Homework One

Questions/Tasks:

1. Your first and most important task is to find a project topic. Search the literature and the Internet for possible topics. Find at least 3 and write them up on your blog (see below). Describe what they are, why each might be a good topic and why you might like to research them. Here are some requirements:
   • The topic must be relevant to the field of Management & Information Systems
   • It must have a significant component that includes business, management, finance, economics, ...
   • It must have a significant component that includes information systems or computer science
   • It must be relevant, new, interesting, valuable, ...
   • It should be something you're interested in, perhaps a subject area you'd like to work with in your future career. You'll be spending hundreds of hours on it so you should enjoy it!
   • It must be a topic that permits you to formulate questions, problems about it or construct scenarios of future applications with it. These will be the things you will research and analyze. It shouldn't be too simple.
   • It should have publicly available information (that is, not completely proprietary or secret).
   • It can have a component where you need to actually build, create or analyze something: software, systems, deploy something, do some data analysis, ... This usually provides for nice demonstrations during your final oral examination.
   • It may be nice if some part of it is controversial or has ethical ramifications.
   • It needs to be well defined, or capable of being well defined. Ambiguous, amorphous, vague or nebulous topics do not lead to good projects. You'll spend way too much time defining and narrowing it down.
2. Create an online blog as a place where you can document your experience during this project. Create a first post where you introduce yourself. Then create a separate post for each of your 3+ possible topics. Be creative. For reference, take a look at some of the blogs from past terms on the main page. You can use just about any free hosting Blogging site as long as I (as well as other students) can access it freely and post comments. WordPress is certainly the leader in this area, but there are plenty of others. You don't need a custom domain or paid hosting. Just use their free option.