Milestone 5 > Scenarios > Carlita Minaya
Carlita is reaching the end of her first semester at the B-School. She hops on the bus to go home from Marketing 503 and reflects on what happened in class. The professor had brought in some really interesting material from a brand new book by Joseph Jaffee on conversational marketing, which she really thinks could be the next big thing for Web 2.0. She’s really glad that Professor Murphy keeps up with current trends so that he can tell his students!
When she gets home, she puts a pot on to boil some pasta, then she checks her e-mail. The B-School advisers have sent out a reminder about the tool for choosing classes for next semester, CourseNav. She has used the tool before and thinks it is a better source of information than going to so many different websites like she used to. Just as she is finishing the e-mail, her husband comes in with the kids. “Hey Mom, I learned to play 3 scales today on my saxophone!” says Rudy, who is 11. Carlita chats with her children about their middle school classes and friendships as she and her husband get dinner ready. They enjoy a hot meal of spaghetti with zucchini and mushrooms.
Later that night, Carlita finishes catching up on e-mail while the evening news plays and her children get ready for bed. Together, she and her husband Morrie look at a few articles on the internet about the latest business news. It’s hard to keep up on the latest trends when you’re a student, but Morrie makes sure she always has a sense for what’s going on in the marketing sector, both at General Mills and in the world. She tells him about the name her professor used for one of the latest trends, “conversational marketing” and he can sense her enthusiasm. She’s always wanted to make selling things on e-bay more accessible to stay-at-home moms and she thinks leveraging this idea and the skills she learns in classes will give her everything she needs to start her own business.
With her renewed excitement, Carlita signs onto CourseNav. She starts by browsing by tag and focuses in on the popular “entrepreneurship” tag. From here, she selects a class she has heard about and opens the course visualizer. She can see a number of different classes in a bubble view, with the largest classes being the ones the most people take each semester. The bubble view is cool! She notices one in particular that is commonly taken by business school students, but is not within the business school. It is SI 663, Entrepreneurship in the information industry. She reads the description and thinks it’s a good fit for her.
All the while, Morrie is telling her about the latest promotion going on at General Mills and shows her some of the new products he brought home to try. “Microwavable brownies!” She laughs. “What will they think of next?”
After selecting a few more classes, Carlita navigates to the page on Marketing 503. She clicks on the professors name, then navigates to the ratings. Here, she adds a comment about the professor’s insight on current trends. “Professor Murphy does a great job connecting what is going on in the world today with what we learn in class. He’s super helpful!” She also goes through some of the other comments and gives them a thumbs up or thumbs down on how useful they are for people deciding on classes. She feels empowered by being able to put her opinion where everyone can see. She likes the familiar feeling of the commenting and rating system; it reminds her of Amazon.com. She gives some more input on her classes and professors and then decides to curl up with her Marketing book and go to sleep after another busy day.
