I officially finished my first grad school class. I had my final last night, followed up by a few presentations from other groups and a revised elevator speech from everyone. I felt better about this final than the first one, so hopefully my grade is a little better as well. It was definitely a relief to be done with everything. I know Leigh was tired of me complaining. But she has been very helpful and supportive.

Now I have a week off from school to get some things done around the house that I have been neglecting. Unfortunately I already have an assignment for my next class…Oh well, I guess this is just part of being in a cohort program.

I turned in my paper and also had my final group presentation tonight. Everything went pretty well. Hopefully my grade will reflect it. Our presentation was over Wal-Mart and their flexible scheduling software provided by Kronos. It was an interesting case study about how it will be good for the customers but makes schedules unreliable for employees. Basically it turned into a big discussion about how terrible Wal-Mart is and how no one likes to shop there. Kind of entertaining.

Now, I have to spend tomorrow night studying for my final. It is over 5 chapters again, but includes a lot of information from case studies that we have read. I am studying a little different this time, so let’s hope it pays off.

I can’t believe that this class is almost over with. It flew by. Hopefully the next 10 classes will as well. I will let you know how the final goes.

I got my grade back on my mid term, and let’s just say, that I am going to study a little differently for my final. It wasn’t as bad as I was thinking, but it wasn’t good either. Hopefully my other grades will help make up for it.

I had originally picked the CIO of Lockheed Martin to write about, but I ended up not being able to find much information on her. So after searching online, I decided to go with Tim Toews, the CIO of Office Depot. There was a lot more information on him as well as other articles on information systems that they have implemented. I spent most of my day Saturday typing the paper. I did a little more tonight and only have about one paragraph left. I am in the middle of critiquing his performance, and unfortunately for me, there isn’t anything bad to say about him. Some of the cases we have read make companies problems very obvious, but everything I have read on Office Depot has been positive. Oh well.

My professor also asked that I give a presentation on CRM systems tomorrow night. She figured that since that is what I do for a living, I would be a good person to talk about it. In case you don’t know, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is the system that allows our employees to view almost anything about our customers in one place. I have implemented this system throughout our organization and now I am just in charge of maintaining it and finding out better ways for our business units to utilize it.

Anyway, I have a very busy week this week and next. Hopefully I can find time to get everything done!

I had my first exam last night. I thought I did a fairly good job studying, but after taking the exam I realized that maybe I need to study a little differently next time. Lucky for me, everyone in the class thought it was difficult and said they didn’t do very well. So maybe the professor will cut us some slack.

I figured the test would be be pretty intuitive since I work with Information Systems everyday…I was wrong. The test was based on facts straight from the book. We had to list and describe several things and processes so there was no room for any error. Oh well, I still have one more exam to make up for this one. I forget how different school is from the real world. I need to get back in the school mindset I guess.

I also need to begin work on my paper. I have decided to write it on the CIO of Lockheed Martin. Now, I just have to find 5 sources to use and begin writing since it is due in 2 weeks. Our group project is also coming up which is about Wal-Mart’s automatic scheduling system for employees. Maybe I will describe it later, but it is pretty boring.

I had to give a presentation in one of my classes this week. Luckily it was short and only lasted a few minutes. Every class, a different group presents some news in the IT industry. I did mine on Windows 7. It will be the successor to Windows Vista with a release date probably in 2010. The new operating system was discussed at the All Things Digital conference last week. Their big thing was the new multi touch technology that it will have. Multi touch is different from regular touch screen in that it will recognize multiple touches simultaneously. Just like the iPhone and iPod touch. Here is a video to check out to see it in action:

Windows 7 Multi Touch

It is kind of interesting to me that this is Microsoft’s big selling feature on the new OS. This came out awhile back with Microsoft Surface which was going to revolutionize the way we order food at restaurants by selecting what we wanted to eat from the screen built in to the table…Maybe I am not eating at the right restaurants.

This is really the only thing that Microsoft will say about WIndows 7. From what I have heard they don’t want to promise all the cool features that it will have and then under deliver like they did with Vista…apparently that backfired.

I have my midterm on Tuesday. It only covers 5 chapters, but that first test is always tough since you don’t know how the professor grades. Now, I just have to find time to study this weekend.