My Contributions

Everyone of us played a pivotal role in the team to come up with this report. Here are just some of my contributions:

• Marketing research Literature Review

I was tasked to do the marketing research portion of our literature review. I initially did it in graphs as i thought it would be easier to see in graph form. But i was later advised by Qifen to put it in words which sucked. I did it, but i left the graph specific to our topic as it would be easier to understand.

• Crafting the questionnaire and survey questions
  

I started the first ever questionnaire and survey questions which were improved on by Hafiz and Shikin. It was tough at first, but my knowledge in the music industry helped me in crafting the questions. I put myself in the shoes of who we were interviewing and crafted questions based on that.

And god knows how difficult it was explaining to Shikin the different purpose of a 'survey' and an 'interview' hahaha...

• Analysis

Together with Shikin, i came up with certain links in our survey questions. From there, once the surveys came back to us, i helped Shikin with the analysis when she was stuck(which was not very often) and after proof reading some of the analysis by the other girls, i added some more details which they might have missed out, but quite important.

• SPSS

I was the main person in charge of SPSS since i was the only one then who knew how to use it. I thought it would be essential for me to get a refresher course on how to use it. So i sought after the help of my previous FYP advisor, Ms Carol Danker for her help. I sincerely thank her for all her help and time.

I then taught SPSS to my team mates the basics of SPSS and its functions so that they at least know what it is for and how to roughly use it. I am quite confident to say that Shikin has become a competent user of SPSS. Good job to her.

I also had to teach Jarell's team SPSS! Because he forgot how to use it and his team didn't know how to use it. But Jarell picked it up fast from me. Good job on his team.

Also, i was the main data inputer and analyzer for the results as Shikin was quite new to it at first Later on, she was able to do it herself.

• Compiling

I had to job of compiling the report. Although tiring, it was necessary. Many hours was spent getting the report up to date, correcting grammatical errors, deleting unnecessary parts of the report, changing the graphs and structure of the whole report.

• Assisted the team in any help

I never refuted anyone who asked for help. If they needed help with whatever they were doing, i would if i could. Its all part of team work. My team mates did the same for me as well. Be it to help them if they were stuck somewhere or even to read through what they have done and offer opinions if needed.

• Assisted Shikin

A lot of weight was on her shoulders being the leader. I tried to lessen her load as much as i can and assisted her in whatever she was doing if she ever got stuck. I worked most closely with her as we were doing the most important part of our report, the results and conclusion.

There are many other things which all of us did to help the team out in one way or another. It was a team effort.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the following people.

Ms Wang Qifen: Our advisor. Never late to lend her opinions to make the report a better one. Constant encouragement from her got us going at times. I thank you for that.

Abdul Hafiz: Dude, you put in effort like I've never seen before into this report. Your work interviewing Mr Hosking was great. Thanks man.

Ayn: Your diligence and hard work ethics got the team going at times. You are the spark of the team. Plus, you give us something to laugh at. haha. Thank you.

Eeqa: The quiet thinker. I thought you did excellent despite all the problems you are facing. You did your parts well. I know you didn't speak up as much as you should, but did so when you thought necessary to get us back on track. Thanks botak.

Shikin: My leader. Its never easy being a leader. You did so with such grace and aplomb. I applaud you. You gave the team directions and always the one holding us together. You learn things quickly and always never too busy to help when you can. I believe i owe you many thanks for your help. Saper namer ni girl?

For anyone i missed out, know that i will be grateful for your help.

It's been one helluva ride.

Now, please exit stage, right.

cheers....

One Last Burst

Team met up with Qifen on Friday during lunch so she could go through the report one final time before submission.

The content was fine, just some of the phrasing and grammar needed to be touched up. Other than that, everything was fine.

Qifen also suggested that someone else do the proof reading this time since i have been compiling and proof-reading everything so far, i might have missed out on the mistakes. I agree. :D

Eeqa was assigned to do the touch ups.

Good luck to us. Here goes nothing.

Meeting 16

Venue: Republic Polytechnic Classroom

Shikin and i met up in class to compile the report and finish up the results. We didn't call the others along as they have done their parts and deserved their rest. But we told them if they wanted to, they could. Also, having multiple people involved in report compiling will make the report messy and unorganized as all of us have different styles of compiling. I thought it was best for the team to have only one compiler.

We tied up all the loose ends of the report and finished up all the parts that were supposed to be in the report.

Shikin finished the results and analysis while i tested our hypothesis with our links we matched in our survey earlier. We then did the conclusion and final touch ups.

After we left, i went home and did one final run through the whole report to update the content page, check the structure of the whole report and grammatical errors. I am sure many slipped past me again as i was dead tired by then.

But alas, i was finally happy with the report and its entirety. All the months work was finally done complete in front of me.

I then sent it out to the team and our advisor. I knew there were other minor changes we had to make before submission at the end of the week.

Meeting 15

Venue: Republic Polytechnic Library

Shikin and me skipped class to continue our report. Since the date line was so near and quite an amount still left to do, it was necessary.

Realized that i had to re do alot of the graphs in the report and put them into words. However, i feel that some graphs are essential in the report as it allows the reader a clearer picture on what we are trying to say and saves them the trouble or reading it numerous times to understand.

Also, i had to manually do some of the graphs as they were pictures taken by a phone camera and some of them were slanted or blur. I had to manually use Microsoft Powerpoint and do a graph from scratch which sucked.

Shikin then continued with her results and analysis which were constantly being updated.

In the end, we went home to complete all that we had to as we had had enough for the day and could not see us being productive anymore as we were starting to do nonsense.

Observations: I now know that little things that we tend to put off till later on is a bad idea. At first, all these minor mistakes i left for later on to do as i thought they were simple. But they kept piling on and on and some of them are NOT easy to do. From now on, all the littlest things that need to be changed will be changed immediately by me.

Also, if parts of the report come to me one at a time, it's quite frustrating to compile as alot of changes have to be done. Next time, i will ensure that i know what documents i am supposed to get and by when so that i do not have to do double work. Work smart, not work hard...

Homework

After having collected all pieces of work from everyone, i got done to finally compiling the report. Compiling sucks....

I compiled everything that the team did from the introduction to the report, to the references they had passed me and also, structured the whole report. I also added new stuff to the report over the weekend such as the acknowledgments and appendix page. That sucked as well....

I checked for grammatical errors in the report and changed them. I'm sure a few of them managed to escape though. I even restructured sentences which didn't make sense or sounded wrong.

I did up the content page and made sure the pages corresponded with the titles. That one sucked most...

Compiling reports sure drains the juice in your brains.....

But after all that, i was happy to see the report looking structured and neat. It was worth it.

I think the fact that i finally completed my CE points kept me going.

Meeting 14

Venue: Republic Polytechnic Library

Shikin and i skipped class to continue our final report. It was all in bits and pieces to date and more things needed to be done. The rest were either not in school or didn't have school.

I felt it was necessary to skip class to finish our report.

We met up with Qifen to update her on our progress and made some amendments to our current uncompiled report. She pointed out some structuring mistakes and grammatical errors that need adjustment and gave us links to help us with structuring.

We then carried on finishing up other parts of the report like the results and analysis before we could compile the whole report.

Observations: I think the smaller the group, the easier it is to work. That's the strategy we have adopted so far anyway. We always delegate work in pairs or triplets. I think this work style suits me well. I think too big a group can cause distractions among ourselves as well.

Homework

I unfortunately missed yesterdays meeting cause of a CE activity at York Hotel.

With the date line drawing ever so near, i decided i had to complete my SPSS at home.

I completed some of the missing data that had come in late and completed all 150 inputs. Shikin also did some data input after i thought her. I think she picked up SPSS fast. Good job to her.

I also tried to come up with some other links that might have escaped us in the previous meeting.

I felt there were just too many distractions at home. I prefer doing it with my team in school. We can then feed off each other and give them a smack on the arm if they stray. At home alone, its ever so easy to get distracted with familiar surroundings and such.

Also noticed that SPSS in more flawless when used in school. Some problems came up when i was using the programme at home. Which sucked. Big time.

Well, at least now we're in full gear with a completed SPSS data sheet, more links and with everyone doing their own work.

Meeting 13

Venue: Republic Polytechnic Classroom

Team met up at the coffee shop for breakfast. Team decided that since it was Eeqa's birthday, we would get her a cake. So while Ayn, Eeqa and Hafiz made their way to school, Shikin and me went to get a cake.

We met up in class and had a mini celebration for Eeqa. Hope she enjoyed it.

After all the fun, the team got down to work. We had to concentrate. Tasks were already delegated by Shikin and we got cracking. Hafiz finished up his lit review, Eeqa and Ayn were analyzing the interview answers.

Shikin and i came up with links from our survey questions that we had collected back to help us strenghten or refute our hypothesis. We had to use the physical survey and SPSS to actually come up with links. It was a tedious job.

Some of the links we came up with are:

1) Q1 à Q7
Which age group now is more likely to attend events in the next 5 years. This age group is more likely to be the supporters of the music industry in the future

2) Q1 & Q3
The age group that frequents music events the most. Re emphasize the first link

3) Q4.9 & Q9 & 10
If the respondent chooses 4 or 5 in Q4.9, see how much they are willing to pay for both local and international acts respectively

4) Q4.1 & Q5.1 Q9 & 10
The two groups (music goer and non music goer) rates the standard of music in Singapore, then see their response in how much they are willing to pay for both locally and internationally respectively

All of us had tedious jobs, it wasn't long before we all got restless and started straying and digressing from our tasks. I guess the mood that was set from the get go was not right.

We decided to end the day with each of us completing the task at home.

Observations: Not much observations as i was too engrossed in my links... haha... but did notice that when we're supposed to do work at home, it never gets done. Have to make sure it doesn't happen this time.

*note to self: remind mates to do their work...

ok done...

Homework

Since we couldn't get all the work done on SPSS yesterday, i had to bring work home to complete.

I spent the whole day inputting data into the SPSS system so that it could be analyzed by the team soon.

It would be awesome if we could come up with certain links to strengthen our hypothesis before the next meeting so that we can concentrate on other areas on the report.

Below are some screen shots of the SPSS programme:


The variable view for SPSS... this is where we input the data and label the questions


Still variable view.. this is how we label our questions so SPSS can read our answers


This is the data view... here, we can manipulate data with various functions...

Meeting 12

Venue: Republic Polytechnic Classroom

Team met up in school to do the tedious part of the report. The results and analysis. Since most of the earlier sections in our report had more or less been completed, all of us would have to be involved in the findings.

We had gotten back our surveys from people. Good team work was displayed. Some of us who could not reach the '30 surveys per team-mate' quota was covered by people who could. Eventually, we managed to hit our 150 respondents target.

Work was delegated amongst us. Eeqa and Ayn would cover the qualitative section of the surveys and Shikin and i would cover the quantitative sections of the survey since we were the only 2 in the team to have licenses to the programme.

However, due to a glitch in the school server or something, Shikin did not have the programme in her laptop and it seemed as though my license was down. Alot of time was wasted trying to verify the problem with IT help desk. So while i was busy trying to resolve the problem, Shikin helped the girls with their qualitative collection.

Later on in the day, my license issue was resolved but Shikin's programme was still not downloaded. I got started on labeling the questions and inputting the data in. And because i was the only one in the team who knew how to use SPSS, i had to slow down and teach my team-mates about SPSS and the basic functions of it.

At the end of the day, we did not have enough time to complete the assignments. We'll live to fight another day because the security guards came to chase us away.

Observations: I thought there was good team chemistry today. We were all helping one another out. Even when i was teaching Shikin SPSS, Ayn and Eeqa stopped what they were doing and came to learn even though they did not have the programme.

Also, i noticed that if we had an agenda for the day and if all of us concentrated, we could get things done. In the past, we didn't really have any direction and all of us played the fool which led to unproductive meetings.

Meeting 11

Venue: Alley Bar@Peranakan Place

Shikin and me went to conduct the second phase of our interviews. We met up with Izaar from local band Fatskunks first and Bani Hidir from local rockers, B-Quartet.

As usual, before they arrived, we came abit earlier to do last minute preparations and the necessary changes.

Since there were 2 interviewees, Shikin and i took turns being the lead interviewer. I thought we did pretty well. When she was asking questions, i was writing answers and vice versa. Both of us chipped in when we felt we needed to be it to clarify their answers of even to add something extra to the question.

Izaar was very helpful by providing alot of viewpoints from a band's point of view. He was also very friendly and seemed to give alot of thought to his answers.

Bani was seemed rather unhelpful at first, but being an interviewer, one needs to know who to bring out the best answers in their interviewees. At the end, we did get some substantial answers from Bani.

Observations: I thought that today went well. I picked up new interviewing skills when interviewing someone. Bani was tough at first, but once i picked up on his style of interviewing and his character, i managed to change my method of interviewing and managed to get some good answers from him.

Shikin also did well in being attentive to what they were saying and came up with certain questions of her own to further get information about our project topic.

Good stuff.

Meeting 10

Venue: Starbucks@Valley Point Shopping Centre

The team met up to interview Mr Michael Hosking, founder and CEO of Midas Promotions, who has brought artistes like Avenged Sevenfold, Rihanna and Avril Lavigne to Singapore. He has also organized the biggest music festival in Singapore, SINGfest.

Before he was due to arrive, the team met up earlier to do some last minute preparation and to go through the questions one last time to see if any additional questions need to be added or any existing questions need to be taken out. Ayn and Hafiz were slated to lead the interview as Ayn had done some background research on the company for our report and Hafiz is good at asking questions.

When he arrived, i accepted him and introduced myself. I also bought his drink. I think that was the least i could do for the man.

Once we got started on the interview, we didn't really need the questions much. We rarely got a chance to ask the questions but gained alot of other insights from other areas which we never thought of asking Mr Hosking. We all asked alot of impromptu questions based on what he had said.

Some of the insights he shared were:

- Tickets for Maroon 5 and James Blunt were sold more in Singapore that it did in UK
- Audiences in Singapore goes for either top tier or bottom tier price tickets
- The company adds on 15% to production costs to come up with ticket pricing
- Number of events coming to Singapore increases by 20% a year, but only an increase of 5% of tickets annually
- Music lover not equals to concert goer
- Lose money on 30% of shows done
- Midas do not deliberately cater to one target segment
- Local vs International artistes

• Have to pay more for international artistes to cover production costs like transportation and airfare
• Local bands will have to raise their game to be better
• Can watch local for free
• By asking audiences to pay, it is a commitment to watch the band play
• Should not concentrate on being opening acts for international artistes

- Sponsors helps in cutting costs. No sponsors, ticket prices will be higher

Observations: Noticed that the team was very pumped up for the interview. It was good that we realised how valuable this meeting with Mr Hosking was and made sure we were all well prepared for the interview.

However, i felt that it was a tad annoying that most of us still reverted back to our interview questions time and again to ask Mr Hosking the next question. It totally breaks the flow of what we were talking about previously and sometimes, had to link or relation to what he has spoke about before. At times, he kept repeating that he has already explained that or answered totally different from the question. It is important that all of us keep the flow going when interviewing someone.

However, at times, we did have impromtu questions to Mr Hosking which i thought was awesome. Myself, i didn't even bother looking at the interview questions when he started answering the first question. It is important to 'read' the interviewee while the interview is going on.

All in all, one of our better meetings. Very productive.

Meeting 9

Venue: Republic Polytechnic Library

The day satrted at the coffee shop opposite school to discuss on the days agenda and what to be completed today.

We then made out way to the school library to get done to work. After Shikin re-did the timeline, it was very clear that we are very behind time. We were already supposed to have sent out our questionaies by this week but we were still working on it.

By now, Hafiz and i already have a basic structure of the questionnaire, by now, all we needed to do is to tweek it a little and specify certain questions to find out specific answers we wanted to. We had already decided to have 4 sections to our survey, different sections for different groups of people namely, people who go to gigs once a month, people who go to gigs once every 3 months and people that do not go to gigs at all.

After a few hours, Hafiz had to leave because he made prior engagements, so Shikin took over his role and further analyed the survey questions to improve it more.

The rest of the team were busy at work doing their own respective work

All in all, quite a god day.

Observations: I noticed that the team was very focused on work today, perhaps the realization that the date-line is drawing nearer or that we had a specific agenda that we wanted to achieve today cause the team to be one tracked on their tasks today. Perhaps we should do this at all meetings.

Lit Review on Market Research

After delegating topics among the team, I was tasked to do a literature review on marketing research.

Learning from my previous FYP, i knew that whatever i put into the lit review, it has to be specific and link back to the FYP topic.

Therefore, i thought it was wise to put it in graph form as it will be easier to understand and see.

Since it is a process, a nice flow chart will be most appropriate method of showing it. It is also quite a dry topic and will be very tedious if it were in word format.

Below are the graphs:



solid.....

Meeting 8

Venue: Al majlis

Had a meeting with Qifen today. the others continued with their own parts like the literature review and introduction to the project. Hafiz and myself worked on the questionnaire and interview questions. I had a rough template which i had previously used in my personal profiling. We came up with improvements which we could make to it. Hafiz gave a good suggestion by spliting the questionaire into 3 parts to target the different groups of people. Qifen then went around to check on our progress and edit the stuff. We still had some doubts on what is supposed to be done and included in our report and our lit review.

Observations: i thought today, all of us actually managed to get work done on top of having some fun. I think all meetings should be liek this. A nice balance of work and play. But knowing us, we tend to have that tendancy of playing more than doing work which will in turn lead to us rushing our report in the last few weeks. I'm not looking forward to that part.

Meeting 7

Venue: Republic Poly

Team met up after classes to get some work done. As tasked has already been delegated to all, our own work. I got started on my questionnaire and interview questions.

Observations: I thought Shikin was good in reminding everyone their tasks. I also found that team looked rather tired today. Maybe whole day of classes took its toll on us. Maybe for subsequent meetings, we can hold them on non school days to be refreshed and fully ready for FYP (as much as we don't want to) instead of worrying about RJ and such.

Meeting 6

Venue: RP Library

My first meeting with Qifen.

Nothing much to update her with as team was really behind schedule. Ayn and Eeqa has a little done on our lit review and introduction and that was about it. Somethings the identified that were need to be done ASAP were:

• Literature reviews (including the different music events the team have identified)
• Coming up with questionnaires and surveys (for event companies and general public respectively)
• Sending out emails to different event companies that we want to interview(e.g. Midas Promotions and LushingtonEntertainment)
  

We have decided to interview big and small companies, music goers and general public separately to compare different responses as these different groups of people who make up the music scene have different expectations and require different things from different people.

It would be wise to divide the work load to be more efficient. I am in charge of the the questionnaire and interview questions. I shall also identify the different groups or companies that would be good to interview.

Observations: Not much observations today. It's nice to hear that the team is getting serious and finally the thought that we are severely behind time is kicking in. We am confident that we will be getting down to work soon. FYP mode is on for me now. I shall concentrate on FYP now. Good job Eeqa and Ayn for your contributions. Good job.

Meeting 5

Venue: National Library

Agenda for today was to get started on some of the topics we wanted to cover in our literature review. The 7th floor was perfect for our research materials as it was dedicated to the arts and business. Sadly, we found most articles and books in the context of international music and not in the local context. Undeterred, we went on to further define our scope and definitions to narrow down to what we want to search for.

After discussions generated, we decided to look into music festivals being held in Singapore on a yearly basis. That way, we would be able to base the success against something. Namely, the previous years shows. Some of the festivals we decided to focus on are SingFest, Baybeats and Zoukout.

We also defined our definition of ROI and what makes up this broad topic according to our project title. We decided on things like how we are going to quantify it and decided not to only look at monetary terms.

Observations: Noticed that we had a focus. We had purposeful discussions. With such a narrow scope on the agenda, we were able to be more efficient. We should always have a clear agenda for the day to ensure quality outcomes from now on. I was somewhat distracted today as well.

Some things discussed by the group were different from my thoughts but i didn't bother speaking up as i wanted to take a back seat for the project and oversee everything. The good and bad of this is a bird's eye view is always better as i can see problem areas clearer and it can be rectified faster that way. On the downside however, it may come across as though i am not contributing much to the team as i am observing most of the time. I took this role upon myself and not let the team know. But since the log book is a blog, there's no use hiding this. I shall continue my role for now and only speak up when the team strays from purpose while continuing my roles and responsibilities in the team.

god blast me...

Meeting 4

Venue: Esplanade library

Agenda for today's meeting was come come up with a project outline to be handed in. I was able to provide a rough sample of a proposal by providing team with a previous FYP proposal. We managed to use some out the things in it like the structure and some things to include inside our own proposal. At the end of the day, we managed to come up a solid proposal which was ready to be handed in.

Observations: We were all still very VERY distracted. I feel that being friends, we tend to digress alot and talk about other things instead of the topics. I felt that Shikin was very exemplary today and took charge and tried to include everyone into the conversation and get us to contribute ideas.

Meeting 3

Venue: Al Majlis

Research on definitions of our project. While surfing the net, we found a events company, "Tinsel Entertainment" Selling event reports online. Team decided to purchase some event reports online as they were quite cheap.

Observations: Team was still slightly distracted. There is no push factors coming into play as yet. Everything seems nice and easy. I noticed that i am too easily distracted and spent most of the time daydreaming when the team digressed and my contributions to discussion was minimal. Team should have a clear goal for meetings and work towards it and minimize digression and distractions.

Meeting 2

Venue: Home

Team met up online to discuss what to do for freely chosen topic. Unfortunately, most of us were not able to come up with our own topics. So once again we had to brainstorm to generate ideas.

I presented 2 topics i thought of.

First was, "The impact of holding special events rather than a continuous event."

(Sector: special event; track: event yield)

Special events are defined as an event held only once with a specific purpose (e.g. product launch or concert etc etc)

Continuous events are defined as something that happens regularly (e.g. Communics Asia, PC shows, biennale etc etc)
· In terms of planning, execution, evaluation and profits
· Our methodology can include case studies, lit reviews, surveys of event companies(if possible)
· Our lit review can have the differences between the 2 types (characteristics, objectives etc etc)

Second, "The sustainability of Singapore’s music sector the in entertainment industry."

(Sector: arts; track: event yield)

· In terms of the future developments, plans, possible placement in the world and its profitability
· Our methodology can include interviews, surveys, lit review
· We can do research on past and current situation of the industry.

In the end team decided to use the 2nd one as we felt the first topics was too simple and vague.

Observations: Team was slightly distracted. Maybe due to the fact that we are not face to face and the multiple distractions that home has, it made discussing abit difficult. I think we should not have anymore online meetings to increase productivity and efficiency.

Meeting 1

Venue: Home

Team had our first meeting online thru MSN to decide topic selection. There was some discussion generated by all of us to decide on the best topic suited for the team.
Next meeting on Sunday to decide on the freely chosen one. Each one of us has to think of 2 topics of different sectors and tracks and present them to team to choose from.

Observations: Communication is key to ensure that everyone is sure on what is expected if we select a particular topic. It is also important to make the right choice of topics. Having the right topic that can cater to each team members strengths is half the battle won.

testis testis....

good to go...