Reflection Notes

Workshop 6:

Virtual Communities & e-Business

Outcomes

 

Issues Discuss

Issues that were brought up by the presentation group of Vlans are stated below:-

• Definition of Virtual Communities and e-Businesses

• History of e-Business

• Virtual Communities & e-Business

• Benefits

• Four Dynamics to capture and increase revenue in Virtual Communities

• Four Stages of Member Development

• Advantages and Disadvantages of e-Busines

• Success Factors of e-Business

• Issues of e-Business

 

What was Learnt

The first presenter of Vlans, King Lam, started off the presentation by defining the meaning virtual communities (again!), and e-business. They explained about the purposes of the e-business, which is to increase the revenue, appeal to global market and etc. They only covered 3 categories of e-business that is B2B, B2C, and C2C. According to the moderators the other models of e-business, such as relating to government sectors are not covered in e-Business.

 

The moderators then went to discuss the history of e-business which evolve from the early 70s where governments and big organization make good use of information technologies and computers in general to today's e-commerce transactions and 'dot-com' revolution as business are utilizing the web as the primary channel for product distributions. And, examples of virtual communities and e-business were listed. Furthermore, the moderators talk about the benefits of virtual communities to e-business from the customers' perspective and the vendors' perspective.

 

Next, the four dynamics to capture and increase revenue in virtual communities were discussed, which includes content attractiveness, member's profile, member's loyalty, and transaction offering. Besides, there were four stages of members development that are attract members, promote participation, build loyalty, and capture value. Most of the aims are to uphold customers value in the business.

 

Then, the advantages and disadvantages of the e-business is talked about. Advantages of the e-business includes easier accessibility, anywhere and anytime of the day. While the disadvantages of the e-business are like social aspects and greater competition as everything is exposed online, which can be assess by everyone including the competitors, and price comparison can be done on the net easily. Therefore, distinctive advantages is not easy to attain. In addition, the moderators discussed the success factors of the e-business with us.

 

Finally, the issues about the e-business are discussed, which include trust, security, implementing security, and law. As these few issues are the most concerned topics of the users of information technology nowadays due to the accessibility of obtaining the knowledge and skills of  computer, many people are challenging the programmers skills in order to prove that they are better than them. In conclusion, virtual communities and e-business does improve the overall aims and goals of the business as a whole.

 

 

Evaluation

 

This presentation is our last Assignment 1's group presentation, which is the longest and most compact presentation our class ever had. It was started about 35 minutes late, due to the previous class that was using our labs was reluctant to leave until our tutor, Peter, came to save the day. This presentation was presented very long and condense, especially at the beginning of the presentation. The moderators prepared too many issues to present for the topic, hence, causing them not enough time to present their work, and had to rush through the workshop not being able to answer student's enquires due to the poor time management that they have.

 

The other part that I do not really like about the presentation is the long and condense sentences that the moderators used for their presentation, which cause understanding difficulty for me and it was hard to cope. Moreover, the moderators copied and paste half sentences for their presentation making it difficult to follow at times, especially when students or other moderators had something to say in the middle of the presenter presenting their work, the lines of the speech could scatter all over the conversation half way hanging resulting the presentation difficult to understand and follow.

 

Overall, the presentation of Vlans was great and they show a huge effort in researching the topic they moderated. Great job - Vlans!

 

 

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