My name is Eric Babbitt, and I am an economics major in my senior year at the University of Florida. After graduating in May, I am moving to New York to work for Morgan Stanley. I am very excited about this new phase of my life. I really enjoy playing and watching all sports. I especially enjoy participating on my fraternities intramural sports teams. This past fall, our flag football team won the fraternity championship and went on to win the campus championship in the swamp. One of my new hobbies is golf, which I play recreationallly with my friends and family. This is my last semester at UF, and I hope to make it the best semester ever!
Eric's ResumeA web presence is essential for all businesses because of the significant role the internet plays in today's society. Everyone has access to the internet. Producers who are making products all have access to the internet and use internet platforms for their businesses. Consumers, the majority of people involved in business, use the internet to shop, learn about new products, and even purchase goods. Today and even more in the future people want instant results and convenience, and the internet is the best way to supply that. People do not want to drive to the mall and deal with long lines, or drive downtown to visit a bank. People want all their information at their fingertips, and in order to fill this want for the consumer, it is essential for all business to have a web presence.
Podcasting in business is becoming more and more popular. It is an extremely valuable communication tool. Expression through writing does not allow the author to communicate passion or emphasis; however, podcasting allows the author to illustrate passion through his or her speech, which is recorded and uploaded to the internet. Hearing someones voice is a much more effective than writing, especially in business, where a podcast allows the listener to form a relationship with the speaker, thus creating trust, a staple in business. A businessman can record a proposal and allow potential clients to listen to his or her voice rather than read something on paper.
Many public companies and large businesses use podcasts to communicate to their investors and keep them informed. For example, when a company releases its quarterly earnings, they hold a press conference where people can ask questions about the company and its report. These companies then upload the press conference to the internet allowing anyone to listen. This allows investors and potential investors to remain informed and feel as if they are actually sitting in on the conference. Clearly, podcasts are advantageous to business, and this new technology has opened up many new channels for communication in which will be utilized even more in the future.
Competition is the heartbeat of business. Every company is looking for a way to gain an advantage over their competitors. The easiest way to gain an advantage is through technology. However, as technology for communicating advances, personal security decreases. When businesses exchanged information through regular mail, privacy was not an issue as the postal service held responsibility for the distribution of mail. Now that technology has made e-mail the standard for communication, privacy is an issue. The internet is not secure, allowing any hacker or internet piracy expert to steal information from one’s e-mail platform, or intercept a message on the way to the recipient. Security measures are necessary to ensure the privacy of messages.
With the standard practice of exchanging information through e-mail, security is very important. Many businesses are sending very sensitive, personal information to their customers, and security must be upheld. For example, this summer when I interned on Wall Street, account information was exchanged frequently with customers. If this information ended up in the wrong hands, it could be catastrophic for the customer and the firm. For this reason, the firm utilized data encryption and signed e-mails to ensure that all information was getting to the correct person, and no computer pirates could intercept any e-mails. Signed e-mails are also essential to prevented unwanted solicitations. A solicitor could pretend to be one of your clients or business partners, when in fact they are attempting to get you to divulge personal information. A signed e-mail will prevent this as the sender and recipients are verified by an independent third party.
Clearly, e-mail privacy is a very important issue. E-mail is an unbelievable tool; however, privacy issues still prevent some people from utilizing it. My parents still refuse to send private information through e-mail, fearing it will fall into the wrong hands. E-mail security measures need to be explained to the public to make them aware that these procedures will make their e-mails safe. Clients should not be scared to exchange personal information over the internet, and hackers should know it is impossible to steal someone’s information. E-mail is the preferred method of communication for most businesses. It offers instant response and that is what people want in today’s business. Unfortunately, until everyone understands e-mail privacy and these methods impossible to infiltrate, not everyone will accept e-mail as the standard for information exchange. But as with most technological advances, businesses will continue to fund research for e-mail privacy because they understand the value of full security with e-mail.
Collaborative computing is a very useful tool in the business environment. The most valuable resource that many companies have is their talent pool. In order to leverage the full opportunity that these individuals can provide, businesses need to take the ideas of their employees and allow them to compare with one another. This allows people to learn their co-workers’ ideas and by natural selection the best ideas are then formulated. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to provide a means for employees to express their ideas. Collaborative computing is the solution to this.
Collaborative computing allows all employees, managers, and customers to share their ideas in order to reach a consensus. This is a much more effective and efficient means for communication than large meetings and group gatherings. People do not have to leave their office, let alone their desk, in order to participate in collaborative computing. Thus, time is not wasted and people can be more productive. The tools that collaborative computing offer are also very efficient. You can share documents and everyone has the capability of making changes or suggestions that they feel fit. Discussion boards allow for ongoing conversation and expression of ideas that promote creativity and outward expression.
My experience with collaborative computing in part 4 of the computing portfolio project was very successful. I was not familiar with collaborate computing prior to this, but it has showed me just how valuable it could be. This project took place during midterms when many of us had busy schedules. If this was a standard group project it would have been very difficult for all of the members of the group to meet to collaborate on our project. The discussion boards and surveys on sharepoint allowed all of us all to contribute and reach a consensus on the direction of our project. Surely, I will consider using collaborative computing for a group project in the future.
Gator Glory Basketball VideoI feel that this portion of the computing portfolio project will be extremely helpful to me in my future in the business world. I have dealt with Microsoft Excel in previously, but I have never experimented with the various functions that excel allows you to incorporate into the spreadsheet. I took my time to go through the functions so I not only learned how to do the required functions like find, left, and right, but I was able to learn about other functions as well. I truly think that it is imperative for one to know how to be able to use these functions when it comes to working in the real world. Pertaining to pivot tables, I have never had any experience in creating one and though that this tool was very interesting. I thought it was amazing how the wizard basically did everything for you in a matter of clicks. In addition, the goal seek portion of this project showed me how to incorporate real life problems into a spreadsheet in order to visualize real world problems. I really enjoyed this part of the project; it was probably my favorite part thus far.
Prior to this project, I must say that I was intimidated by Microsoft Access. I had experience with every other Microsoft Office application except for Access. I knew that Access was a platform to create databases, but I had no idea how to utilize it. In business, a main concern is efficiency. Workers are concerned with completing their assignments in the most efficient way possible and databases are a tool that promotes efficiency. This summer at my internship we used many databases. Unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with Access and could not use these databases to their full potential. Thankfully, this project has provided me with the knowledge necessary to use Access and build databases.
This past summer, I had an internship with the possibility of leading to a full time job for the top interns in my class. As a result, I, and the rest of the interns, tried to develop new methods or platforms for outdated activities. Many of the other interns were proficient with Access and this provided them a great advantage. They took the initiative to create databases to organize client lists as well as other large amounts of information that was previously organized in a very inefficient manner. I did not know how to use Access and was at a disadvantage. I learned the hard way how valuable Access is. In competitive industries, workers do not have time to gather and retrieve data for every transaction. This is why databases are essential to effective operations of any business.
After completing this project, I can say that I have a solid foundation with Access. I can use and build a simple database. However, I would still like to learn more about macros and programs that can be designed using Access. I am not familiar with the creation of these programs, but I have utilized the end result and they are phenomenal tools. When I begin my full time job this summer, I will surely take my newly acquired Access skills with me. Hopefully, this will allow me to make an immediate impact on my group and add to my value as an employee.
