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One last thing to do today and that is to see the setting of the sun on my Business Intelligence Master of Science degree program at Full Sail University. I have one last posting before I close out this chapter only to turn the page to start a new chapter. The thing about books is that whatever you have read up to this point doesn’t magically evaporate into the ether. It sticks with you as you go forward into the next. As my quote suggests, had I not started one year ago I am not sure how the journey to get to today would have ended up. It would have been a mistake to not embark on this path. I know I wanted to quit along the way. I pushed myself beyond my comfort zone and I made it, but the path forward is to recreate new goals to forge new journeys and live life.

This past month I completed the two parts to my Capstone project on St. Vincent Hospital.I think the hardest part of that was I didn’t work in the industry and I didn’t work at St. Vincent.It became difficult to come up with specific and innovative ideas when you are window shopping. That remains the problem I am still window shopping. So where to from here?

First graduation ceremony. Second take a much needed break. Third to begin studying for CBIP certification and CAPM. The jury is still out on the MCSE:BI although I am seeing a need for it as a lot of positions are asking for T-SQL and MS SQL Server rather than Oracle. I am also planning on taking a class at my local community college I have always wanted to take - Spanish. This isn’t for anything special but for me to know the language. I have tried some self study but things get in the way. If I dedicate to a formal classroom I might get much further.

I wish my classmates, especially Erin and Brandon, the best of luck in their future endeavors. I wish my instructors good will and good life for them and their families. Hopefully I will see them Tuesday. Maybe. Maybe not.

The sun is setting. The good thing about that is that it will rise tomorrow. And tomorrow is not the dawn of a new day but the reality of my dreams for a new tomorrow.

Good night. God bless and God Speed.

This month I have gone through more sheets of paper, countless graph ruled composition books all in the attempts to plan a Business Intelligence Solution for a local hospital I do not even work for. It’s okay, I think I ended on just the right version to only be redone next week!

This month was about taking everything we have learnt over the past 10 months and applying that into a Capstone Project. Rough, yes. Fun, even more so! Exhausting? yes. I think the most exhausting was the change of the project as the past year went on. That was more frustrating than anything. About June, I just succumbed to stop worrying about it and moved on. I was on a precipice for a while though. A part of me didn’t want to continue and part of me said push through. I had a rough time getting to this month and when I turned the project in today, the weight of fifteen universes were lifted off of me. Its done its over. Well not quite. One more month to go. So what did I learn this month? Planning for a BI project is the same as planning for any other IT project. You have to analyze the issue and develop a problem statement to work from. There is no magic bullet that makes BI Planning different that IT planning. Yeah there are different types but isn’t there in anything else. August and September I played it cautious to reserve what I had left. I think this played well because today I feel so much better than I have in the past. I know one more month to go, but the light is finally in sight.

How did I do? I don’t need a grade to know I applied my best. yeah there are mistakes but its not how hard you get hit its about how you get back up as Rocky would say. I think I grabbed those ropes and slowly hoisted myself up. It took time to get back up but in the end I did get back up.

This has been my philosophy since I had my accident in the US Navy. I was really hurt then. Partial paralysis that was only temporary. Burnt lungs and told that I would never be able to fly again. For me this past year hasn’t been just 10 months of studying I have done. Since August 2015, I have been working hard and have been studying every month at this level that I have been for my Masters degree.

I worked for three months starting in April and ending at the end of June. That took some, okay, a lot of the wind out of my sails. I was exhausted tired but not down and out. Then I had several interviews that just kept the fall going.We talked about GRIT and Ambition in the first week of this program in our Mastery class. How it seemed such a lifetime ago. I had to read my initial post once more. Rocky is right and I have been trying with everything I can to keep moving forward. The punches seem to come at lightning speed but only to be experienced in slow motion. Like a fighter, however, there is no give up until you can’t get up anymore. This is the very nature of ambition and GRIT. Do I have the GRIT to complete the last 60 days of this program? Should I keep moving forward and endure the pain only to fizzle out at or near the end? Will I fizzle out or will there be a renewed vigor? Should I pause here and catch my breath. That could be the worst thing to do because starting again comes even harder. I know this from being a cross country runner. Never stop never give up.

It’s been a rough year for me and I have a lot of people counting on me to finish the best that I can. One of them is a United States Congresswoman. I have to show her that her fight for me to go to school was not in vain. So what I did not obtain one of the most coveted spots in Indianapolis for BI. Is that the only thing there is out there for me? No. I need to find the motivation to pull me out of the doldrums and move forward. Keep moving forward, stumble, fall, what have you, I need to cross the finish line. No breaks no stopping to catch a breath. That is the GRIT we explored in Mastery course. The ambition, when we think we are down for the count, is the renewed vigor to achieve what we set out to achieve. We find the will to chase ambition. I have the ambition but do I have the drive.

You know it when the music changes in the movie, Rocky getting pounded blow by blow. He has fallen a couple of times. A feeling wells up inside you, knowing that he has found it. That drive, that ambition, that will, and perseverance to pull himself up and find the strength that he never thought he had to go on. There is no music in real life to denote this change with me or you. There aren’t thousands of people watching and cheering. There is only me and the weight of the world on my shoulders. There are people are pulling for me, I just don’t know it. What I do from here will denote whether that proverbial music that is my own anthem changes in my story line. My story doesn’t end when I cross the finish line. A new chapter begins and so the story must be told until the bitter end.

What happens in the next 60 days is up to me and only me. Forget about the interviews and their rejections, another will come in the next day or two. Forget about the people watching your every move. Focus. Be determined in your efforts. Rise above the fog and set the ship right. You don’t have to deliver a knock out punch to finish the fight. Just make sure you are standing when the final bell rings. This is how leaders do it when they are down.

Rocky was an inspirational role model even if the story was fictional but for that one story line there are a million true stories that are inspirational to us all. They have survived and kept moving forward. Learn. Adapt. Keep moving forward. That’s been my motto all along. The true test of a leader is not in the times when everything is going smoothly but in the period when things are so chaotic and everything seems way out of control they never will be in control again.

When every bit of you is screaming to run and the voice inside your mind is making you doubt your very self. They are telling you its okay to stop but you don’t; you get up and keep moving forward.Then and only then through the other side will a true leader be made.

Reference

Find Quality Wholesalers, Suppliers, Manufacturers, Buyers and Products from Our Award-Winning International Trade Site. Wholesale Products from China Wholesalers at Aliexpress.com. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2016, from http://www.aliexpress.com/

At the beginning of the Visualization class I really had never used Adobe Illustrator. Yes, I had it on my computer before beginning my Master degree but never really used it. This month I encountered an issue with a print order that was done in Illustrator. I took it to five professional so-called print shops, gave them the file and said I would like such and such done. In my mind, they were professionals it should be easy for them to do it. With poor results and projects due for the class,

I turned to Illustrator and told it we were going to be good friends. I got down to learning it and produced a couple projects with it. I made errors and scrapped things several times, many times quite honestly, before I got it the way I wanted.

I went back to the UPS shop where I have my business mailbox and told the lady there, who was working in Illustrator, how to get done what I needed to get done for my business. In her eyes, the way I moved around the program and was able to do things she had not even thought of before, this came easy to me but not to her.

Easy, smarts or what have you comes through hard work and learning. Its hard when you don’t know but its easy when you do know. The practice, over and over, and learning leads to confidence to know it can be done and is not as hard as you once thought.

Another aspect is that I was talking to someone quite recently and they said they were scared because they didn’t know how to do something because it wasn’t in their background.

Earth to McFly!

We are all scared of the unknown - until it is known.

I have several philosophies and the one that relates to this month’s course is:

I can learn anything so that I may do anything.

There is always going to be a fear in the unknown when you do not know how to do it. That is why you practice, continually to expand your knowledge base and confront the beast head on. This way when someone says you make it look easy, you can sit back and smile because your hard work has paid off.

#Easy #Hard work

Four more to go...

Another class in the record books. I find it interesting that out of the classmates that have started this journey all but two remain. I have thought about jumping off the train but decided to stick with this journey as haggard has it been. While the repite the between the last class and this one did me some good, I felt it was not long enough. This course started off well for me as I knew the subject matter but as it became more advanced and I entered into uncharted territory, I felt the walls closing in and the darkness begin to envelop. The journey seemed impossible however once it was all over, took that long drawn deep breath and exhaled, it was just that, over not impossible. I revisited some things and I learnt some new. I even applied knowledge to a startup that I will be doing part-time for awhile. As November draws nearer and the grey of winter begins to envelope the world I find myself in, I am reminded that the light at the end of this tunnel is not so far away now as it was last November. I had a business intelligence analyst interview for a company about an hour away this past month. The interview went really well however, they were looking for someone more senior and dubbed me intermediate. The ironic thing was that it was basically the same thing as I would be doing in my company. There will be other opportunities that come along. I am hoping Work One Indy will approve my training for CSM and CSPO to be held in October, so I can focus on the CAPM certification. Passing those will be a boost when it comes time to graduate.

Vision of a Champion

This month has been the most tiring and exhausted month for me. I have literally run out of steam and tried with all my might to finish this month. I have had to rearrange some priorities and made the decision to leave the position I acquired in April due to demands placed on me that I am not able to meet because of my schooling. This caused some consternation but in the end I think it is best for both the organization and myself. Does this mean I am stopping? No. This means its time to get ready for the next quarter and play on. There have been countless days I have come home sat in my chair, pet my dog and the next thing I know its 4AM in the morning.

The final week I was unable to actual perform the work required of me in my Patterns class. I feel guilty at not having done one of the assignments due to being tired mentally and physically. I am looking forward to the week off so that I may regenerate my reserves. This has affected everything I am doing so in line with the this month’s course, I am noticing the pattern and making course corrections now so that in the future it will be more beneficial to me. I tried to come up with alternative solutions to this as I reached out to several people and discussed this with them. My priority is my schooling and will be so until I graduate. IF that means to stop working for the time being then so be it. I will graduate and I will do so with a GPA of 3.7 or better.

I learnt quite a deal in my course and I thank the instructor for that. Now the game is not over so I must stand up straight and tall and get back into the game to push hard to the finish line.

There are times I just wanted to lay down and sleep but instead I stayed up. I started a new job in April, combined with my courses, I haven’t been this tired in a while. Over the last four weeks I have increased my Excel skills as I completed a Scorecard at work and made my first predictive model in class. While I feel I did okay in this last assignment and correctly predicted two of the five, its not enough. I need to learn the process more and work on it. I am on schedule to take my Agile courses in October. I spoke Mr. Ramos about the Capstone and have a plan moving forward. This month has been very tiring but I think come November, I should be ready to move forward in my career.

I am not sure coming into this course that I truly understood what data mining really was. I walk way understanding a good deal more than I started with.

One cannot fathom how many times I have been told you cannot do this because you don’t have the degree or that you cannot do that because I was hurt in the military. Now I am working towards what I want to do versus what everyone else wants me to do I have felt so much better in my life.

Almost halfway!

Yep, almost halfway through the BIMS program at Full Sail University. These past four weeks were a struggle for me not in the terms of content but in the terms I started a new position on the State of Indiana IEDSS project as a subcontractor. The last time I worked full time going to school was a long time ago. I don’t remember being this tired night after night and circumventing my school work so I could catch a couple of hours of sleep.

Business Intelligence Analysis I was a bit hesitant going into it because of Bayes Theorem but after studying it off a couple of websites like Udacity.com I understood it much more going into the program. While I liked the idea of working towards a larger project, it seems I didn’t feel or see the life of the project until the third week. I need to really invest more into producing analytics and writing about them but this will come from practice more than anything else. One gets a feel on what should and what not should be included. You have all these numbers, created six to ten tables and played with the formulas then postulate their meaning after you have derived the results. This is a writing style I am not really used to and will work more on it in the future.

So if 5 of 12 classes have been completed by a student given that the student did not work full full time in 4 of the 5 classes what is the probability that the student will complete the program? 100 percent! Why? Because the student has the drive to overcome all obstacles in the way,

Reflection on BIN 550

Today marks Easter and the final day of the fourth class on my Mastery Journey in the Business Intelligence Master of Science degree program. Our capstone project is underway. I have accomplished a lot in the past four weeks. One of the biggest accomplishments outside of school is that in two days from this writing this post, I will have rejoined the workforce. Its a short contract position but it is a spark of hope that can turn into a roaring flame of success if given the right fuel. Three weeks of the class seemed like we were rehashing the first two classes until we entered into the final week where we put it all together into a business case. I thought I performed above average but not liked I hoped I would. Near the end I took on a lot outside of class that I wasn’t expecting but life is like that. It throws curve balls at you and you have a choice to either swing or not. Sometimes is best to let it pass you by and other times you swing as hard as you can and hope that the ball will sail outside of the park. You never know until you swing.

These past four weeks flew by and I am hoping that the rest of this program will also fly by. The only problem when your assignments are due weekly is that you begin to think in one week increments rather than on what lies further down the road. I am hoping that the break next week will allow me ample to step back, evaluate how far I have come and make actionable decisions on the next leg of this journey.

Sometimes you land on a path where the journey is not clear however you know you must follow that path where ever it may lead. The path I fell upon during this past four weeks I will know better by September. Until then, I am going to follow the yellow brick road.

Dream. Believe.Create. Succeed.

If you have a dream you believe can come true, you create the will to succeed.

EDM Course Reflection

As I turn in my last assignment, I am reminded that my goal in this course was to learn about ETL and data warehousing. I come away knowing that I have expanded my knowledge further than it was previous. Although the course was not really what I was expecting, I still have the satisfaction to know that I am much further in my knowledge than I started. An example of what I was expecting was maybe hands on knowledge. The creation of a data warehouse and modeling or the use of a ETL tool. Informatica Suite was one tool I had previously used but only the Monitoring portion of the suite. I would have liked to have received some hands on. Am I disappointed? No.

Near the end of the course I chose my industry and company for my capstone project. Healtcare seemed to me where a great deal of growth resided over that of the insurance industry. I am looking forward to completing this project as I move forward in the BIMS program.

When I started on this journey in November, we were given course descriptions. These course descriptions told us what to expect and what we would do and learn. I based my expectations on those that were in front of me at that time. Adaptation is not only to expect the unexpected but be willing to accept the unexpected and move forward knowing that which has been planned has been undone and now you must re-plan. That has been how I have lived my life. However, this time around I was not angry or disappointed I accepted the change and moved forward. Learn. Adapt. Move Forward.

My desire is to achieve and in doing so I must be creative in surmounting the obstacles that lay before me. I have met the goal I set out to achieve in the class and have made new ones on what I have learnt from it.

Reflections of FBI Course Jan 2016

Having been asked to reflect on the last four weeks of the Foundations of Business Intelligence (FBI) course at Full Sail University and compare the goals that were set in the Mastery Journey Timeline for this month, I have found that I was able to meet the goals that were set by the program and me. An overall goal that will not be met until completion of the program but can be tracked at the end of each course is that of my CPGA – to graduate with a 3.5 or better. This goal is progressing quite well as I am headed into the week four with a 97% out of a 100% for the course. This will equate to a CPGA of a 4.0 out of 4.0 upon completion of the course, provided I maintain the 95% or better in Week 4 grades. This grade point average is an important goal for me as I can use this for an internship or future employment upon graduation.

The goals set forth in the Mastery Journey Timeline were to gain a basic understanding of the core concepts, such as the four BI Capabilities; process, BI solution methodologies such as Agile Methodologies and the BI Development Life Cycle (BIDLC); and tools of BI, such as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE), Qlik View and Sense, and many more.

These basic, or rather fundamental, concepts that I have learnt and now leave the course with will definitely be utilized and leveraged going further into the program. As I do leave this fundamental course with this basic understanding, not only do I take with me these concepts, I also take with me the acquired understanding of concepts that were not as clear to me as when I entered the course and embarked on my Mastery journey to learn and master Business Intelligence. These concepts included data warehousing, data mining, extract, transform and load (ETL) and enterprise resource planning systems (ERP). Of course there were concepts that were newly presented to me in during the course like Organizational Memory and I have obtained a minimal a basic understanding of these. However, I understand and realize with a better understanding of what constitutes an ERP system or a CRM system or even what data mining is.

Moving further into the third class out of twelve in the program here at Full Sail University, I can honestly say that the concepts that were new and the concepts I obtained a further grasp on I will use in my professional career and in this program. For example, learning about the Gartner BI Tools report will be useful when comparing, contrasting and analyzing the right BI tool for when I need to consider these for the overall strategy, solution and implementation for a particular project. Or the reasons and differences to using a dashboard versus a scorecard and who should use which.

My journey into this endeavor really has just begun and I hope that I meet continued success as I have done in the first two courses of the Business Intelligence Master of Science degree program. While the short term objective is to learn and pass each course, the medium term objective is to secure employment as a Business Intelligence Analyst upon completion of the program. Knowing this, I intend to rest the remainder of the day today and wake up on Monday ready and energized for the next four weeks in order to meet the goals I have set for the Enterprise Data Management course.

References

Sabherwal, R., & Becerra-Fernandez, I. (2011).

Business intelligence: Practices, technologies, and management

. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

#Business Intelligence #Goals #Mastery #full sail university

FBI - Week 1 Visio Assignment

#Organizational Memory #Visio

When you encounter obstacles in your life, you need to find a way. If you think you need to give up finding one then its time to create one.

Weekly Inspirational

In my search for mastery, I am reminded that we must have a dream and pursue that idea/dream. To do so we must take many steps on this one ever branching path to lead us along. Whether or not one determines the end goal is achieving or it is the process that is the ultimate dream, we must think to ourselves how many other dreams or ideas did we look at and decide this one was not for us. And when we look back we usually find ourselves talking ourselves out of this dream before we even explored for whatever reason we have told ourselves. Success is tied to failure. It is okay to fail. Failure is how we learn to become successful. If we fear failure we doubt in ourselves. This is why doubt has killed more dreams than failure ever will.

#doubt #failure #mastery #suzy kassem #dreams

MDL510 Week Mastery Journey Timeline Presentation.

#Mastery Journey Timeline #Michael Fischer

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