Revolving Around Billy Mays (The Story of a Fantastic Group)

When I first heard about the group project, I was not sure what to expect. I knew that I was capable of working hard in a group, but I had no idea what to expect from the people I would be placed with. Fortunately, I was was put into a group with five people who from the outset showed the qualities that assured me that I would have nothing to worry about.

Now while we pretty much skipped the forming phase because of Andi determining our group for us, we were thrown right into the norming phase for about 5 minutes at the end of one class. We accomplished a lot in this first short meeting. We determined that the best method of communication would be mass text (although we would add email later in the project) so we all exchanged phone numbers. This gave us a very essential communication avenue that proved very successful during our group project. We also decided that we would focus on communication issues that relate to entrepreneurs. We all would interview an entrepreneur and use this for our presentation. In addition, Kerry took on the responsibility of gathering potential interview questions and Rachel stepped up to do the short blog post about our topic.

A couple of days past and we had not met to discuss our presentation yet. Kerry then assumed a leadership role and organized an evening meeting at Stamp Student Union. This meeting is where much of our storming came from. At first, we were having trouble coming up with what type of communication issue we should focus on. In the end, we decided that we should talk about the pitching part of being an entrepreneur. We also started to divide up the pitching process in our presentation. We were fortunate that Major had already done his interview and he was able to give very good information that helped us divide everything. Also Sophie came up with the idea to use a Google Docs powerpoint so that everyone could work individually on their own parts. This was a key meeting that helped our project become a success.

We then had our second meeting at Cambridge Community Center. This was a short but incredibly productive meeting. I came up with using Billy Mays to both introduce our presentation and as a thread that would make our transitions easier. The group went along with this idea and I think it really helped us find an identity for our presentation. We decided we should do a Prezi, and Rachel assumed responsibility of that task. We also all marveled at the fact we could see each other editing the Google Docs and this along with Billy Mays clips provided some humor that took some of the stress away from our presentation. This meeting essentially ended our storming process.

In the end, our group performed incredibly well and our presentation was a success in my eyes. Everybody brought something to the table and I have a lot of respect and admiration for all of my group members. Kerry was our main leader and she was instrumental in organizing us and pointing the group in the right direction. She was a perfect leader because while she brought us together, she did not carry any type of assumed control into meeting and this hands off approach was great for our group. Major was a very good teammate who was huge in putting the initial pieces of our presentation together during the first meeting. His quiet demeanor during meeting was great as well Sophie's idea to use Google Docs was a turning point in our group. It literally made the project 10 times easier. She was a great group member. Mark was also a fantastic teammate who was very influential in the second meeting. He sent a text apologizing for his absence a the first meeting and went out of his way to ask for responsibility because of this. I thought that was a great gesture he gained a lot of respect from me for it. He also sent a text which reminded me at least to dress up for the presentation which is something I would not have remembered. Rachel took on two responsibilities (first blog post, prezzi) that I don't think anybody wanted to do. She did them very willingly and brought a ton of energy to the group especially telling over and over that we would be fine during the second meeting. As for me, I felt like I provided both energy and a little humor to our group. My idea of using Billy Mays ended up being the backbone of our presentation. I felt like I worked hard and I hope my teammates were satisfied with what I did.

This group was awesome. I mean really really awesome. I have tons of respect for all of them and I would work with them again.

RIP Billy Mays

Billy Mays Soundboard. Its really entertaining.