did great. Yet, there was no regrets for all we know, we did what we meant to do. And being at the 3rd place? It was more than a reward, it was a blessing. We never see it coming.

Through our journey, we had experienced different things that we ought to encounter. We faced not just the sort of success but also hardships and failures. And we were grateful that all we did was to continue kicking aiming for our goal. The fear of rejection, responsibility, and failures, all of our thoughts, actions, behaviors, and decisions will create a state of weak-thinking that will likewise continue to sabotage our progress towards the attainment of our goals and objectives. It is also important to realize that our commitment levels are connected to the expectations that we initially formed when we began our journey towards our goal. Along the journey, there may be times when we are not meeting our expectations and that commitment will waver and we may be likely to quit, but the commitment to our goal is important. Because Success don’t just happens, we create them.

We are never good as we think we are when life is going great. The flip side is also true. Success takes a TEAM. And that is out team. I will never get a glimpsed of success without them helping each other along. Out temperaments may contrasted but we make a good Team.

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Determination over Pressure

Have you ever planned out every detail along the path towards achieving your goals but for one reason or another something unexpected happens and your plans are torn off directing you to a great stress? Well, let me share a scenario wherein I myself is involved. It was long before our pitching elimination when our team had planned to assign each of our members a role for the pitching. For the past days, we already started doing what should be done. And just happens this unexpected thing. Night before the pitching elimination, one of our members had the final file for our pitching saved in her laptop and accidentally her laptop was spilled with water. And yes, her laptop can’t be turned on yet. I somehow got panicked because we do not have a copy of that file. And it was so devastating thinking that we will start all over again. Our leader somehow managed to remain calm and assigned each of us a task.

We met early right in the morning and worked for our presentation. It was indeed nerve wrecking to be working on the presentation without even being prepared for our speech with the fact that we did not have enough time. Luckily, we had finished working on it before our team was called and we also had a brief practice. Only two of us in our team presented and we seem to look like we are really prepared but seeming and being are not one and not the same, still we got to act like we really are ready. Cold are our hands when we stood right in front of the panels but as we started speaking, confidence seemed to possess us seeing how the panels’ eyes were interested with our presentation. We ended the presentation with the feeling like floating for being overwhelmed with the panels’ reactions and idealistic recommendations.

It was such a great experience not mentioning the struggle on working with the presentation. We really are glad that we took the determinations within ourselves rather than being taken with the pressure. For just a few hours of the happenings, lessons and realizations came washing our thoughts. Overtime, our negative emotions usually turn into uncontrollable pressure that will dictate our decisions and actions. And probably, the toughest challenge that we may face come from within ourselves because sometimes in many instances, we are simply blinded to their existence. Things like pressure and deadlines help us to grow. If we don’t have the pressure, we will never experience growth. Pressures bring out the deepest strengths inside of a person. The ability to work with determination through a challenging pressure is a marker of becoming a successful adult, far more than intelligence and skills.

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Slowly Aiming for the Goal with Changes

Days have passed with some sort of sorrows and gladness, failures and success. While there is the unending struggles for our start-up, here is our team still determined and slowly, we will aim what we ought to achieve. There may be some complications, and some things that surely give us headaches that somehow feeling tired or giving up is the only option but the truth is, there is no such goal that does not have trails.

We spent our week with preparing and changing what needs to be changed for our website. The team with each of the member’s role, individually worked for the changes for our presentation for the consultation. Usual as it is, consultation always gives us more ideas, more knowledge, more lessons, and more realizations to make our website better. After the said consultation, our team had discussed and planned to interview our early adopter which is the catering service, regarding with the price rates we had made for the product. Still we are on the process of deciding how we will change the price rates since during the consultation, we realized that the pricing we had made is somehow not right. Change is indeed constant, and dealing with changes is quite hard. When you need to change something what you made or worst you have to change from the start. But it is all about dedication and determination for us to be enable to achieve our goal, slowly but surely.

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MEAT Up to its Finest

On the very first day of the class week, Monday, the Financial Management Seminar was conducted. With the invited speaker, the team learned a lot about business, starting a business, and most importantly the financial management and its techniques of the business. Indeed, managing the business is risky. You have to be using the right method for you to gain customers, keep them, and make your business grow. There was never a moment that we felt bored, for the speaker was great, an attention catcher to be exact.

With the huge lessons from the seminar, our team recalled what we have learned and let each member share our ideas with the team. After the gathering each of the lesson learned, we decided to assign one presentation for technoprenuership class for the 2 members, since there were two presentations that were needed to prepare. It somehow made us easy to make the presentation due to the learnings we have gained from the seminar. It really helped us a lot to bring the team’s MEAT Up to its finest. With the help of different lessons we got, we were able to enhance more the business start-up we are making. I am indeed grateful for each opportunity that has been thrown towards us.

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Making use of Chances

This week has been a so-busy yet productive week. We haven’t had pitching or any presentations but only lecture for our technopreneurship project. A new topic has been introduced and discussed to us widening our knowledge regarding the business world. Indeed, the discussion was full of lessons answering some of the questions roaming our minds, some ideas were clarified.

We were assigned to present the given topic for the next week’s activity. Our team had not have much time conducting the interview but we have divided the said topics and assigned each of our members to focus to the topic and make a presentation with that. Still, we needed more knowledge on how to improve our start-up and so our team set a meeting and we had that brainstorming session, recalling all of the suggestions the panel gave us the last time we had our pitching presentation. This time, we will make use of the chance and lessons that the panel shared to us. Different perspectives indeed will lead you to realizations and meet improvements.

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Thorns of Success

It was one toasting day when we conducted our interview. First, we formulated the questions to be asked then searched to what catering to interview. And we have just informed that our own school offers a catering service. Since it was in favor to us, we then immediately conducted an interview. Since their Head was so busy, we have been referred to their Cook. We asked her about the daily operation, the catering operation, their meat supply and supplier. After, we introduced to her our website. But then she told us that she prefer to order from their ‘suki’ since they offer late payment orders. And that usually in online orders, there is a “No Return, No Exchange” policy.

Moving forward, our second location for interview was at Lawesbra Lapsan. Luckily, the owner was available and was open for an interview. Funny, she even prepared herself first. We asked her the same questions we asked to the first interviewee and we told her about the website. According to her our website is applicable to those busy persons who do not have time to have a grocery. Because in their line of business, they need cheaper price and that they still need to go to market to buy for some ingredients which our website do not offer. She comforted and gave us advice with her last line that goes “In business, you should examine first what would be good for your business, you can’t just be successful when you want to. Because you need to go through Thorns before arriving to Success.”

I was glad with the interview since we did learn a lot. Added with the Pitching, we have gathered different perspectives and different suggestions from the panels. We were grateful for the result given the fact that it was a big help for the improvement of our start-up and for our ownselves. Every day, in every situation, we can’t miss the lessons we ought to learn. Given the chance that every day is another opportunity to improve.

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Creating a Room for Improvement

Yes, just a typical day it was. It was Thursday, and we had presented a report regarding the Channels for the website we are creating. Among the groups who presented, ours was the only presentation that I can describe as below Good. Our team has not achieved all the required contents for the presentation. I felt bad indeed, for us.

After our team have presented, our instructor asked us an absolutely fruitful question. As long as I remember, it was “What if there are buyers from Davao who wants to orders from your website?” One of our members answered but I was disagreeing at the back of my mind because I know his answer does not give justice to the question. And I did have the idea but it seems to stock at the bottom of my tongue. Our instructor then have given us idea which is to do the method called “Copy and Paste”. That method had somehow made us realize that there are still lots of things to give a room for improvement.

Since having a busy schedule working for thesis, attending seminar, preparing for the other subjects’ requirements, we haven’t had a chance to conduct an interview. We did plan to interview on Saturday but we all just have things that needed to accomplish on that day. Especially 2 of us had a schedule for a thesis presentation. We didn’t see it coming, we thought we could spare time for the interview. So we rescheduled the interview on this week, on weekdays before the Technopreneurship subject.

Pressured or not, I think we should double time and have a time management for us to accomplish all the requirements we have to do. We are on the last year of being a College Students, It’s not a wonder if we ever have this piles of requirements. We just have to set the right thing for the right time. And accept the tiny fact that even if we feel like accomplished a thing, we should spare some room for improvements.

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Website Development: On the Process

The week has been tough for us with couple of requirements and late midterm exams. A one hectic week I must say. Our team had quite got some time to meet since each of us was kind of busy working for some of the subject’s assignments and need-to-study exams. But before such week ends, we have gathered ourselves to have a discussion of what to be done and what should be done first.

As per planned, we had agreed to first focus on the development of our startup Website. Our assigned web designer believed that the wireframe he made is all set up and ready. But for my own way of thinking, I disagree. There are still some things that need to be developed and that’s what we are trying to work on. We are focusing on adding some functions to make the website ready. So soon, I do hope everything will be as what planned.

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Chasing Possibilities

This week was a positive one I suppose. Although this week is scheduled for midterm exams and the team had a hard time copping up with each other. I had these so called complains with the other members of the team but I only left those thoughts in my mind. I pinched myself with positivity and some hope for possibilities that somehow, our team could make and could manage to handle all the stuffs to be done. We divided the tasks for each of our team members. Danica volunteered to be the one who’ll be doing the pitching and with the thought that she is good for delivering the pitch, we then agreed. I, with the other hustler of the team were assigned to do the search for the catering service as our website’s early adopter. During the search, we’ve been accompanied with our team’s designer for him to introduce the wireframe of our website. Our target location was at Nazareth. We already have chosen the possible catering service that we think is interested upon our website. Unluckily, their store was close. More negative moment was met when one of our options was also closed. We almost gave up until we decided to try the other catering service we once interviewed which we didn’t thought would be our early adopter. We even hesitated to continue the plan upon seeing how busy they were and upon sensing that they don’t have a plan to entertain us. But we wanted to chase the possibilities, so we took the risk. And we had a wrong judgment since the catering Manager was so approachable. She was so fun to talk to, she crack jokes and she even gave us one of their products. We were indeed grateful that we were able to have her as our early adopter. And we were glad we brought some cup of positive thoughts and we were able to catch the possibilities we were chasing.

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Persevere through Execution

The definition of perseverance is: continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failures, or opposition. Every day we are all faced with some sort of adversity or hardship. When you face adversity, what are you going to do? Will you push yourself to the next level?

Life is a funny thing. It seems that it is always testing us, challenging us, while pushing us to the edge of what seems impossible. I guess most people, including our team look at these setbacks and see them as insurmountable obstacles. And likely, we failed to persevere because somehow, we lost goal. We just felt like doing something for compliance and I myself, lost interest. Keeping going without knowing where to go obviously won’t work.

Last week we had a glimpse of such success with the shop we interviewed for making the store manager get her interest with our product. We also had high hope to the other shop whom their HR manager was not at that moment but when we went back still no shadows of her to be found. They told us that she is really a busy person. Doing thing without putting much effort is somehow useless. From my point of view, we do need to double our effort, we need to not just be persevere to what we think we needed to do but also to set our goal and not just do things without even realizing the real goal, and to not quit after meeting those obstacles.

In the face of what feels like extreme challenges, we need unshakeable foundation –self-confidence paired with perseverance to make it through anything. Being persevered is about pursuing a higher goal and having the ability to deal with setbacks. Mechanically, perseverance is having stamina to actually keep going and doing the right things. Mentally, it is about knowing where to go and how to deal with failures or challenges. We need to be a little reckless with what we do, since we started with achieving nothing, so we have nothing to lose. We need to push ourselves more beyond the limit, to expand our comfort zone and have that feeling of being uncomfortable, because it is only there that we get better. Perseverance alone will never make us successful but without it, we will never get anywhere.

Gratefully, being persevered made our team to choose and make right decisions, also it made us set our right goal. So, we set our plans. We appointed Tubal to be the one who will do the pitching since she is great of doing such thing. We then have decided to not give up to those two meat shops and to make an appointment so that the store’s manager can give us time. We also decided to have an interview on the neighborhood of one of our members since she knew someone who has backyard piggery. When we went there and had an interview, we found out that the owner of that backyard was actually a relative with one of our members. Successfully, we pursued her to use our website. It was quite a successful interview.

Most people struggle with life’s obstacles. Today, we can do anything. There are no walls, there is no Cold War, this generation doesn’t need to rebuild the country. We can do anything and still most people are paralyzed by the possibilities. We should not waste time – set a goal. If we may happen to lack inspiration, ‘putting a dent in the universe’ is a good starting point. When we are backed up against the wall with adversity facing us in the face and success is against all odds, this quote then is worth to be remembered, “No matter how much it hurts, how dark it gets, or how hard you fall, you are never out of the fight.” –Marcus Luttrell

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Glimpse of Success

Days ago, our team arrived back from a minute of reflection and a break from all that was familiar… That uncertainty with our website. As inspired as that sounds, it was one of the most difficult times of our college life – I guess. We realized that we were a long way from where we wanted to be. We were dull inside, uninspired, and unmotivated. We have almost pretty much given up. But doing this doesn’t work. We have to face it all. We had to. That moment in time was not an easy one to endure by any stretch of imagination. There were days of tensions and confusions. Not only did we get through it but by having courage and patience, there was a massive shift that happened to open doors to allow us to take a glimpse of success and move us into another realm of living that we so desperately desire. After putting ourselves and courage back, we had a talked and planned for the weekend interview. We simulated questions to be asked and searched for possible meat shops’ location where we will be conducting our interview. Our first stop was in the Meat & Deli store at Lim Ketkai drive. We arrived inside seeing a quite old woman in front of the counter. Looking and studying her, it seems that she is the store manager. We felt hesitant seeing her crumpled forehead upon seeing us. I asked “Can we conduct an interview regarding with this shop Ma’am?” She just stared at us with confusion but still answered us with a question “What is that about?” We answered her question and I kept talking introducing our website. Her face softened. She told us how she is interested with our website since it can advertise their product. But she wanted to tell first their Boss about us and our product. She even gave us their calling card and asked for our contact number. Their store by the way is a shop with variant of meat types. They also offer free delivery. Next stop was at the Meat Gallery located at Velez St. Divi Soria. We happen to interview the store’s butchers. One of them had fun with us speaking English, asking a lot of questions about our interview. And we were glad as we can manage to ask all his questions properly with the same language he used, It felt great knowing that they were willing to hear us. Their shop also offers free delivery within the city and according to them, they have customers from restaurants and catering services. They told us to interview their HR because they seem to find our product good, so we decided to go back to their store on Monday. Here comes the last stop, at Nazareth in Montery meat shop. According to them, their meat supply was from San Miguel Corporation. Sadly, they do not offer delivery. Our team planned to only focus to those shops which offer delivery for the orders. So we did not find Montery as our customer for the website. And we will be focusing to the latter shops we set our interest with as we found them to be our possible early adopter. Day ended feeling the hope and a few steps closer to success. We were glad we haven’t given up our hope with our website. As long as we’ll stay as a team, and stay courageous, we will meet success. In this journey, we may encounter stop signs, road blocks, and breakdowns. These are the times that we need some sort of motivation to propel us to keep moving forward, until we attain our own definition of success. As the popular phrase I once used, goes “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. In the end it’s the courage to continue that counts.” Having courage to continue after failures and hopelessness is important, but what’s even more important is continuing after success. That is when it gets easy to sit back and look at all you have to accomplish and forget how much more there is left to do. Success is a journey, not a destination.

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My Roller Coaster Ride of Life

This week has been a Roller Coaster ride for our team. One day we lose hope, another day we gained it, and then the next day hope seems hard to be seen again. We were enlightened with the consultation we had with our instructor but when we started to interview again, luck seems to get away with our hands. We thought it will be easy going up after having those overwhelming news about how someone got interested with our website. Yet, life won’t be like a roller coaster without it going down.

Here comes my weekend that never seems like an end. Every weekend is always a Start for our team. A start to interview, a start to get up or go down, a start with another realizations about our website, but I like to take it as a start to learn a lot of new things and to start getting better for ourselves, for our team, and for the website we are creating.

As one of the Hustlers of our team, I together with my companion went to Cugman to conduct an interview with the company that supplies meat. It’s really mood wrenching being under the heat of the sun. Added that we do not know the exact location of the company. I begged with the back of my mind if only heaven will send us a blowing wind. But I took it back when even the wind that touches us is freakin’ hot! I really am sure it’s not from heaven…

We stopped by and ask if anybody knows where the Mega farm is but they seem to not know. They don’t even recognize that company. Well, another scratch of luck again?! Really, how will we ever be lucky enough that even luck is opposing us?! We sat for a minute to cool up our burning heads. Good heavens, someone then told us he knew a company that also supplies meat named Gama Food Inc. We went to the company but we were not allowed to conduct an interview according to the company’s guard. So she referred us to their other branch just a walking distance away from the company.

We walked for another few minutes under the burning sun feeling like roasted chickens. “Ooh, Waaa!”- The only sound we managed to voice out when we finally got in front of the company. No, it’s that the building is amazing! We can’t even barely catch a glimpse of it since the gate is so high. But what surprised us was the store in front of the company that named The Meat Up! Like, whow! It’s the name of our website! I don’t know, it’s just overwhelming… We had a short conversation inside with the store’s cashier. And according to her, the store is under the GAMA Company and its purpose is to sell parts of chicken meats with a low prize. After Cugman, we went to Bulua to have an interview regarding the suppliers of vegetables and other spices. Another ride to our next experience. The day was considered as a kind of adventure with those up and down moments. I’ve never been in a roller coaster ride before but I guess I’ve been riding my life just like how any coaster rides give. I seem to get confuse whether get sad for having this kind of life or be glad for like having a free ticket for the ride.

It’s not just the roller coasters that are higher or the falls that are steeper. It’s also the clock that seems to move faster, the day that keeps getting shorter with many tasks that need to finish and goals to pursue. It’s not always easy to be mindful that I actually do have a choice, especially when the downward track of the coaster causes me to feel pain inside. But the reality is that we control our thoughts and our thoughts control our emotions and feelings. So we have to use the power of our thoughts to help us stop screaming in pain and fear and start yelling in joy and excitement. We have to force our thoughts to think of the positive possibilities that lies ahead…

“Life is like a roller coaster. It has its ups and downs. But it’s your choice to scream or enjoy the ride.” That quote is great because it makes it so easy to visualize what it is saying. Yes life is indeed like being on a roller coaster. We can’t control the ups and downs of the track, but we do have a choice on how we will feel about the ride. We can scream and hate it or we can throw our hands up in the air with a big smile on our face and yell out of joy at the thrill of the ride!

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A Beautiful Mistake

Things have been tough lately. It has been couple of weeks passed but our team’s proposed startup haven’t improved even a bit. Every interview we conducted was like a light clearing our path to make us realize how our startup will not work. We started thinking to change it but it was really difficult for us to find and think of another idea. It was like our proposed startup was a Mistake after all. Everyday feels the same that I wanted to scream from the top of my lungs. Every day I feel like I’m on a downward spiral. I just hoped that my life starts to change real soon.

It was second week of our presentation for our weekly update regarding our startup. And the day before that, our team had a meeting and we discussed about our new ideas. Realizing that starting everything from a scratch is a real huge deal, we agreed that we will be continuing our startup but will change it a little bit. From an application, we decided to make it into website. We also changed our target market from the suppliers of the meat, to the buyers of the meat products.

Then here comes the day of our presentation. We were the last presenters and witnessing how good and ready the previous teams are, made me felt ashamed of our startup. Thinking I am the Hustler of our team, the one who will present, made me more than just nervous.  And having Mr. James to witness our presentation made me want to back out. I even begged our team’s Designer to replace me that she will be the one to present but it didn’t work, she just gave me a cheer that I can do good. As I was presenting, deep inside I was hoping that it will end sooner. And good heavens, it ended. I didn’t think though that Mr. James likes our project. But his advices gave our team more ideas to what action to do next.

Thursday afternoon, our Technopreneurship instructor set an appointment for us to have a consultation with him. It was really not a good afternoon for us thinking that our startup is no good and we were facing different problems from different subjects making us feel more hopeless to face our instructor. As he told us Mr. James was a bit interested about our startup, we felt like we were alive rising from being dead. Also, our instructor gave us more ideas to what to do, he widen our seemed narrow minds about the project. It did gave us hope but then we don’t want to have any false hope so we got to work for it.

For this weekend, we conducted our third interview at the Catering Services around Nazareth. We are not familiar with the place, so we just had our walk finding for a catering. Along the way, we found 3 roasted chicken stores. Even though we haven’t had a plan to interview them, still we did hoping we will have a good information. But according to them, finding supply was not a problem because they already have poultry farm. So we decided to continue finding a catering service’s location. After sweating like an ocean, finally we found them. And majority of them, buy their meat supplies from Cogon market particularly Ororama. They only buy an already cut parts of meat. One of the catering service we interviewed, has an own piggery and have a family friend’s supplier for the meat except for the chicken meat. We asked them if they are willing to use our website and positively, they said yes because it will give them convenience but they will consider the price. Aside from getting their response, we also got information regarding to the companies they get their supplies. And one of the store owner told us that it will be helpful if we will advertise the ready to cook meat in our website, just like hotdogs, hams, and etc. From what we get from them, we then know that after having a hope, still we need a lot of things to do and work harder for it. We still have a wide ocean of ideas to discover.

From the experienced I have this week, I learned that my life will not improve if I constantly feel sorry and ashamed for myself. Nor is a better life going to happen instantly. We are used to wanting everything quicker. We want to reach our destination as fast as possible, just like wanting our internet speed to be lightning quick. My life is not going to change and our team’s problem is not getting better by clicking my heels. I had always hope it would be that easy! I wanted it to be like the movies, my rise from the lowest point in my life to the top would be in under 2 hours. There is no quick fix in the real world. So what will it take? It’s going to take one day at a time. What’s worse is that we will be doing things we should be doing on a consistent basis and we may not be seeing any results or difference. It really is frustrating, the reason where most people quit. That the work they are putting in is a waste of time. But small consistent actions over time will produce tremendous results. Anything we truly want in our life is not going to come easy. It is how life works. Life is testing us to see how bad we want it. It will weed out the weak ones and only the determined will survive and be handsomely rewarded. And my favorite part of my experience? It was realizing that the startup we thought as a mistake, is a beautiful hope after all.

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Life: To Live in the Future

Most of us live either in the past or the present. People seem to stick from the past to the things they are already used with. Either way, we tend to stay to the things we are comfortable right now.  It is easier to analyze what had already succeeded and think of ways to replicate the success. We must think by analogy. It is a valid way to think except that it is not a way to create a good startup. Yet if we live in the future, more likely we will find a way to make the impossible become possible.

Our team learned that our proposed startup will not go to success, with the reason that our target customers may change their way in their business transactions with our app which is merely will become the reason to make them consume their time more. And we aren’t really solving something with our app. With this realizations, our team decided to think of another startup that will surely be beneficial to the people today and the future. We had our brain storming session, exchanging our thoughts and ideas but we seem to not agree each other’s opinions. The scene started to heat up so we decided to think and find for problems that we may be able to solve with a startup in each of our places.

So I started to think what is missing now? What do we need now? And then came up with the question, “How about making something that will make people live life to its fullest?” but how? So I thought about things that makes life valuable or makes life longer. Then medicine captured my thoughts. Obviously medicines can ease pain or cure sickness. So I started analyzing and came to think of a startup, a website or an application where people can order medicines online, and will be delivered to their place. Maybe this will help a lot to a person who urgently needs a medication. I still need to consult my team mates’ ideas and still, we need to share each other’s opinions.

Thinking of how to start a startup is not easy, but you can deal with it by living in the future which is living life with advancement that makes something at ease, and not sticking with the past or present. Most of your thoughts, even the best ones, will never see the light of the day. You may forget them into oblivion. The only exception is making something out from those thoughts. You build, you design, do anything that makes them more than just thoughts. Even if your first idea wasn’t successful, do not just stop right there. As what Winston Churchill once quoted, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.”

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Meat-App for Your Meat

As our group managed the complexity of the process in decision making, we realistically looked for a certain situation and analyzed a problem as a team. We set goals and objectives to establish criteria by which to judge our proposed solutions for the problem. One of our members, personally experienced the dilemma of having to find a buyer for their hogs. We then thought of the retailers of meat in the market that need to find a supplier and also the suppliers that need to find a buyer for their meat.

So here goes the proposed solution, an application for your meat, the MEAT-App. MEAT actually have two meanings. First, it stands for each of our team member’s surname initial. And second, is the literal meat which the making of an application is for. This app will cater both the supplier and retailer/ re-seller. The supplier can post their meat products with the certain price. The retailers then can order the meat via this app.

As part of our goal, our team went to Cogon Market and had an interview for the meat retailers. Majority of those we interviewed, are just workers and not the actual owner of the meat stall. Still, our team managed to gather information. According to them, they don’t need to find a meat to sale but there are many suppliers’ appointed persons going and asking for retailers about the meat/hog for orders. The owner of the meat stall then will have a transaction with the supplier and have their order to be delivered for the next day.

Luckily, there is an owner of a meat stall that we happen to interview. According to him, he orders the meat by contacting the supplier. He asks for what parts of meat are available before choosing to what he will going to order. Then follows the payment of his order. There is actually no problem upon finding a meat supplier because they already have a contact. The only problem they are encountering in such kind of business, is that their meat to be able to sold out after the end of the day. And another thing is that when there are meat that weren’t sold, they will need to put it with ice and it will cost a lot with the fact that they only have less revenue.

At the end of the day, I realized that our application that stands to be a solution is not actually a solution. For there is no problem that it can solve. Only that if this application can help reduce the price of the meat delivery, then maybe it can help to the retailers. Our interview is a big help for realizing if there is an important use of our application. We decided to dig more for problems to solve by making something out.

[sunschaine15-blog]

Education Technology: A revolution in the making

Technology has made a big change to human life. We are literally going through another revolution. It is slowly yet steadily improving our education system. Entrepreneurs and educators had the same discovery regarding its abilities to improve the way we learn. But challenges are always present. The act of learning is quite different, it is much more personal and intimate.

Now that we have completed our team members, we came up to a decision that our start-up will be focusing on educational technology. The project is about a device which teachers can type a letter of number. It will then display to the monitor and the sound of the letter or number of how it is pronounced will then be heard from a speaker device. This project will cover lower grades of elementary students. But still, we have to interview number of teachers so that we can come up to a better idea.

Adaptivity is apparently the Holy Grail when it comes to Education Technology. Our team must make sure that our start-up will become useful to the teachers and students. The project should fit to the needs of each student. Our goal is to find solutions to the school’s pressing issues. Technology is everywhere and entwined in our daily lives, so when technology in the classroom is used correctly it will open up possibilities for more student learning.

[sunschaine15-blog]

Forming a Team: The Start

“How?”- The very first question you can ever ask to form a team. How can you build a team? How can you build a successful work team? To build a team is serious. It can be tough and challenging because people will bring everything about who they are to the team. This includes opinions, knowledge, values, prior team experiences, and life and work goals. But teamwork and collaboration can be taught and developed.

As for our Technopreneurship subject, we are required to build a team of three people. Which includes the Hacker, Hustler, and the Designer. Still, I am in search for a Hacker and a Designer for the team. I can merely say maybe I can best fit for the Hustler role. I am literally not a hustler but technically, I can approach people to ask for details or any information that can be helpful for the team project.

When starting out, I cannot expect to click with my soon co-members and everything to fall into place and get a great performance. Forming as a team takes time, and team members often go through different stages of development before finally uniting as a team and achieving success. But a team’s processes usually change over time. Like individuals, teams develop their skills, the more they use them. The function of a team basically improves after the team has been together awhile. As what Vince Lombardi says, “Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”