Week 14 | Josh

Opportunity
What I realized about the Proposium is that is was as much about opportunity as it was about gauging interest in forming a graduate design network. I was able to meet some amazing individuals that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to meet. Debera Johnson and Matt Munoz stick out in my mind. Being able to have dinner with Debera was an amazing experience. For someone who has achieved what she has, she was extremely humble and very inviting. I also had the opportunity to meet new students and some NC State alumni – this helped me to realize what was possible straight from the mouths of former students.

I talked with Gary about teaching and how the individuals from different colleges that he applied to perceived him. It was reassuring to here that NCSU has a solid reputation amongst colleges nationwide.

I talked with Laura about her job at IBM. It was reassuring to hear about the relationship between this company and the school of design. While she couldn’t really go into specifics of the projects that she was currently working on, it seemed like she was really into her job there and they she was working on some interesting projects. In general, these two alumni just opened my eyes to how the college was perceived by companies and educational institutions across the nation.

Teamwork
I also realized that there are core individuals who will always be looked to as leaders in situations like this. It was interesting to see who all was willing to do what and who was more interested in being a fly on the wall. I think I had a unique perspective on this because my job was mostly to take video of different aspects of the Proposium. Coordinating teamwork in real time is an extremely difficult task. I feel like when we broke into groups during the studio class we created a nice hierarchy and everyone knew their responsibilities and could coalesce around the members of their specific team.

When we got to the event, however, the team members that were not actively involved in workshops or had a specific role assigned them seemed to sit out and be unsure of what to do. Without having someone to delegate tasks to these people, they seemed to be content with simply observing the event and at times they would participate in some of the workshops, but it was equally as likely that they would simply sit around out of sight and be a ‘fly on the wall.’

This led to my original observation of indivuals having to take on a lot of responsibility that there may not have originally been delegated. It seemed not to phase these people as they probably would have willingly volunteered for the role – but it seemed to contribute to the disparity in responsibility.

Another point that I found interesting was when we were trying to figure out what we were going to do to accommodate those who flew in from out of town to participate. I assumed the majority of the class would have gone out and showed the attendees that Raleigh was a fun city. It was definitely a long day, but in my opinion, people should have sucked it up and gone out. Instead, there were only six of us who actually went out. We did have fun, but it was just surprising to me that people were so content with going home and relaxing rather than taking the time to play host to the people who spent a lot of money to show up to our event.

Proposium Well Done
Although the teamwork may have been a little lacking, I still thought the event came together amazingly and it was nice to hear the feedback from the faculty, speakers and even the dean. I think it speaks volumes to the hard work that everyone put into making the event a success.