Interview With A Leader: Analysis

Interview With A Leader: Analysis In the first part of the course work, I made a report about a business person who made impact on me. His behavior and aims which he has already achieved made him my idol in my life. Nothing is perfect this quote is true, the person I chose does not know English, so I have just talked with him in Uzbek, and asked his opinion and ideas about following five criteria personality, motivation, leadership, team and group working skills, and decision making. I chose a person who made impact on me because he has very strong emotional control on himself, also he is very optimistic; he is a business person who manages a credit union in Tashkent. His name is Ilyaos, he was born in Samarkand in a simple family in 1981. In his childhood he wanted to study and work in Tashkent. During these all time I have learned many practical things from him. As he says: I became independent in 1994, and started my own way. So that is why he is so independent nowadays. In 1999 he passed entrance exam to the Finance institute in Tashkent, successfully. He had financial difficulties while he studied in institute. Because of that he had to work after the studies. He studied very hard and the result was a graduate ship red diploma of Tashkent Financial Institute in 2003. In 2005 he began working as a teacher in Finance Institute in Tashkent. In 2010 he got a PhD degree from Insurance. In addition, nowadays he teaches Insurance subject in the Academy of Bank and Finance and also in one time works as a manager of Credit Union. If we look to the theory to the personality it could be said that personality is the sum of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others (Robbins, 2003). In the reference from the Jungs theory that the personality of the individual I chose, can be clarified as an extraverted. Because, he speaks a lot, as we know that extraverted people first speaks and thinks. And also, according to the Big Five Model, Ilyos aka can be put into the personality group of extroversion, because he tends to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. In my opinion, difficulties in his student life made him very strong. When we talked, I said that difficulties make person stronger if he does not give up and solves them. Then Ilyos aka said that: You will be stronger if you know something to give up and do not be upset. He always says: If you are making decisions, always remember that new things must be more useful and beneficial than your older ones. His life experience and skill which he is gaining made impact on me. Because, when we are having discussions he always wins. He reads books every day, watches news and analysis. That is why, he always the first in discussions. Once I wanted to reflect on him, I wanted to be like him in talking and thinking. It was difficult, but one day I won him in discussion and then he said: Good job, boy! Motivation Motivation is a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status (Robbins, 2oo3). As we learned from lectures there are two types of motivation such as internal and external. For example, for the person I chose intrinsic motivation is his own future plans and extrinsically motive is money. Before motivating others, you yourself should be motivated first, for the reason that if, someone hesitates, he/she will hesitate others, too Ilyos aka said. As for him, money is the strongest motivator in the world. In addition, in order to be motivated himself, a person should have strong personality, and optimism, said Ilyos aka. According to the Joyce S. Osland, 2001, most effective leaders are alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It is not that IQ and technical skills irrelevant. And also in this book there was given a research in Leadership and management which was done by author and his friends. They have found five components of emotional intelligence at work. Self awareness is the first component of emotional intelligence which makes sense when one consider that Delphic oracle gave the advice to know you thousands of years ago. Also, self awareness means having a deep understanding of ones emotions, strength, weakness, needs, and drives (Joyce, 2oo1). When I asked him to speak about leaders and leadership skills, he bound leadership skills with motivation, as for him motivation is the most important tactic for leaders and managers, and said that without knowing motivation no one can be can have leadership skills. As I mentioned above he likes to read books about psychology, during the interview he gave example of ideal leader. He said the words of the leader who got one million dollar a month, There is nothing bad for employees except the punishment of their manager. As for me the same situation, I always tried to encourage the people with good words. Leaders should know what his employees want, and always should respect others ideas. Ilyos aka said that: Your works and results should speak instead of you. For example, when he worked in commercial bank as a manager, he had always a good communication with his colleagues. I think, having good communication is good, however manager should remember that he leads the company. So, my o pinion is that managers should be a bit strict with his employees. Team and group working skills A team is a small number of people, with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they are mutually accountable. A group is defined as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who come together to achieve particular objectives. Groups can be either formal or informal. (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993) The nature of Teamwork occurs when a group of members work together in ways that utilize their skills well to accomplish a purpose. The person I chose has some lack of team and group working skills because when I observed his speech in some meetings he always tries to be first and talks a lot and loud. According to Arts of Communication by Dale Carnegie there was written about that if a person wants to have more audience and friends that person must learn to listen to them. However, he always tries to be in the center of the attention. Speak a lot, gives interesting facts. As for me, it is cannot be seen as a good skills, he has some minus in team working. For example, he should learn how to listen to the others idea. Decision making Then he gave an example of buying his flat as a decision for his own purpose. On the other hand, when he chaired the meeting in his credit union almost always decides regarding to the purpose of the organization.

Optimizing Cloud Resources Implementation of IPTV Service

Optimizing Cloud Resources Implementation of IPTV Service Optimizing Cloud Resources Implementation of IPTV service delivery through Virtualization MOHAMMAD ISMAIL Abstract- The Internet Protocol Television is a system over which Internet television services are delivered using the networking and architecture methods of the Internet Protocol Suite through a packet-switched network infrastructure, e.g., the Internet and broadband Internet access networks, rather of being delivered over traditional radio frequency broadcast, satellite signal, and cable television (CATV) formats. Implementation of IPTV Virtualization is of practical concern in numerous applications such as detecting an IPTV service delivery failure. The intrusion detection is determined as a mechanism for an IPTV service delivery over virtualization to detect the existence of inappropriate, incorrect, or anomalous moving attackers In this paper, we ruminate this issue according to inhomogeneous IPTV service delivery models. Furthermore, we ruminate two sensing detection models single-sensing detection and multiple-sensing detection we want to lower a providers cost of real-time IP TV services over a virtualized IPTV architecture and over intelligent timeshifting of service delivery, We define a extrapolated framework for computing the amount of resources needed to support multiple services, without missing the deadline for any service. We construct the problem as an optimization formulation that uses a generic cost function. Our simulation results show the benfits of multiple sensor inhomogeneous WSN IPTV service delivery through virtualization. We also show that there are attarctive open problems in designing mechanisms that allow time-shifting of load in such environments. I. Introduction Now a days the demand for Internet-based applications grows around the world, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has been very popular. The recent advances in communication and computer technology, television has gone over many advances over the years. Now a days IP based video delivery became more popular (IPTV). demands placed upon the service provider’s resources have dramatically increased. Service providers typically provision for the high demands of each service across the subscriber population. However, provisioning for high demands leaves resources under employ at all other periods. This is particularly evident with Instant Channel Change (ICC) requests in IPTV. Our goal is to take favor of the difference in workloads of the different IPTV services to better utilize the deployed servers. In IPTV, Live TV is typically multicast from servers using IP Multicast, with one group per TV channel. Video-on- Demand (VoD) is also supported by the service provider, with each req uest being served by a server using a unicast stream. For each channel change, the user has to join the multicast group associated with the channel, and wait for enough data to be buffered before the video is displayed; this can take some time. As a result, there have been many attempts to support instant channel change by mitigating the user perceived channel switching latency [1], [7]. In our virtualized environment, ICC is typically managed by a set of VMs while other VMs would be created to handle VoD requests. With the ability to spawn VMs quickly [1], we believe that we can shift servers (VMs) from VoD to handle the ICC demand in a matter of a few seconds. This requires being able to predict the ICC bursts which we believe can be predicted from historic information. Our goal is to find the number of servers that are needed at each time instant by minimizing a cost function while at the same time satisfying all the deadlines associated with these services. To achieve this, we i dentify the sever-capacity region formed by servers at each time instant such that all the arriving requests meet their deadlines. We show that for  any server tuple with integer entries inside the servercapacity region, an earliest deadline first (EDF) strategy can be used to serve all requests without missing their deadlines. This is an extension of previous result where the number of servers is fixed [2]. Thus, well known concave programming techniques without integer constraints can be used to solve the problem [3]. Finally, for a maximum cost function, we seek to minimize the maximum number of servers used over the entire period. II. RELATED WORK There are mainly three threads of related work, namely cloud computing, scheduling with deadline constraints, and optimization. Cloud computing has recently changed the landscape of Internet based computing, whereby a shared pool of configurable computing resources (networks, servers, storage) can be rapidly provisioned and released to support multiple services within the same infrastructure [7]. In preliminary work on this topic [4], we analyzed the maximum number of servers that are needed to service jobs with a strict deadline contraint. We also assume non-causal information (i.e., all deadlines are known a priori) of the jobs arriving at each instant. In this [5], considers the advancing scenario, this approach only requires a server complex that is sized to meet the requirements of the ICC load, which has no deadline flexibility, and we can almost completely mask the need for any additional servers for dealing with the VoD load. With the typical ICC implemented on current IPTV s ystems, the content is delivered at an accelerated rate using a unicast stream from the server [6], [7]. There have been multiple efforts in the past to analytically estimate the resource requirements for serving arriving requests which have a delay constraint. These have been studied especially in the context of voice, including delivering VoIP packets, and have generally assumed the arrival process is Poisson [8]. For a concave minimization with linear constraints, the solution is one of the corner points of the polytope formed by the linear constraints. III. Improved Cloud Data Utilization for IPTV Transmission Internet Protocol-based video delivery is increasing in popularity with the result that its resource requirements are continuously growing. It is estimated that by the year 2017 video traffic will account 69% of the total consumer’s Internet traffic. Content and service providers typically configure their resources such that they can handle peak demands of each service they provide across the subscriber population. The solution presented takes advantage of the temporal differences in the demands from these IPTV workloads to better utilize the servers that were deployed to support these services. While VoD is delivered via unicast, Live TV is delivered over multicast to reduce bandwidth demands. However, to support Instant Channel Change (ICC) in Live TV, service providers send a unicast stream for that channel for a short period of time to keep a good quality of experience. If a number of users change their channels around the same period of time, this produces a large burst l oad on the server that has to support the corresponding number of users. Compared to the ICC workload which is very bursty and has a large peak to average ratio, VoD has a relatively steady load and imposes a relatively lax delay requirement. By multiplexing across these services, the resource requirements for supporting the combined set of services can be reduced. Two services that have workloads which differ significantly over time can be combined on the same virtualized platform. This allows for scaling of the number of resources according to each service’s current workloads. It is, however, possible that the peak workload of different services may overlap. Under such scenarios, the benefit of a virtualized infrastructure diminishes, unless there is an opportunity to time shift one of the services in anticipation of the other service’s requirements to avoid having to deliver both services at the same time instant. In general, the cloud service provider strives to optimize the cost for all time instants, not necessarily just reducing the peak server load. Cost Function We investigate linear, convex, and concave functions With convex functions, the cost increases slowly initially and subsequently grows faster. For concave functions, the cost increases quickly initially and then flattens out, indicating a point of diminishing unit costs (e.g., slab or tiered pricing). Minimizing a convex cost function results in averaging the number of servers (i.e., the tendency is to service requests equally throughout their deadlines so as to smooth out the requirements of the number of servers needed to serve all the reques ts). Minimizing a concave cost function results in finding the extremal points away from the maximum to reduce cost. This may result in the system holding back the requests until just prior to their deadline and serving them in a burst, to get the benefit of a lower unit cost because of the concave cost function (e.g., slab pricing). The concave optimization problem is thus optimally solved by finding boundary points in the server-capacity region of the solution space. Fig1. IPTV Architecture. the potential of utilizing virtualization to support multiple services like Video On Demand (VoD) and Live broadcast TV (LiveTV). We explore how we can carefully configure the cloud infrastructure in real time to  sustain the large scale bandwidth and computation intensive IPTV applications (e.g. LiveTV instant channel changes (ICC) and VoD requests). In IPTV, there is both a steady state and transient traffic demand [2]. Transient bandwidth demand for LiveTV comes from clients switching channels. This transient and highly bursty traffic demand can be significant in terms of both bandwidth and server I/O capacity. The challenge is that we currently have huge server farms for serving individual applications that have to be scaled as the number of users increases. In this paper, we focus on dedicated servers for LiveTV ICC and VoD. Our intent is to study how to efficiently minimize the number of servers required by using virtualization within a cloud infrastructure to replace dedicat ed application servers. Since there is storage at set top boxes (STBs), by properly speeding up the delivery prior to the burst ICC load, the delay constraints for the VoD can be relaxed for a period of time. The opportunity is to explore how these services may coexist on the same server complex. We cause one service (VoD) to reduce its resource requirements temporarily to help support a sudden influx of requests from another (LiveTV ICC) service. IV.Impact of Cost Function on Server Requirements We investigate linear, convex, and concave functions. With convex functions, the cost increases slowly initially and subsequently grows faster. For concave functions, the cost increases quickly initially and then flattens out, indicating a point of diminishing unit costs (e.g., slab or tiered pricing). Minimizing a convex cost function results in averaging the number of servers (i.e., the tendency is to service requests equally throughout their deadlines so as to smooth out the requirements of the number of servers needed to serve all the requests). Minimizing a concave cost function results in finding the extremal points away from the maximum (as shown in the example below) to reduce cost. This may result in the system holding back the requests until just prior to their deadline and serving them in a burst, to get the benefit of a lower unit cost because of the concave cost function (e.g., slab pricing). The concave optimization problem is thus optimally solved by finding boundary p oints in the server-capacity region of the solution space. The linear cost represents the total number of servers used. The minimum number of total servers needed is the total number of incoming requests. The optimal strategy is not unique. Any strategy that serves all the requests while meeting the deadline and using a total number of servers equal to the number of service requests is optimal. One strategy for meeting this cost is to set to serve all requests as they arrive. The optimal cost associated with this cost function does not depend on the deadline assigned to each service class. V. Evolution We provided an analytic framework that computes the optimal amount of resource (i.e., number of servers at different times) for accommodating multiple services with different deadlines. The initial theoretical framework depends on non-causal information regarding the arrival times and deadlines for each chunk of a requested content. We demonstrate two optimization approaches namely, postponing and advancing VoD delivery. Alternatively, VoD requests can also be advanced after the initial movie request without incurring any startup delays (i.e., subsequent chunks of the movie can be advanced before their playout deadlines). We set up a series of experiments to see the effect of varying firstly, the ICC durations and secondly, the VoD delay tolerance on the total number of concurrent streams needed to accommodate the combined workload. In figures diurnal VoD time series (in blue) and a ICC time series (in red). For a given VoD Delay n≠¥0, we use two services, one with delay 0 and o ne with delay . For each incoming VoD  movie request of length L, a request is made of second service in each of the L consecutive time-slots. Further, each ICC burst creates a request for the first service. Thus, given the requests of the two services, gives the number of concurrent streams that are necessary and sufficient to serve all the incoming requests Fig2: Maximum Cost: Maximum number of Concurrent Sessions. A movie request is made up of different chunk deadlines. For each chunk, we associate a service class i. Specifically the i th chunk of any movie is designated a service class with a corresponding deadline of i-1. For a requested movie, we enlist a request made of L service classes (service classes 1 to L ), where L is the movie length. A LiveTV ICC request corresponds to a service class 1 request for 15 consecutive seconds as in the postponement case. For an operational trace as shown in Fig. 2, with advancing, a maximum of 24955 concurrent streams can accommodate both LiveTV and VoD requests. With only LiveTV, the total number of concurrent streams needed is 24942. VoD requests can be essentially serviced with just an additional 13 concurrent streams. VI. Conclusion We presented the construction of an efficient PDP scheme for distributed cloud storage. Based on homomorphism verifiable response and hash index hierarchy, we have proposed a cooperative PDP scheme to support dynamic scalability on multiple storage servers. IPTV service providers can leverage a virtualized cloud infrastructure by intelligently timeshifting load to better utilize deployed resources while still meeting the strict time deadlines for each individual service. We used LiveTV ICC and VoD as examples of IPTV services that can run on a shared virtualized infrastructure. Our paper first provided a generalized framework for computing the resources required to support multiple services with deadlines. We formulated the problem as an optimization problem and computed the number of servers required based on a generic cost function. We considered multiple forms for the cost function of the server complex (e.g., min-max, convex and concave) and solved for the optimal number of serve rs required to support these services without missing any deadlines. We provide an analysis that computes the minimum number of servers needed to accommodate a combination of IPTV services, namely VoD session and Live TV instant channel change bursts. By anticipating the LiveTV ICC bursts that occur every half hour we can speed up delivery of VoD content by prefilling the set top box buffer. This helps us to dynamically reposition the VoD servers for accommodating the LiveTV bursts that typically last for 15  to 30 seconds at most. Our results show that anticipating and thereby delaying VoD requests gives significant resource savings.   References [1] H. A. Lagar-Cavilla, J. A.Whitney, A. Scannell, R. B. P. Patchin,  S.M. Rumble, E. de Lara, M. Brudno, andM. Satyanarayanan,  Ã¢â‚¬Å"SnowFlock: Virtual machine cloning as a first class cloud  primitive,† ACM Trans. Comput. Syst. (TOCS), 2011. [2] J. A. Stankovic,M. Spuri, K. Ramamritham, and G. C. Buttazzo,  Deadline Scheduling for Real-Time Systems: Edf and Related  Algorithm. Norwell, MA, USA: Kluwer, 1998. [3] N. V. Thoai andH. Tuy, â€Å"Convergent algorithms for minimizing a  concave function,† Math. Oper. Res., vol. 5, 1980. [4] V. Aggarwal, X. Chen, V. Gopalakrishnan, R. Jana, K. K.  Ramakrishnan, and V. Vaishampayan, â€Å"Exploiting virtualization for  delivering cloud-based IPTV services,† in Proc. IEEE Conf.  Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), Apr.  2011. [5] V. Aggarwal, V. Gopalakrishnan, R. Jana, K. K. Ramakrishnan, and  V. Vaishampayan, â€Å"Optimizing cloud resources for delivering IPTV  services through virtualization,† in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf.  Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), Jan. 2012. [6] D. Banodkar, K. K. Ramakrishnan, S. Kalyanaraman, A. Gerber, and  O. Spatscheck, â€Å"Multicast instant channel change in IPTV system,†Ã‚  Proc. IEEE COMSWARE, Jan. 2008. [7] Microsoft TV: IPTV Edition. [Online]. Available:  http://www.microsoft. com/tv/IPTVEdition.mspx. [8] G. Ramamurthy and B. Sengupta, â€Å"Delay analysis of a packet voice  multiplexer by the Queue,† IEEE Trans. Commun., pp. 1107–1114,  Jul. 1991. [9] H. Tuy, â€Å"Concave programming under linear constraints,† Soviet  Math, vol. 5, pp. 1437–1440, 1964. [10] S. Sergeev, â€Å"Algorithms to solve some problems of concave  programming with linear constraints,† Autom. Remote Control, vol. [11] A. Dan, D. Sitaram, and P. Shahabuddin, â€Å"Scheduling Policies for an  On-Demand Video Server with Batching,† in Proc. of ACM Multimedia,  San Francisco, CA, October 1994, pp. 15–23. [12] A. J. Stankovic, M. Spuri, K. Ramamritham, and G. Buttazzo, â€Å"Deadline  Scheduling for Real-Time Systems EDF and Related Algorithms,† 1998,  the Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science.

Natural Resources And Management Essay -- essays research papers

Natural Resources and Management   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Cultural resources are the traces of all past activities and accomplishments of people that includes designated historic districts, archeological sites, buildings, structures, and objects. These also include less tangible forms like aspects of folklife, traditional or religious practices, and landscapes. These nonrenewable resources often yield unique information about past societies and environments, and can provide answers for modern day social and conservation problems.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  a ship wreck   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  an arrowhead a canon   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  an Indian campsite   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Indian rock art   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  a tin can   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  a Victorian house   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  an historic mining town   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  an irrigation canal   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  a dam   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  All of these can be cultural resources. Cultural resources are the physical remains of a people's way of life that archaeologists and historians study to try to interpret how people lived. Cultural resources are important because they help us to learn about our past. These tangible remains help us understand other cultures, appreciate architecture and engineering, and learn about past accomplishments. Furthermore, they offer educational and recreational opportunities and provide links to our past. &nb...

The Kohen Gene :: Biology Essays Research Papers

The Kohen Gene In a world where Jews have assimilated so much into other cultures, is it possible to trace the lineage of an elite group of Jewish men all the way back to a man who lived three-thousand and five-hundred years ago? According to Karl Skorecki, a scientist at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, and Michael Hammer, a geneticist from the University of Arizona at Tuscan, the possibility is alive (1). In Jewish tradition, as written in the Hebrew Bible, the Children of Israel were split into three groups. The Kohanim (the singular is simply Kohen) were the priests. The first Kohen was Moses' brother, Aaron, and all Kohanim since then are said to be descendants of Aaron. The second group was the Levis, of which Moses himself was a part of, and the third group was compiled of the remaining eleven tribes (of which ten have said to be "lost"), simply called the Israelites. Since the Kohanim were the priests among the Jewish people, their duties were the holiest and most important. They were in charge of the sacrifices brought to the Temple, and thus had the most intimate relationship with God, aside from the prophets such as Moses. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., and thus the secession of sacrificial offerings, the role of the priests became ceremonial. However, despite the fact that their strict duties do not apply today, all Kohanim, according to Jewish tradition, must still obey many commandments that pertain directly to them. The hope is that one day, a new Temple will be built, and their service will be required once again (1). According to Jewish tradition, the role of each individual (Kohen, Levi, or Israelite) is passed down patrilineally from father to son. In traditional and orthodox Judaism, a woman is known as "the daughter of a Levi" (if her father is a Levi) until she marries, and then she is "the wife of a Levi." So, the concept of a "kohen gene" can only pertain to Jewish men who have not converted into the faith (1). A gene is a sequence of DNA that is used by cells to create protein. It has all of the information needed to make a protein. It knows when to make these protein and where to begin and end. The functions of a cell are then carried out by the proteins.

Child Abuse and Neglect Essay -- essays research papers fc

â€Å"Child Abuse†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Child abuse is a very serious and controversial issue that is escalating in today’s society. As we look back to the 1940’s and 1950’s, it was almost unheard of to let anyone outside of your immediate family know anything about your personal life. Every family was thought to be, or shown to the general public to be, the â€Å"perfect family†. Some schools had the authority to punish a child by either spanking them with a paddle or hitting their knuckles with a ruler. Child abuse is one of the leading causes of childhood deaths in this nation. Statistics show â€Å"every 4 seconds a child is abused and every 7 minutes a child's life is lost† (Neglect 1). We as a society need to work together to try to think of alternative ways of disciplining our children. A child is a gift from God and should be treated as such. I do understand that with the hectic life styles of today’s society, sometimes it just seems like life is a struggle and just too much. Spanking a child as corrective action is one thing, but beating a child, ripping his or her hair out, locking him or her in a closet, or verbally abusing a child is unacceptable. One solution we can consider is...

A character study of Nick Bottom Essay

The play † Midsummer night’s Dream† was written by William Shakespeare in 1595 and is set in Athens, Greece. The play features four main groups of people, the court, the lovers, the rude mechanicals and the fairies, all of which are linked by love, marriage, the night and the natural world. The title is paradoxical as, when the compound word â€Å"midsummer† is used it conjures a picture of the play taking place during a joyful and enjoyable time, whereas the word â€Å"night† implies that the play occurs during a dark and frightening time. The oxymoronic title gives the impression that the play is unreal and magical. Nick Bottom is a lower class weaver who considers himself to be a very important and professional person, as he dresses very smartly in the modern film version of the play. This gives us the impression that he is very conceited about himself as well as his appearance. In Act I Scene (ii) Bottom is introduced to the play as the mechanicals gather to determine the roles of each character. Immediately Bottom tries to take control of the situation, as he says † First, good Peter Quince, say what the play treats on; then read the name of the actors; and so grow to a point†. This shows that Bottom is very bossy, and that he thinks that he is the leader, as he gives Quince precise orders to follow. This also shows that he is a very committed actor as he is very eager to know his role in the play. Bottom becomes full of himself and very pompous as he begins to beseech for various parts of the play, as he says, † let me play Thisbe too. I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice†. In my opinion this shows how ardent and desperate he is for glory, as he searches for more parts to play. Bottom then asks to act the part of the lion, but is refused by Quince, as he feels that Nick’s acting is of such a high quality that he may frighten the ladies. Bottom says â€Å"I will roar that I will make the duke say let him roar again, let him roar again†, which shows how self-centred and ambitious he is. Quince then replies by saying â€Å"And you should do it too, terribly, you would frighten the duchess and the ladies that they would shriek; and that were enough to hang us all†. This shows that Quince looks up to Bottom as a great actor and a leader, as he is very go-getting and Quince believes that he is so good he will actually scare the ladies. In the modern film of â€Å"A Midsummer Night’s Dream†, Bottom is also very dramatic and emotional, as he appears to be very prestigious and egotistical. He is very dramatic as he suddenly feels an urge to act, and becomes inspired by himself, as he shouts phrases such as â€Å"The raging rocks and shivering shocks shall break the locks of prison gates, and Phibbus’ car shall shine from far, and make and mar the foolish fates†, which are out of his own inspiration and imagination. Bottom is also very prestigious and egotistical in the sense that he only cares about himself, as he wants to act all of the parts in the play. Bottom also appears to be very emotional, as during one point in the play he is very excited and joyous, whereas he suddenly becomes sad and unhappy. This occurs when Bottom tries to act various parts of the play and someone throws a bucket of water on him. This not only shows what other people think of him, but how foolish he is to actually think that hi is a good actor. As the mechanicals go to the woods to rehearse, Bottom makes himself seem even more foolish as he says, â€Å"First, Pyramus must draw a sword and kill himself, whom the ladies cannot abide. How answer you that? â€Å". This implies that Bottom is so confident that their acting is good that they will scare the ladies. Shortly after Bottom suggests an idea of a prologue to inform the women that Pyramus is not really dead. He says â€Å"Not a whit; I have a device to make all well. Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say we will do no harm with our swords, and that Pyramus is not killed indeed†. At this point Shakespeare is expressing how silly the mechanicals were becoming, as they were thinking that they were so good that they needed a prologue, so that they do not frighten the audience. Throughout the play Bottom really thinks he’s something really special for a number of the following reasons. Firstly, he comes up with ideas such as the prologue and thinks that he is such a good actor. Secondly, he actually deems that Titania is in love with him and that he is so handsome and good looking, but wakes up and wonders if it is all a dream. Thirdly, Bottom sees a statue that reminds him of his ‘dream’ and requests a ballad thinking that it was his destiny to perform his dream. He thinks that God has sent him a message to perform the dream and name it â€Å"Bottom’s Dream†. This tells us that Bottom is very imprudent, as he is silly enough to think that God has sent him a message just to perform his dream. Bottom seems more foolish and stupid, as the play continues as he makes continual malapropisms, by mistaking the words ‘devourer’ for ‘deflower’ and also ‘ninny’ instead of ‘ninus tonb’. Another way is when his head is turned into an ass’s head, which matches his behaviour and attitude and makes the play seem more and more surreal. Before the entrance to the wedding, the mechanicals were waiting for Bottom and when he arrived there was a big cheer, which shows that they really looked up to Bottom, as he was an inspiration to them. When the mechanicals are selected to perform, they are delighted, not knowing that they are only being chosen for the Duke’s and Duchess’s amusement. They begin to perform and are laughed at when the wall is seen, as there is a man standing with his arms spread out, covered with a sheet of paper with bricks painted on it but still continue to amuse the guests. Then poor vocabulary is used, which shows that they are uneducated when they say, â€Å"I see a voice† â€Å"hear his face†. At the end Bottom steps in and kills himself, which ends the play and pleases the crowd. Bottom thinks that he is the hero but does not know that everyone was clapping because they were amused. Overall I think that Bottom is a very self-absorbed and shameless person, as he only cares about himself and is very unabashed as seen when their play was acted. Nick Bottom is also a fool as he is always the last one to understand the joke, and he does not know when people are laughing at him. He is also very foolish and big-headed as he thinks that he is supposed to perform his dream, as a message from God. In synopsis I think that Shakespeare is trying to show how lower class people were treated, and how foolish, nai ve and over-ambitious people like Nick Bottom were. However, Shakespeare could have also meant that if you have a dream or an ambition that you should go for it and try to achieve something, like Bottom did.

Kudler’s Strategic Plan Essay

The mission statement should be a clear and succinct representation of the enterprise’s purpose for existence (BRS Center for Business Planning, 2010). Kudler Fine Foods mission statement is to supply the finest assortment of their wines and foods with a knowledgeable support staff. Vision Kudler Fine Foods vision highlights their image for the future and their motivation. The gourmet grocery store’s vision is to sustain superior and quality foods, at competitive prices, with friendly service. Values Statements The values statement provides boundaries on how such success will be achieved and establishes a covenant you ask all stakeholders to accept by answering the question: â€Å"How will we behave as we pursue success?† (Magus Consulting, 2010). The value statement of Kudler Fine Foods focuses on employee’s dedication, high standards, and cleanliness. Their employees and customers are priority and Kudler provides the means to inspire employees, which in maintain long-term relationships with customers. Environmental scan Kudler Fine Foods performed an SWOT analysis scan to determine the company’s new strategies. To conduct the analysis, the company conducts SWOT analysis to establish its current conditions. Strengths Kudler Fine Foods is small, customer-oriented organization in which the owner, Kathy Kudler, interacts with staff members weekly. The company offerings include a wide variety of quality fruits, vegetables, wines, and cheeses. In addition, the stores are in excellent economic regions where customers can afford the prices. Furthermore, the firm has repeat customers, which demonstrates that the company has an impeccable reputation and high customer satisfaction (Apollo Group, Inc., 2007). Weaknesses Kudler Fine Foods sells mostly perishable foods, and about 12% of the stock is removed from the shelves to ensure freshness, which also results in waste and lost profits. In addition, the stores have high payrolls associated with specialty positions and small management that makes managing, ordering, and maintaining inventory difficult for the owner. Kathy is managing all the stores, ordering supplies, and maintaining inventory. A management model in which Kathy performs all major activities limits growth and represents a risk because if she became ill, she would not have a replacement, which would have a negative impact on store operations (Apollo Group, Inc., 2007). Kudler’s Fine Foods External Analysis Opportunities Kudler Fine Foods has the opportunity to fulfill other market needs by including additional gourmet products to their offer such as coffee and tea, a fish counter, a deli counter, among others. This horizontal expansion of the business will attract new customers and increase the share of wallet from current customers. Other expansion opportunities for Kudler Fine Foods include the consolidation and growth of the catering business and the entrance to the e-market by offering delivery of gourmet products and ordering of catering services. The Internet is usually a lower cost channel given that fewer employees are needed to maintain it and to drive an increase of the customer base. Finally, the most obvious growth opportunity for the company relies in geographic expansion. Opening more stores in the California area and in other states is a possibility for Kudler Fine Foods if they can increase their management capabilities. (Apollo Group, Inc., 2007). Threats Kudler Fine Foods, like other businesses, faces threats relative to the economic conditions of the region in which it operates. The market for gourmet products is very sensitive to economic downturn because consumption of such items usually responds to desire rather than necessity. Current unstable weather conditions and natural disasters (like earthquakes) due to global warming also pose a threat of increased costs of produce if it affects local producers that supply Kudler Fine Foods. Other threats come from direct and indirect competition. If competitors choose to expand geographically or to extend their product lines to include the products Kudler Fine Foods today provides, this expansion could have a negative impact on the company’s bottom line. Another threat could be that traditional supermarkets are expanding their offers to include organic products and some gourmet items. Traditional supermarkets usually have higher bargaining power, which allows them to offer lower prices, and they have the advantage of covering a wide rage of needs in a same location. (Apollo Group, Inc., 2007). Review of the individual strategies from Week Four and a recommendation for the best strategy for Kudler see strategies below (in pink) and choose best strategy Strategic Plan Kudler’s strategic plan involves increasing efficiency of their management and employees. Firms that implement the strategy of operational excellence typically restructure their delivery processes to focus on efficiency and reliability, and use state-of-the art information systems that emphasize integration and low-cost transactions (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). Kudler Fine Foods requires exceptional customer service because the store is a customer-oriented. Companies excelling in customer intimacy combine detailed customer knowledge with operational flexibility. They respond quickly to almost any need, from customizing a product to fulfilling special requests to create customer loyalty (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). Therefore, their strategic plan will include ways to retain their customers, as customers are the most important to their bottom-line. Concentrated Growth Strategy Kudler Fine Foods should consider the concentrated growth strategy. According to Pearce and Robinson (2009), the concentrated growth strategy is the least risky grand strategy. Successful implementation of a concentrated growth strategy would increase KFF’s market penetration. Smaller companies such as Kudler Fine Foods with limited resources can increase market position with a concentrated growth strategy. In addition, this strategy can help KFF to increase the number of repeat customers and their usage rates (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). However, this strategy does entail some risks. These risks include changes in the economy, possible slow market growth, vulnerability to high opportunity cost related to alternative strategic approaches, and the probability of financial losses by KFF related to poor forecasts (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). Product development focused on new products Kudler could develop Product development is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business or enterprise to its customers. A product can be any item from a book, musical composition, or information service. The task of developing outstanding new products is difficult, time-consuming, and costly. However, quality products are not simply designed, but instead they evolve over time through hours of research, analysis, design studies, engineering and prototyping efforts, and finally, testing, modifying, and re-testing until the design has been perfected (Riley, 2009). Kudler Fine Foods is already a supplier of gourmet food and adding coffee products to the company’s selection would put them another step ahead of the competition. â€Å"Demand for both coffee and coffee â€Å"drinks† is so high that recent surveys estimate that coffeehouses alone sold $8.3 billion in coffees and coffee drinks and that amount is expected to reach almost $19 billion by 2011, according the Specialty Coffee Association of America. It reports that the United States coffee industry has grown almost 50% from $7.76 billion in 2000 to more than $11 billion in 2005 and the figures keep climbing† (Rosen, n.d., p.1). The type of coffee products that Kudler Fine Foods could market is gourmet coffee, flavored coffee, and decaf coffee. Differentiation and customer responsiveness Another alternative strategy that Kudler Fine Foods may consider to realize growth would be â€Å"differentiation.† Differentiation is â€Å"designed to appeal to customers with a special sensitivity for a particular product attribute† (Pearce & Robinson, 2009, p. 204). † Differentiation assists in building loyalty with customers as well as it enables an organization to charge a â€Å"premium† for its products and services (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). Differentiation helps separate a brand from others and build a reputation for â€Å"excellence† (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). Kudler may use differentiation to separate itself from competitors and help build its reputation, which would result in increased customer loyalty and would appeal to those customers seeking for specific attributes. Kudler may couple this strategy with â€Å"customer intimacy,† which tailoring products and services that fit customers (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). â€Å"Customer intimacy† assumes certain degree of knowledge about customers and the flexibility to make necessary adjustments. This long-term approach is designed to satisfy customers. Because Kudler is a relatively small operation with centralized management, it has the flexibility and the resources to grow to know its customers and build the kind of relationships that will result in lifetime customers. Market development by adding a sales channel Kudler Fine Foods has been successful in marketing its products through several stores where customers can choose and buy gourmet products. As revealed in the company’s SWOT analysis, the superior selection of a variety of products has been a critical strength to support such growth. According to Pearce and Robinson (2009), â€Å"market development allows firms to leverage some of their traditional strengths.† In this proposed strategic alternative Kudler Fine Foods can use its excellent selection of products to appeal to an even larger base of customers by selling its products through the Internet. Online sales have presented two digit growth rates in the past four years (Greene, 2009). Internet can be considered a cheaper channel to drive growth given that it requires less capital investment than opening a new location and it reaches a larger base of customers. Advertising in other media Other strategic option includes advertising with newspapers, a local radio station or television advertisement. Placing a weekly ad in a local newspaper, KFF will become a known brand for fine gourmet in the Del Mar area. Because the advertisement will be in a local paper, it pinpoints the target market and reduces costs. Kathy should advertise on the radio during peak hours her free cheese samples and wine meetings. If the cheese, dairy, and wine areas are in the front of the store, Kathy should consider placing it near the back. The goal is to compel consumers to walk around the KFF store to see their products before arriving at the cheese and wine area. Another way to market Kudler is through television. Because Kudler is selling locally, expensive commercials will work against them. By using a local advertiser, the intended message will be seen by consumers in that particular demographic area. Costs will be minimal because advertising in local newspapers, radio, and television will be done locally. Implementation Plan: Create a WBS and Gantt chart for the new strategy. Include objectives, functional tactics, action items, milestones, tasks, resource allocation, and a deadline. In addition, analyze the key success factors for plan implementation. Include cash budget for the implementation plan and forecasted financials for Kudler. I did this last week, but I was not sure if I did this correctly. See excel spreadsheet Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Incorporating a work breakdown structure will assist KFF in their efforts to assign responsibilities and manage time. Currently Kathy is responsible for each department and which takes away her time from other managerial duties. The WBS has four sections, planning and supervision, inventory management, staff management, and marketing. Planning and supervision refers to how Kathy will operate Kudler Fine Foods. Kathy will make plans, verify the budgets, and meet with shift-supervisors for each department. Inventory management is crucial for a gourmet grocery store. Forecasting sales will help reduce chances of ordering too much food. A customer count can be incorporated by issuing savings cards so customers can attach to his or her key ring. This device not only tracks what customers are purchasing but also their geographic location. Food count will let shift-supervisors know how much food should be ordered every two days. Food management must be accurate because KFF offers the freshest foods and ordering too much food will cost the company. Kathy has to manage her staff so that she is not over or understaffed. Because there are six sections to KFF, there should be at least three employees in each department. Employees should strategically be placed in their area of strength. For example, an employee with excellent math skills, they should be placed on the register. In addition, the employees should be cross-trained in the event of someone taking leave. Shift-supervisors are also responsible for coordinating employee’s schedules. Marketing for a gourmet store is chief to earning sales. Kathy has to study the local businesses, schools, stores, and understand who the competitors are. This understanding will assist in becoming more profitable and peaking customer’s interests. Once Kathy is aware of the other factors, it is easier to strategize. In addition, considering holidays and vacations will alert Kathy of when to expect crowds and order more inventory. To continue to attract customers, Kathy should continue to offer free samples on Saturdays. Once a potential customer is interested, he or she has a higher chance of coming into the store and spending. A guest check average will assist with ordering inventory because the average calculates the number of customers divided by the money spent in the store.