Some notes about my Log

Here are just some notes about my Log book.

1. I don't believe in noting down the minor details like Time of meeting, Location & Meeting minutes. I mean, do you want my insights or a punch-card to track my hourly wage job? I've contributed significantly to my FYP, as have my team mates, proof is in the pudding or the final product, i prefer pudding.
2. The pictures are all in good fun. They're there to illustrate a point and add a little humor to this log. I like them. Makes the whole thing a little more lively, aye?
3. Yes, there is some amount of Scarcasm and Jokes within. There's content in there too and times when I'm serious, I hope you have a good read.
4. If anything offends you, don't take it to heart. Its all in good taste, I hope. I just find being a little less than serious helps motivate me to blog.
5. NOTE Because Blogs are set in reverse chronological order, I recommend that you scroll to the bottom of each page and click "older posts" till you reach the first entry. Then read up from there, it'll make a little more sense and not spoil any surprises I have ^_^

Have fun reading. I've tried to make this blog as entertaining and insightful read as possible.

MY BUCKET!

Good Bye

Well this is the probably the last post that should be counted as part of my FYP log book. Its been fun. A little challenging coming up with the ideas, puting it down into excel and finally structuring it into a wiki that is easy to read and navigate. But yea, its all good.


Most of the wiki isn't finished yet... It won't be for a long time but thats the great thing about a wiki. Its a never ending work in progress. That doesn't mean that nothing of quality can be gained from it. Not ending is not a flaw, its what keeps the catalog up-to-date and what keeps it growing. Hopefully one day our concept will grow and gain users and visitors. Maybe one day our very own DIEM graduates will put it to use when they go out to organize events. But from here on, it rests on the future teams to continue our work. Maybe one day their project will no longer be about filling up the catalog. One day they'll be marketing it, evaluating its success and merits and getting people's opinions on it.


That also means letting it go, relinquishing the wiki to wee leong and future teams. Take it far guys... Its not much now, but I see a future for it...

Feeling like the Walrus in this picutre:

This One's for the Team

Its been an honour working with you all. I had fun.
I still remember the start... I was so at odds with you guys over the topic that i ended up chasing Aileen out... sorry Aileen. It was just me, I'd like to think I have a strong passion for protecting the only home we've ever known for the past few billion years. I thought it'd be cool to take a look at the green practices in Singapore. I was planning to see if we really are as ignorant about Green issues as people think we are. I was putting my money on NO. Thinking that we are actually conscious about green issues and that it was the majority not the minority that cared.
But we'll never find that out now. 2nd time they've stopped me from doing an FYP about green issues... Maybe if they actually had a team that cared, they'd see some real insights.

Anyways back to my team. You guys have been great to work with. I'd like to think that we worked quite cohesively. We never stressed each other out too much, we were always understanding of each other's appointments. We put in our strengths as individuals and as a team and we helped each other at their weakpoints. I hope that, we pulled through happier and closer as friends. Its worrying when you see people fight and B**** over FYP, especially when some of these people are supposed to be really close. I'd like to think not us.

Actually I like to think about many things but there's one thing i know for a fact, its that you guys make a great team. The pleasure's been mine.

3 Cheers (for sweet revenge, actually no for a great team)

Are we done yet?

No. haha.

After sending our first draft in, it came back. I wonder whats wrong...

Minor corrections to work on. Thankfully. Which brings me to another point... A little worrying... If it was major, then we wouldn't have had time to correct it properly... If it was minor, its not going to affect our report too much, which means its not going to affect us too much which means why bother?

I like the wisdom in the poster... So we're off to do more correcting and formatting.

Till next time...

Finally Report

REPORT TIME!

Its time to get down to writing. Actually to complete the writing... We're basically following the format that Kun rong used in his previous FYP. It seems to fit our needs. We just have to change things here and there but its mostly there.

We're splitting to work up and then later compiling it all so. I think our advisor was not so subtly hinting that someone should be doing the proof reading, something about icing and cakes and reports... Don't remember exactly what, but here's a picture of what i think he was talking about...

So anyways it looks like more sleepless nights working on the report like i did last time. Not that any of us will have much sleep to begin with...

ZZZzzzzz.....

Cat-a-log

The catalog seems mostly done now.

Minor changes required at most.

I'm pretty happy about how this has all turned out.

The quality of the information that one can provide on the wiki is limited only by the information you can obtain.

It has a basic sorting function, we can create as many sorting criteria as we need and as long as the pages are properly formatted, the sorting works like a charm. As of now, the only real sorting function that's working is the SIRD grades. Mostly because we don't have much information on the other companies to properly sort them.

For the one company that we have managed to complete, I have to say I rather like the way it turned out. From my point at least, the information seems to flow well and the formatting of page looks good. Hopefully one day all the pages will be filled like that or better. Its going to be up to the future teams to do this. Which makes me quite proud to have a project that will potentially continue on for a number of years as well as one day be put to use.

Not sure if I've come to like it because i had to do it. But I really see this taking off. Information on security companies is oh so limited... I can see this at the very least helping future FYP teams who are tasked with security based FYP topics like we were.

I just hope others are as enthusiastic about this as I am.

7-Eleven! (Because Cheers stopped sponsoring this blog. Nah, just kidding.)

Interview with a Vampire (oknonotreallyavampiresuemealready)

Headed over to the HQ of Event Security Specialists Pte Ltd. I was somewhat apprehensive about the quality of the information that we would get this time around, considering the fact that my previous interview(during my previous FYP) with one of their staff was less than satisfactory...

But it seemed to have turned out better this time. We got a lot more useful information, part of the reason i believe is that this time round we had a clearer idea of what we wanted to do and what we required from them as well as what would go into the catalog.

We managed to get a better understanding of the services provided and more detailed information. Such as how they provided security for regional events. Their strengths and expertise in the various areas of event security.

I think one of the more useful insights that we gain was to do with the costing of security. The cost per man-hour is just one part of the entire equation. Some security companies may actually have a number of hidden costs that are only made known after the event. Some companies may charge for things like a customized SOP for each event and apparently those things can cost $50k?
Which means... If we were to follow our original plan of including the pricing of the various agencies, we end up not only being ethically questionable but also potentially way off the mark? Way to go... glad we had this little meeting... thanks ESS...

Phoo!(ph=f, so its supposed to sound more like foooo! for fooo! thats a lot of money!)

What am I Kneeling In?

What am I Kneeling In?

We're done with the calls and more or less confirmed which companies do provide security for events. But as always, something stops it from being easy. In this case its the formating or medium on which we will present our catalog.

As mentioned earlier on, Excel is FAIL. It fails at many things, the most vital being user-friendliness and "presentability". Its not neat its not easy to search. It only really works well as database for our reference. Chances are if you gave anyone this, they'd much rather pick another method, be it GeBIZ or looking through the yellow pages. We need something that potential users would find easy and quick to use yet be comprehensive enough that they can actually get useful information out of it.

We basically have a few other viable options,

A Physical catalog

A Website

A Blog

A Wiki

The following Graphic(s) should adequately explain it. Enjoy!

I hate describing my art. I find it so much more interesting when a picture means a different thing for each person. It makes my art that much more meaningful and valuable. But for the lazy ones here goes.

Essentially, The rest just don't quite cut it*. For one reason or another they've failed to meet the criteria we've set. So it seems we're only left with one contender. A Wiki. That's right, a Wiki.

Its the most capable of the options that we have. I honestly think this will work quite well.

IMPORTANT

I probably haven't mention this before but our project is a work in progress. Right now we're building the scaffolding. It tends to be the ugliest part of any construction work but without it the construction cannot begin. At this point you see little to nothing of the final product, the work is hard yet the results are barely visible but what happens here will affect the final product for better or worse. It is our vision that this catalog be continued by other teams and that they build on what we already have to make it into a comprehensive and reliable resource. The number one reason why we've chosen a wiki is because the work can easily be continued on it. The extent to which it can be modified and expanded is only limited by future teams abilities and resources. It is simple to use so anyone with a moderate level of "know-how" can easily work on it and continue to improve it. It is nothing like a website where once the structure is laid out, it becomes difficult and tedious to change or modify.

The incompleteness is not a flaw, it is the foundation on which the rest of the catalog will be built. It is a foundation that can change and evolve along with what is required of it, yet it will remain solidy in place so that great things may be built on it.

Don't judge a building by the scaffolding on which it was built.

Ring of Fire

Ring! Ring!

Call time!

In our never ending quest to provide event organziers with a comprehensive catalog of security agencies, we first need to... Find out which ones even do Event Security in the first place.

As one would expect, not all companies work on an ad-hoc basis and thus we need to filter out those that do not provide security for events.

Number of issues cropped up here:

• How to call them?

Calling 150+ companies through our handphones is going to be expensive. We could do it from home but then we'd lose a good amount of communication between team members. Thankfully wee leong suggested Media Ring to us. Free calls! All from the comfort of our laptops. So we can work together as a team and start prank callin... I mean doing our field research. Oh but media ring can be quite difficult to use, everytime we used it we needed like 5 updates and only 2 people in the whole of RP could do the updates. Like what?!

• What to ask them?

So besides asking them the main question;"Do you provide security for events?", we should also ask them more questions to make the most use of our call. Wee leong to the rescue again here, he suggested we ask them some of the major events that they have done. We should also try asking for prices.

• What to tell them?

Do we come clean and say we are students doing our final year project? Or do we throw a smoke bomb and say we're from some event company, we're planning our budget and thus we're calling to find out what they charge? Its evil but i like it. No seriously, If we come clean, the quality of our information and the co-operativeness of the security companies is going to be adversely affected. From my past FYP, I basically got the feeling that they aren't too keen on helping us students. So, time to be sneaky, but that brings its own disadvantages as well. Its unlikely that we can follow up, by interviewing the companies... Especially if they know we were the ones that called.

So the first week was Kun Rong and Sok Hong's turn at calling the companies.

Choon hua and I took the next week.

Fun stuff. It was difficult getting started, getting our story right and all. We also had a few hiccups along the way. Someone had difficult controlling their laughter. Totally understandable given the situation, trust me. But as we went along we also got more confident and calls were easier to make. Though a few companies seemed like they were on to us... Were we too obvious?

But we were racing against the time too. We planned our calls between 1pm and 5pm. Just after lunch and clearly within office hours. So that companies would have no excuse not to answer us. Still we got a few hang-ups without even answering, a few wrong numbers, a few no answers.

We finished well within time. We compiled the information and another milestone reached.

To Socks!

"Divide and Conquer" has an EVIL Twin Sister!

Which ever idiot coined the Phrase "Divide and Conquer" forgot to name its EVIL twin sister.
So being the one who "found" it, I'll very appropriately name her "Put it all back together or FAIL!"

So after all that work dividing and conquering the E-guide for information on security agencies, we're left with one big awful mess that will stick with us to our presentation day. Actually because it was divided, we now have 4 big awful messes*. So we need to do the "Put it all back together or Fail!" aspect.
So begins the paradox... If we divided and conquered it, can we all put it back together too?

Simple Answer, No.
Longer Answer, No. Just doesn't make sense, Someone has to do it. Genius huh? Well I've taken it upon myself to do it.
Partly because I want to spare my teammates the pain of doing this, but also because I need to make up for my perceived lack of contribution(or some possible lack of contribution in the future). So its all fair guys. No worries.

So I successfully put 4 big messes, into one big mess. Yay for me. Its not easy, If i knew we had this many duplicates, we could have 1 person do it and let the others work on more productive stuff. Seriously.
But whats done is done, so its done. Time to get on with the FYP.

"Never take life too seriously, no one gets out of it alive anyway."

Till next time. (By that I mean never!)
--------------------------------------------------------

* By mess I do not meant to lessen the contributions or hardwork put in by my team and I. I mean it figuratively as well as literally. Excel just doesn't excel at having large amounts of information in it. So something like a short company profile will never fit neatly no matter how hard you try. Even the address of the company won't fit in neatly. Unless you want one company per page or something. So by no fault of my team mates or me, it is really very unpresentable. It works fine as a database, just not a catalog we'd publish or show people. Eck.

Which bring us to our next problem, excel is untidy as hell, how do we neaten it up?

Progress is no so good, no so fast.

So far our Progress is slower than expected. Slower than i expected anyways. Gathering all this information is more tiring than you'd think.

Steps to capturing information into the database

1. Copy company name
2. Paste
3. Copy address
4. Paste
5. Copy Telephone number
6. Paste
7. Copy copy copy
8. Paste Paste Paste
9. After "X" Fields have been filled in, Copy one last time
10. Paste
11. Rinse and Repeat for next company

Monotonous to no end. I hope we can get this over and done soon. Its beginning to kill my brain cells and my motivation to do FYP2.
In all honesty this just isn't the same drive i sensed in Semester 1.
Its not the team members, we're all fully capable and hard working(mostly). Just not as motivated.
Not sure why. I might still be a little sore from beign picked to do security yet again. Sorry, I'll get over this soon i promise.


In Other News:
We've been developing a list of questions to ask both security companies and event organizers.
This is supposed to add "Value" to our catalog. What value remains to be seen, parties involved could not be contacted for further comments.

Oooh. Work!

Yes, Our first piece of work. Time to get started. Should have started earlier but, better late than never.

Yes this is a very badly back dated post but the main jist of the idea is to compile a list of security companies from resources such as E-guide, Yellow Pages, blah blah blah. Here I'll draw you a flow chart of the plan. Tell me if you like it. XD

Its a little crude and unfinished plan at the moment but its a plan none the less. Cheers to progress. Or as Calvin and Hobbes would say it, "Scientific Progress goes "Boink!"

Why a Security Catalog?

So basically why would anyone bother with a catalog? All we need to do is head to your online Yellow-pages or E-guide or something along those lines. All you get is contact info and maybe their location. That's about it. As an event organizer/planner, you're not going to waste time calling up the 150+ companies just to ask if they do event security or to e-mail all of them for a quotation.

So your next likely step as an event organizer would be GeBiz, Put up a Tender for your event and wait to see what kind of response you get. But as an event organizer, how do you assess the quality of the people who have responded and their expertise? Aside from what they give you, not much else. Not all the agencies will respond, this could include some of the better agencies.
They might have sufficient contacts that they do not actively seek out business, they could wait for business to come to them...

The other path they could take is by re-hiring a previous security agency they've worked with before. Doesn't really ensure much though. The company could be less than optimal for them but who else can they turn to?

So as an event organizer, we could potentially be left with a bunch of agencies that don't exactly meet your needs... Plausible enough, i say...

What if these event organizers suddenly had a resource they could search through? Read up about some companies that could meet their needs? The catalog could include things like past events, costs, company profile and their areas of expertise.
Suppose they required bodyguards for their VIP? They can filter the list down to which companies do VIP bodyguarding/escorting, read up a little and have a better idea of what they want? Then e-mail these companies for a quotation?

Security agencies and my socks.

Yes thats going to be the theme of this FYP. Socks. White, black, rainbow, ankle, high, everything. Socks.

So where do we begin. Just like in class with our Problem Definition Template.

What we know:

• Its not going to be easy to get any first hand information.
• Second hand information is normally sub-par. I mean seriously. How much do people really care about security when it comes to events? When nothing happens, no one takes notice. This is singapore, nothing happens.
• We have a hell of a job. Cataloging security agencies?! Its going to take a bit of work. While it should be reasonably easy to find the agencies, not all of them are going to do events security. I think i'm going to create a fake e-mail account and start asking them what they do.

What we don't know

• How to get more information aside from procudures? - My worry is that we're going to end up with a lot of less than helpful things SOPs and day to day job scope. We're going to have to be extra careful about coming up with the questions. If they even reply that is.
• How to get useful secondary information?- Your average person attending an event is at best unaware or at the worst completely ignorant(OMG am i gonna be sued?!), In regards to event security. They don't really have a lot to share because they don't take much notice in the first place. Don't believe me? Go and ask anyone who's been to any event, ask a simple question like "Were there any security guards? What company were they from?" If you get a good answer, send in your resume. I want you in my FYP team.

Have i logged enough yet? Wanna read more. I hear you, and the answer is, NO. Wait till next time.

Wee met in the Library

The whole thing was blah. Which leads to another thing this whole blog idea, its messing up with my english(its to do with the whole dynamics of blogging), but thats for another update.


So lets just get to it. We met wee leong in the library to discuss our proposal that we had worked so hard on, on sunday. Apparently our proposal didn't go through so in the end we ended up with some thing about cataloging security agencies. (Ack.)

1, there are few event security agencies. 2, how do we get good info?

My main concern is obtaining useful information. Since first hand information is unlikely, we're going to have to depend on other people like event organizers and event attendees(we all know how "helpful" those are). Its going to be very likely that event attendees don't give a flying cow about event security unless its some high-up event and the attendees are ministers or CEOs.

If it ends up the way it did last time, we might just get screwed.

Original Idea

This is Was our original idea for our FYP topic before it was rejected based on some forced and artificial catergorization of security in Singapore.


Uh, Man works hand in hand with Machine. Its been that way for the past 9000 years. Since we've developed tools to help us, its been that way. When you put man against machine, both lose. No machine, man is handicapped. No man, machine is handicapped or completely disabled. Security is all encompassing, whatever aids in the detection and handling of threats is security, be it the man or the machine, ideally and realistically, thats how it works. Never mind, time to think of a new topic to propose.

Starbucks & Burger King = meeting

Had BK and SB. It was a good meal before we got started on our work. Got the proposal down but it got rejected in the end. Gah... Its going to be my new key-phrase. Gah...

I think we need to work on being more focused. Not that chatting and all isn't fun but it would be nice to finish the work faster. Especially as the deadline closes.

Cheers.

Gah...

Ok so Its finally up. What a way to do a log book.
I'll get posting when i have the time, by have the time i mean never.