Amna Waseem

In this blog, I will try to explain the complete journey of taking business development lab 2016 course.

It was a beautiful experience and a great opportunity to take this course and learn about entrepreneurship and business through practical activities.

The first adventure was to participate in brainstorming session to get a good idea out of our brains. It was a lot of fun. During this phase, my mind was completely occupied by getting some good idea. I was used to think about ideas even watching some movies and during rides on bus. This actually helped me to observe my surrounding and get an insight on how things around me were working. There is term " Lack of Insight" which means that you know the thing from its appearance or heard about but do not know how it works. This experiment has freed me a little bit from the chain of lack of insight phenomenon.

The second adventure was to conduct interviews with real people and get their feedback on our finalized idea.It was a great experience as well. I had no way how to start conversation with strangers on bus stands or train stations. People were so friendly in Stockholm and they gave us honest feedback. This has helped me to overcome my fears of talking to complete strangers and gain confidence. I think after this experiment, I feel I am a different person now with more self-esteem and self-confidence.

Now let me tell you about most interesting experience for me given by this course. It was Android Development. I have never done programming in android for making applications. However, I know about Java Programming a little bit.It was a good learning time to get the tits and bits of Android. I read tutorials, saw video lectures and finally able to do programming in Android. I think I am a beginner in this development process but I can write one more interesting thing to know in CV :). 

For the fourth adventure, I gave credit to VideoScribe by Sparkol. I learned how to develop videos on it. It was easy to use. I have also tried other software likes PowToon, Moovly , Go Animate etc. Through all this activity, I was able to use a lot of available online free video making software and to compare them with each in their features. Next time, when somebody asks me what to use, I can give opinion about these based on their features and limitations.

Last but not the least, we were blessed to have Mark Smith as our Mentor. I have learned so many things about startups building process. He has a charismatic personality and I was really impressed by his energy and motivation. This has provided me motivation and passion to continue working on our idea and improve upon it. I think the whole credit goes to Terrance, Serdar and Andreas who have developed this course. The design of the course is very good and provides opportunities to learn a lot of things about business and entrepreneurship. The idea of journal writing was first seemed to be boring, but in the end, when I self monitored myself after reading all the posts, It gave me pleasure and satisfaction.

Thanks to all who have worked with me and to all mentors and advisers and teachers who have made this possible

Amna