Blog 10: 19/04/2018

Lecture:

This weeks lecture was a little different as we had guest coming in to give us a lecture. Haider Bilal had started the lecture to let us know that James Whittingham would be presenting today. Before James started the lecture, Haider had made sure to let everyone know that we needed to go 10 blogs in 9 weeks. He reminded us that we should have done a blog during the Easter break.

This weeks lecture was based on 'Sustainability & Business in the 21st Century. James had introduced himself and told us that he was LSBU sustainability manager. He had started the lecture by introducing himself as he has been working for roughly 15 years which involves 3 years as a sustainability consultant and 12 years in house as a manager. I really enjoyed this lecture as after introducing himself we had done a quiz. This was new for me as usually I would either watch a short video or just listen the lecture. He had a different perspective which made the lecture more enjoyable and I was able to understand it better. He had asked some strange questions which I was not able to get a estimate on how many people they would be by 2050. My estimates were not accurate but were close. I was pretty shocked to see the results of the answers as I did not realise how big our economy really is. His questions was only based in the UK and what really surprised me was the figures were huge so it made me think 'how really big is the world'. Through this it made me also realise that there is a lot of opportunities that we can grab.

After the quiz, in order to still keep my attention; James had put up a video was based on 'Malala introducing the worlds largest lesson'. Personally I know about Malala and she is one my role models; I have also read her book. Knowing that a video of Malala was on really captured my attention as I do follow her. This video was really interesting as it showed us that there are people in the world are more fortunate then others. This video had made me  made me realise on how we should watch out for each other. It explained that it had 17 goals which involves; no poverty, zero hunger, good health/well-being, quality education, gender equality, clean water/sanitation, affordable/clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate change, life below water, life on land, peace, justice and strong institutions and partnerships for the goals. This was very inspiring as it made me realise that I can also made a contribution to fix these issues. James then went on explaining that we are consuming a lot more than before.

James then went ahead and explained that there are businesses who are also contributing by using greener products/services which has also benefited them too. These businesses are Tesla, Unilever, Toyota Prius, IKEA, Nike and GE Ecomagination. I do purchase from some of these companies so it gave me a sense of relief that some contribution is taken place. I had also decided that I would make a contribution by purchasing from companies who are greener. After explaining on how these businesses make a contribution, James had challenged LSBU. This was very interesting as I wanted to know how is LSBU making a contribution to this issue. James explained that LSBU had reduced electricity and gas by 40% since 2005 and also was ranked 9th in 2017 Brite Green HEI ranking. This was amazing to hear as I had enrolled LSBU at 2017 and finding out that they were ranked within top 10 had made me proud that I study at LSBU. LSBU only had saved a lot of water by reducing the use of water as they had saved roughly 37M litres which had shocked me as LSBU was trying to be as greener as possible. One of the biggest aspect that I was very happy to hear was that LSBU is Fair Trade.

Seminar:

We had focused on a case study which was based on Ebay as the worlds largest business. Susie had also focused on assignment 2 which is based on reflection. She had explained more about assignment 2. Susie had asked everyone in the class if they have shared the blogs with her. We had focused on doing our blogs. I asked a question to Susie if we needed to have different presentation for each person and she had told me that the presentation is the same. Although we did not do much this seminar but Susie gave us time to catch up with a lot of things we were behind in. She had asked us we had done a week 9 blog during the Easter break. She had given us time to do the blogs and to touch on them if we needed to. Overall this seminar session was very useful as I was able to catch up with a lot of work.

Teamwork:

As we have not done the presentation today, on the group chat we had decided to do the presentation on Thursday as Ponni and Assanatu was not able to do the presentation on Monday or Tuesday. I was not able to do it on Wednesday as I had a orthodontics appointment to attend. We had managed to present the presentation on Thursday. Overall we had done everything but we just needed to present the presentation.

Before the presentation Viorica had explained the changes she had made. She had came up with more ideas such as summarising the findings before giving the four main recommendations. She had also come up with a good overall conclusion that she would present. Before the seminar started, we had
asked Susie if we could leave earlier as we needed to find a place to present our presentation.

After the seminar, we had managed to meet up as a group after a short break and found a place at the key-worth centre. Viorica's son Yousef had came by to help us record as we needed someone who would be able to hold the phone to record. We had done a lot of draft presentations as we wanted to time the minutes. We knew we had to do the video around 15 to 20 minutes. One thing I had realised which had caused problems was Assanatu and Mumtahin did not memorise their part of presentation. This had caused major delays as they were able to put their best. We had to keep pausing as they both would not fluently speak. This had caused a lot of time to be wasted as we had to remind them on what they need to say. Although they both knew what they had to speak, I was sure that they did not practice presenting at home. This got me really frustrated as I had told everyone at the group chat to read the notes and practice at home so this way they could memorise it and the presentation would flow. We had taken roughly 4 hours to record the presentation due to this. Me and Viorica had to manage and give ideas of what exactly they can say. Overall we had managed to finish the presentation on time.


Suman Tanveer

Blog 9: 11/04/2017

Teamwork Week 9:

During our Easter break, we had stayed in touch through Whatsapp as we had discussed on when we were going to present the presentation. We had decided to do the presentation on Monday as we wanted to make sure that it was done as soon as possible.

One aspect that we had lagged behind was presentation as most people did not attend the presentation which led to changing the date of the presentation. We could have presented the presentation 3 weeks before Easter but due to team member not attending or not checking their Whatsapp messages, it had caused delays. The assignment is due on Friday back and we need to make sure that we present before the due date.

I had told in the group chat by latest Thursday, if nobody attends then we would record the video without them as we can't keep waiting for team members who are not even interested. this got me really frustrated as every week we would plan to do the presentation and some members of the team would make excuses or just not attend. Some group member would not even read the message and would say that they did not know about it when I would tell him 2 to 3 days before the presentation. This is why I had told them by Thursday latest everyone needs to come in and do the presentation or else we would have no choice to record without them.

During the Easter, I had made sure to practice on my presentation and I was able to remember my part of the presentation by heart. I made sure to do the presentation in front of friends and family so this way when I am recording for the presentation I am confident and able to get my point across.

Overall I would say our group work was good as we were ahead of everyone. We had found a business really quickly and managed to do an interview within that week. We had managed to identify the problems and solutions. The only aspect we had fallen behind on was presenting the presentation. We didn't really have a group leader; if we had a group leader who would be telling us the dates of each activity then I think we would be been more organised. As we did not have a team leader misunderstanding occurred as some group members would think and prepare for the presentation whereas some would not bother coming in.

we had used whatsapp as or main communication platform as the days that we don't come in university everyday and we usually just see each other as a group every Thursday. In order to make sure that we are organised we should have had multiple meetings within the week so this way we would be able to discuss on what days everyone is available to record the presentation.