Brandon Muramatsu

muraPOI: November 9, 2012

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  • What’s Your Problem? Putting Purpose Back into Your Projects: Whitney Hess writes about defining a problem before trying to solve it.

    “What is a problem in the first place?

    • A gap between the current state and the desired state, AND
    • The problem owner wants to do something about it

    In order for it to be a problem, both of these bullet points have to be fulfilled.”

    People: Ask questions to root out the truth:

    “Market research is an effort to discover people’s opinions, likes and dislikes. User research is an effort to discover people’s behaviors and needs, motivations and attitudes, and most of all frustrations.”

    This is the real point of the article, delving into techniques for better understanding the need.

    She uses “six categories: Background; Attitudes; Behaviors; Motivations; Frustrations; and Tech Use” to classify interviewees.

    “We often spend our time going from the current state to the peak state on the smaller problem. When we do as we’re told, we miss the bigger picture.”

    (not sure of the original source, but possibly StartupDigest)

  • The Courage To Say ‘I Don’t Know’: Leah Hager Cohen encourages to use the phrase “I don’t know” to keep us from falling into traps that lead to dishonesty, in particular academic dishonesty. Instead of trying to hide what you don’t know (plagiarize or otherwise obscure your work), admit that it’s ok to not know everything and behave accordingly.

    (via StartupDigest, October 19, 2012)

  • Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Student Software Contest Holds Lessons for Startups: I do some work with Edwin Guarin of Microsoft to help him further encourage MIT students to participate in the Imagine Cup (because it lines up nicely with the iCampus Prize competition that I run). Here’s an article by David Strom at ReadWriteWeb coming out of the 2012 Imagine Cup.

    Great presentation skills. Each team had just minutes to present its slides and demonstrate its solution. The better teams structured their presentation to match the judging requirements and also rehearsed their speeches to make sure they could deliver them in the allotted time. On the other end of the spectrum, some presenters sat in their chairs when addressing the judges. Entrepreneurs who aren’t polished presenters should go to their local Toastmasters branch or take a course in public speaking at a community college.

    They got to the point, quickly. Some of the losing teams took too long to set up their solution, focusing on matters that weren’t germane to the judging criteria. Founders need to be ruthless when trimming slide decks to make them as crisp as possible. When you are pitching an investor or potential partner, make sure you hone your own presentations so that they are succinct and on-point. Think Twitter: If you can’t formulate your message in less than 140 characters, work on another message.

  • Hackathon Hacks for Organizers: Building a better hackathon.

    (via StartupDigest, October 26, 2012)

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