week 11

This week, as I spoiled in the previous post, I finally had enough responses to my survey, and cound FINALLY get on with the rest of my project. The problem for me was that the survey input was kind of crucial to my research, and thus I wanted to get at least 50 responses, which was quite a hassle as you can read on my blog posts..

Anyway, after working through the results of the survey, which took quite a while since I had made 4 different versions in 4 different languages (Dutch, English, German and French) and quite some questions. After this tedious job was done, I could finally start on writing my conclusion.
Thursday I had a brainstorm session with my boss here, Jac van Orsouw. Only, it wasn't really a brainstorm session, as Jac aimed a little too much toward problem solving, instead of just generating the most random ideas. Later that day I had my weekly conversation with Tom, and it turned out that my conclusion wasn't really.. well, concluding :P and I'd have to change it. I got a few good tips from Tom on how to do this, and started on it that afternoon, and was done with it near the end of Friday.

All in all, quite a progressive week (which was really welcome, as I haven't had too many of those lately)

Week 10

This week I started by finishing the first draft of my thesis, as this was required for wednesday when I had to go back to school. I also prepared the presentation for that day as we had to tell a few others about our project and the progress I have made so far. Also, I finally got the German version of the survey proof read, and started spreading it on different forums. At that moment (Tuesday) the countof valid responses was still at 24.

Wednesday I went back to school. First I got some information on the job market for when I'm done with my graduation. Later in the morning a teacher told us more about the requirements for the final thesis, and some common mistakes she had found in the first drafts. Both these lectures were quite interesting. In the afternoon we first had a presentation in a small group on the progress of our project, from this I also got a bit of feedback, mainly on how I described the project, which turned out to be incomplete, as fellow students only really understood the project after asking some questions to gain more information on it. After the presentations most students went to the school café for some drinks and to catch up with fellow students, which was quite nice, as I haven't seen a lot of them the past months.

When I got back to DAF the next day I started to adjust my research to the feedback I'd gotten the day before. I also researched a final bit of information for the project. The survey didn't receive many responses during the day I was back at school, so I also searched for more places to spread it, hoping that these would get me enough responses.

(Spoiler alert, as of Monday I had 60 valid responses, and could finally start to finish my research!)

Week 9

This week was mostly spent on trying to get enough responses for my survey. Monday and tuesday I called a lot of logistic companies, asking them if they would spread the survey amongst their truck drivers.

Surprisingly, a lot of companies were willing to do so, though they could not guarantee that truckers would actually fill it out, naturally. On monday I did get more positive responses, as tuesday I started calling bigger companies, who tend to have less time to spread it, or don't have their own drivers.

I decided to translate my survey on wednesday, first to english, and later this week also to french and german, but as the final two aren't my strongest languages, I had to ask someone to check them for me. French was checked friday, and I was able to put it online then, but german will be checked later today, english has already brought me a few valid responses :)

Oh, and collecting all the valid responses, even though there aren't that many yet, is a tedious piece of work, especially with the way thesistools collects the responses.
I hope I soon have enough responses, as that kind of concludes my research, HALLELUJA! Can't wait to start creating a concept and making a proof of concept, finally some more concrete work :P

Friday I started working on a first draft of my thesis as next wednesday I have a day back at school where we discuss what has been made so far. Quite curious to see my fellow students and hear what they have done so far!

PS. At the time of writing, there are 24 completely filled out/valid responses.

Week 8

Just one week in one post this time, woo!

Anywho, this week started with a day off, which I could really use by then. Tuesday my school mentor came by to discuss the disagreements with the company mentor. Which turned out, were not as bad as I thought. We set up some rules around my work to make it more clear for both parties, and the rest of the week I spent finishing the survey, putting it online, and spreading it on different places. Turns out that after a few days, I didn't get many responses, Hopefully this will change during the week, as I'm going to contact more possible interviewees. Not too many hiccups this week other than the lack of responses.

Little catching up

Yeah, I haven't been active enough on this blog really, but anyway, here's some news :)

Week 5
This week I've started setting up my surveys towards the truck drivers. I need information from them on their CB radio use, when they use internet on the road, information on their social media usage, and wishes for the social media system I'm developing. It's turning out to be quite a list of questions, and it's harder than I thought to create a proper list of questions.
Next to the survey set up, I'm also still researching some little stuff and I'm contacting international trucking companies. Got quite the list from my father (former truck driver) of companies around here that I could contact. At the end of the week little over half of them have notified me that they don't want to help as a company, or that the truckers don't want to help, which I can understand, as they usually arrive at the company on friday or saturday, and want to go home.

I also got to accompany a HAVO 4 class in informatics as they got a tour around DAF and the DAF museum as well as some presentations to show them how important IT can be, and that it's found in everything nowadays. Later this week I heard they really enjoyed the tour, and were quite surprised at how much IT they could find around them here.

I have to say, I rather enjoyed the tour of the DAF museum as well, had never been there before, and there were quite a few interesting things to see there.

This is the class (In front of the new XF truck):

Week 6
This week has mostly been researching some more, also for a bit more information on the surveys. Which got a bit delayed at this point because of some hiccups between me and my mentor (which have been resolved by now). I've also contacted a few of the remaining companies that I hadn't heard from, and in the end I'm left with just 2 companies that are willing to help out. Tinie Manders and De Rooy Logistics, worth mentioning them here I think :)

Week 7
This is also a short piece, as I've been home sick most of this week, it's been mostly doing a bit of research, and managing to get a CB radio to use, well, almost, since I still need an antenna. No one knows where to get this antenna within the company, and I've found a proper one online, but it's hard to get DAF to buy it, big company problems.. :P