Growing your Social Capital

First Individual

1. The first person I spoke to was Robbie who is my manager at the box office I work at. Robbie has been working at the box office for a little over ten years and worked in the music industry during his time in New York before he came to Gainesville. I decided that Robbie would be a good choice for this part because he has worked with multiple ticketing programs during his time at the box office.

2. I consider Robbie a domain expert on the opportunity that I presented in previous posts because he has worked with different ticketing programs throughout his years as a manager at the box office. He also works on improving features of the software with the company that provides it.

3. I've been working with Robbie for about a year and a half now and I decided to talk to him about it after I lost one of my tickets this year before a football game.

4. I explained to Robbie how the Gator Student Ticketing Office processed lost or stolen tickets and the solutions they provided to fix the situation. Robbie talked about how the ticketing software at our box office works and what differentiates our ticket office compared to their ticketing office. However, he stated that it is "stupid" that their ticketing office doesn't have a way to track lost or stolen tickets for students and feels that it is bad practice to have students pay a lot of money for tickets throughout the season and not provide them with a solution besides buying a new one. When I proposed to him the possible solution that I came up with, he mentioned that it could work with them but asked what would happen in the case of students that sell their tickets and claim they lost them if they went back to the ticketing office. He also mentioned while the feature would be good for the students that purchase tickets from them, he also told me to think about how it would affect the ticketing office and the costs of implementing it.

5. I think the best way to incorporate Robbie into my network would be as a consultant role since he understands how ticketing software should work at a ticketing office and the expectations of it. I think from my experience of working with Robbie, I could potentially have him help me exploit this opportunity if I pursue it.

Second Individual

1. The second person that I sat down with and talked to about my opportunity was Matt, who is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the whole performing arts center that I work at. Matt is directly responsible for working on improving the ticketing software and working with the company that provides it to us to make sure that is running efficiently and changes are made to improve it.

2. Matt is filling the role as the market expert for this because he has been working with ticketing software for a long time and is responsible for the actual development of it within the performing arts center. He is also conducting research on improvements that could be made to it and how it benefits everyone that is involved with the software.

3. Since Matt works at the performing arts center and I work at the box office connected to it, I've met him a few times when he comes up throughout the day to talk to my managers at the box office. After I spoke to Robbie about my opportunity, I decided to ask Matt a few questions about it to see what he thought about it.

4. I proposed to Matt the situation that I was looking into and the possible solution that I thought could help solve the problem at hand. Matt had a similar feeling to what Robbie had, but he was also looking at it from the point-of-view of the Gator Student Ticketing Office. He also mentioned that they deal with a lot of students every weekend in a small period of time during the week before home games of the football season. He thought the solution I provided is good, but it could also be problematic when it comes to efficiently get tickets out to all the students throughout the day.

5. By speaking to Matt, it provided me a lot more insight for my opportunity and solution to for it. What I need to do according to Matt is to figure out ways to improve on the efficiency of the system and fail-safes to keep from students from scamming each other when they sell them and have them reprinted afterward. However, Matt wouldn't exactly be able to fit into my network as he is focused on developing his position at the performing arts center.

Third Individual

1. The final person I spoke was Stephen, a computer science student that I met through a friend of mine. Stephen also develops simple programs for people as a freelancer as a way to improve on his skills and knowledge from what he learns in school.

2. Since Stephen does freelance software development for other people for a fee, he fills the role as a supplier because he is supplying a service to a customer with his programs.

3. I found the person through a friend of mine who is also a co-worker of mine. I asked her if she knew anybody that was in the computer engineering field here at the University of Florida. She gave me his phone number and I texted him asking if I could ask him a few questions.

4. When I spoke to Stephen, it was over the phone as he was not able to meet up at the time that I wanted to talk to him. Since I don't have the skill set to develop the actual software the I was proposing, I had to do my best to explain it to him without it sounding to far-fetched. Stephen commented that while the opportunity presented does it exist for me, he questioned how feasible is it for the ticketing office to implement the feature. He explained to me that there is a lot of trivial tasks when it comes to software development and you have to avoid being a feature-creep during the development process. He mentioned that it is a good idea, but you have to look at it from the point-of-view of a developer and what to avoid as one.

5. While Stephen provided me with good information about the opportunity, he didn't have any interest in being a part of my networking circle because he was focused on doing his own freelance development.

Reflect

This assignment did require a lot more 'targeted networking' than I have had to do in previous assignments. I had to find people that fit within a specific parameter to talk about my opportunity with them. However, the previous assignments have made it much easier to network and establish social capital with people in the industry. For this assignment, it was pretty simple since I already established social capital with the first two individuals because I have been working with them for almost two years now.