Defining the Issues Surrounding Guest Artist Lectures.

After interviewing 12 individuals and attending my first guest lecture event of the year, I feel as though I'm just now only beginning to see the big picture of Guest Artist Lectures. I've taken this information and answered the question, "What makes a good guest lecture?"

A few points are:
• A lecturer with great public speaking ability
• An active question and answer session
• Interaction with something tangible or hands-on
• People attending by their own accord
• Relevant Topics: cultural and/or universal ideas or experiences that can be shared by a broad range of individuals.

Next, I made a running list of all the "issues" or "problems" I've defined thus far. They are sorted into 7 categories:

• Issues at the lecture
• The marketing and promotion
• Follow-up
• Organization at faculty, administration, and committee level
• Logistics
• Cultural (Students, Faculty, and Community)
• Technical

The Issues are sorted below (some have multiple categories)

• Issues at the lecture:
1. Quality of public speaking ability.
2. Not always a good Q&A Session.
3. Artists do not always seem excited about being here.
4. Topics do not seem relevant to a large amount of students.
5. Many students disappointed in first guest lecture
6. The artist introductions are not necessarily strong.
7. There is not always structure to a guest lecturer’s presentation.
8. Technical difficulties- there is not an expert there or available to fix these issues.

• The marketing and promotion
1. Faculty, students and the community are not aware of guest lecture events in a timely manner
2. Many students feel as though the lectures are not important
3. Information such as artist work and backgrount is not shared with faculty, students, or the community
4. There is no mention of guest lectures on the College or Art Web Site.

• Follow-up
1. Very few individuals watch the movie if they miss the guest lecture

• Organization at faculty, administration, and committee level
1. Funding to bring in artists
2. Faculty feels embarrassed, foolish, and perceived badly when things go wrong or fall through.

• Logistics
1. Bad Timing
2. Very few individuals watch the movie if they miss the guest lecture

• Cultural (Students, Faculty, and Community)
1. Artists do not always seem excited about being here.
2. Students mature and start to see the relevance of guest lectures later in their college career, but by this time often a sour taste has already accumulated because of bad experiences and forced participation.

• Technical
1. Very few individuals watch the movie if they miss the guest lecture
2. There is no mention of guest lectures on the College or Art Web Site and very few interviewed students said they looked at these web sites.
3. Technical difficulties- there is not an expert there or available to fix these issues.

Bug List - a start

This week I have been collecting a list of things that need a fix. Below are a few comments on each.

1. Final Cut Pro doe not have a "screen capture" function - at least not one that I can find, search for, or google.

2. The lab printers are faulty. If my request even registers on the printer, more often that not, it says "unexpected paper size"

3. A gift company sends me a wedding gift with no documentation of who bought the gift for us.

4. Yahoo does not automatically update when email is received - you must refresh - unlike their email competitor, GMAIL!

5. MIX email is atrocious - my biggest pet peave is MIX displays your inbox from oldest to newest. Even after changing the setting, it only works until you logout. Then, you must repeat the process. MIX also no longer forwards email, this is a HUGE inconvenience.

6. Aaron just received a new "very nice" watch. It is not at all intuitive (as we discussed), so an interactive cd rom is included. It teaches how to set the time and how to use the many watch functions that are all controlled by 3 controls.

7. I tried to set up my Verizon telephone and DSL service today. The sales associate was less than helpful and the web site did not make the information I wanted to view easy to acesss (if the information was even on the website)

8. Airmiles. Aaron and I have hundreds of airmiles to claim. The process is very difficult, mostly because we did not have our frequent flyer cards on us during the ticket purchase or flight. Now our options are mail (we don't know the address), phone (the automated service does not connect to a person and just "runs you around", or use the web site (we can't figure this one out.) There is obvioulsy a customer service issue here. We have spent over half an hour trying to get credit for our miles and have gotten no where.

9. Target - Once again a coupon issue. Our registry closeout 10% coupon could not be accessed from the store (unlike Pottery Barn). We have to wait for the paper coupon to be mailed to my Dad's house, then mailed to us, and then brought to the store to use it. We almost bought the item, a Bose Speaker, from 2 other stores because we simply couldnt wait. A simple digital/software solution could have kept them a customer.

Those are my bugs thus far. I think there is really potential with the coupon idea. Shouldn't this move to a digital process and save consumers, stores, and manufacturers time, money, hassle, mailings etc.? There are quite a few components with this that could be addressed.

Coupons

Yesterday my husband was left waiting at Target while a sales associate slowly tried to work out his issue. Because of his long wait, he received 2 coupons. Today, I went to redeem the two coupons. However, my cashier was a new associate with a trainer associate working alongside him. She was explaining the tedious process of checkout to him, which during my short stay in the checkout line she had to call over a manager twice for confirmation codes. When I presented the coupons, there was a brief discussion of "how this is how she deals with them" and then the first coupon was scanned 3 times, because apparently it is trial and error to determine which of the several barcodes to use. While scanning the proper barcode she had to cover the remaining coupon barcodes.
This lead me to think - Isn't there a better way of finding, using, tracking, and utilizing coupons? Scissors, files, time spent in aisles searching for the exact product, cashiers that can't use them, cashiers that do not double them, and a slew of other issues surround coupons...how could this be revamped?