Jessica Allen's e-Portfolio

Hello and welcome to my e-Portfolio! This blog will showcase some examples of my work from school and beyond. As a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in English Literature, I have an affinity for language and understand its incredible power in the business world. Not surprisingly, this passion has led me to the Marketing Management program at BCIT with an option in Communications.

My goal is to combine experiences from my two educations (English and Marketing) and use them to establish a career in communications, specializing in corporate communication or public relations.

If you would like to contact me, please use the Contact Me page to send me a message.

Enjoy!

Once upon a time, long, long ago, before I even considered BCIT’s marketing program, I attended UBC in the Faculty of Arts. (I only graduated last year, but it feels like ages ago!) Being a part of the UBC community was great fun, and I still feel connected to the university six months after my convocation ceremony. As I mentioned before, I became involved with the Alma Mater Society (AMS) and worked a number of different on-campus jobs, and in my limited spare time I squeezed in a degree during the time I wasn’t working, networking or making long treks across campus!

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The English Department at UBC is incredibly varied, full of professors, grad students and regular old undergrads pursuing different areas of study. Before starting the English program I wasn’t aware of the full breadth of topics that the study of English Literature covers. For instance, rarely does an English course focus solely on poem structure or the rising and falling action of a novel. Instead, classes delve into topics you might not necessarily associate with “English” – cultural and gender studies, history, philosophy and more.

One of the most interesting English classes I experienced at UBC was a fourth year seminar that focused on body politics and the way in which the state controls and regulates the human body. This description references political science, philosophy, science and technology, history ….and maybe a little bit of English. My point is that the study of English Literature isn’t limited to old, dusty epic poems – it’s an exciting and draws upon current, controversial issues that matter to us right now.

Before this e-Portfolio came into being we had a sort of practice-run with WordPress in our BSYS1000 class. The product of this test-run is my Zen Tutorial – Using Autofit with MS PowerPoint 2007:

Some special features of this blog include using the “sticky” first post, ordering of posts through edited dates and, of course, a step-by-step guide to using Autofit with PowerPoint. This blog is complete with screen shots, embedded YouTube videos and a beautiful hot pink and yellow colour scheme.

Make a trip out to my Zen Tutorial!

When students graduate from university they usually get to enjoy some thoughtful gifts from their family and friends – flowers, high-end pens, leather jackets, sunglasses, trips to Europe, gift cards; the list goes on. But when I graduated I was surprised with the best gift I could have ever expected….

The Yamaha Electric Piano P-140

…there it is – the Yamaha P-140! I love to play piano, and I’ve been at it since I was about 8 years old.

One of the neatest thing about owning a digital piano is that you can connect it to your computer with the help of a MIDI output/input cable. With this cable and a music editing program (like Garageband for Mac) you can create your own music tracks. With the help of one digital piano you can duplicate the poliphony of an entire orchestra, arrange your own techno beats or record your own webcasts. I’ve uploaded a track that I created a while back to demonstrate the power of Garageband combined with a digital piano. While the piano track is obviously recorded from my piano, the bass and jazz drum kit are also converted from the piano keyboard. Enjoy!

Misty by E Garner

I think that one of the reasons why I enjoyed by time at UBC so much was because of the student associations, jobs and events I experienced or participated in along the way. Every year I tried to mix it up a bit, whether that entailed applying for a new on-campus job or getting involved in new organizations.

One of these jobs that I took on was the position of Special Projects Commissioner in my second year at UBC. This job was with the Finance Commission, a sub-committee of the Alma Mater Society (AMS). The job title is a little bit vague – but that’s because I was a proverbial jack of all trades! I helped coordinate club orientations for 300+ clubs at UBC, approved club budgets, fielded questions from treasurers about loans, budgets and regulations and met a lot of interesting people!

One of the best parts of working with FinCom and the AMS was our ability to award thousands of dollars to deserving students. FinCom has three different funds meant for students who’d like to start up a conference or attend an academic event but are lacking in start-up money or can’t quite afford the trip. The three funds we administered were the 1) Student Initiatives Fund (up to $500), the Clubs Benefit Fund (up to $450) and the Constituency Aid Fun (up to $750).

These funds helped student travel to Africa, attend conferences in Mexico City, help establish charity fundraisers and much more. I think that these funds are one of the most directly helpful aspects of the AMS and hope they continue to be awarded!

In my first year Marketing class, MKTG1102, we’ve learned a great deal about the marketing mix, or the 4 P’s – Product, Pricing, Place, and Promotion. The 4 case studies we’re assigned throughout the term each address one of these 4 P’s and challenge us to apply our theoretical knowledge in practical ways. Our most recent case study focused on the second P in the marketing mix: pricing.

A screenshot of my group's case study on pricing.

This case study examined a fictitious company – Canty International Limited – and required us to find appropriate pricing strategies for a type of new wall covering. This case study was particularly challenging for the following reason: I didn’t know a thing about commercial wall coverings! But after some phone calls, “field research” and talking to some people in the wall covering industry our group was able to devise some great pricing strategies that would make returns for this company as well as provide value to customers.

…And now I’m an expert on commercial bamboo-based track wall coverings! (Perhaps only a slight exaggeration…)

Financial accounting is one of the first courses a student takes in the first term of Marketing Management at BCIT. Understanding the accounting cycle and how businesses take stock of their financial standing has proven very helpful in some of my other courses recently.

I’ve posted an example below of a worksheet that I completed recently for homework. The worksheet combines the trial balance, adjusting entires, income statement and balance sheet. This example is fairly short in comparison to a work sheet you might find in the real world, but it’s a great example of how the worksheet can help you to visualize a company’s finances.

Below is a screenshot of my PowerPoint presentation on the rise of the consumer demographic called “The PANK’s”. PANK is an acronym for “Professional Aunt, No Kids” – or a segment of older, professional women who have focused on their careers but don’t have children of their own. These women still love children, however, and spend time with their neices, nephews and children of their friends.

My presentation, which was held in my Business Comm. class, focused on how this group of women is gradually increasing and what some entrepreneurs are doing to capture their attention (and their money).

Most students encounter MS Excel at some point in their academic and professional career – for me it was Grade 9 Business Computer class at Thomas Haney Secondary School! Since a lot of time has passed since I graduated from Grade 9, the Excel portion of our BSYS1000 class was incredibly useful.

A recent assignment with Excel included formatting business data into a chart, as well as creating a multiplication table using only cell references. In these charts I’ve used a combination of relative, absolute and mixed cell references to organize data and to create new data. Take a look at my work below:

Allen, Jessica multiplication table assignment

Allen, Jessica car dealership business model

These assignments, though relatively small, show the power of Excel when used to its full capacity. In addition, I had the opportunity to teach myself how to use MS Excel on my Mac as well as on a PC at school. That challenge really added to my Excel skills!

Using Microsoft Word 2007 my team and I developed an online publication on Cloud Computing for our BSYS 100 course. To create this document we used MS Word theme templates, the automated table of contents function, and page formatting, well as many other basic Word features. The majority of the content is taken from the Wikipedia entry on Cloud Computing, but we’ve added value to this Creative Commons licensed content by including some extra resources on the topic. Give it a look here:

After creating this document we published it at Lulu.com, a free online publisher. You can take a look at our publication here or even purchase a copy if you feel so inclined!

This video is a commercial my team, Ironcorp, created for a BSYS1000 project. The aim of this project was to become familiar with the basics and special features of PowerPoint – and there was no better way than to create a one-minute YouTube masterpiece!