Month: January 2021

Last week’s speaker, Paolo Tosolini, was for me the most exciting and amazing speaker in terms of what they do professionally. But what really impressed me the most was when he showed an app that had a 3D model of the human body/anatomy in your living room seen through your phone! I thought that was so cool and so useful for med students who are studying remotely!!

And that led me to think what else VR/AR could do to change the way we learn about in school. Now that students are all learning remotely, it’s been hard trying to replicate the physical things we do to learn in school, especially in science classes where we go to labs and do experiments or observations. With VR/AR, I feel like there could be a possibility of almost replicating that physical learning. Now that you can see what’s inside the human body using a 3D model on your phone, you’re almost doing the same thing as seeing the physical human body model in your Biology classroom!

All the possibilities you could do…..I just feel so amazed with how far we’ve gone in science and technology.

In Summer 2017 at SXSW, HBO had their marketing campaigns for their tv shows Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and Veep. But to make their campaign more fun and engaging, they set up escape rooms that replicated the set of these tv shows. It drew a lot of fans of these different show in the area and instantly became a hit.

What I think the reason why this marketing campaign was so successful is because of the fan engagement and the thrill of escape rooms became a way for fans to make that possible. If you were a fan of these tv shows, you definitely would feel ecstatic seeing the set of the show and feel like you are a part of it. Also, you get to experience it with other fans of the show which makes it feel more welcoming. It was fun, exciting, thrilling, and memorable. And I think that’s what other companies should do to make their campaigns successful!

More details on what the people’s reactions to the escape room: https://www.techhive.com/article/3180166/hbo-brought-its-best-shows-to-life-at-sxsw-with-an-awesome-escape-room.html

After seeing what happened in the 2020 US Presidential elections las November, I realized how confusing and complicated it is to vote in the United States. With every state having their own process of voting (accepting mail-in ballots vary from state to state) and the Electoral College being the determining factor of who wins in the election instead of the popular votes, I feel like this process seems too convoluted. But, I believe that this process can be changed with much simpler and straightforward solutions.

For me, I think a better voting process would be is to have the popular vote be the determining factor in choosing the winner instead of the Electoral College. The popular vote is quicker to count and every voter’s vote is equal, which what democracy should be about. Explaining the process of the Electoral College, its history, and why it doesn’t give every citizen’s vote equal representation would take too much time for this elevator pitch because of how complicated it is.

However, this change will take a long time to happen because it requires so many efforts for lawmakers to fully agree on it, especially during this time where we have a bipartisan government that have strikingly different views on every issue. We also have to re-design polling stations and ballots in every state and city across the country. But starting in small steps can go a long way!

Side note: This is quite a challenging assignment for me because I have only lived in the US for 7 years and the voting process is so confusing for me to follow!