The Brand New Positive News!

The first issue of the revamped and rebranded Positive News arrived in the post today. 

In the same way that I keep saying film and media studies would greatly be enhanced by adopting a more constructive approach, Positive News has innovated and utilises the related emerging field of Constructive Journalism, which is precisely why I purchased some shares in Positive News last year, as part of the #OwnTheMedia crowdfunding campaign.

"Positive News is now owned by 1,526 readers, journalists and supporters from 33 countries following a successful crowdfunding campaign. With the aims of raising investment to grow and become financially sustainable, while also creating an inspiring ownership structure, our 30-day ‪#‎OwnTheMedia‬ campaign enabled people to buy 'community shares' in Positive News. The campaign ran from 8 June to 8 July and raised £263,422, surpassing our initial goal of £200,000. Using the online crowdfunding platform Crowdfunder.co.uk, people worldwide invested - from Mexico to New Zealand - ranging in age from 18 to 89." 

- Postive News, Issue 84:7

I even found my name on the list of shareholders on the back cover (that was a nice touch)...

When you consider that the research has shown you are 40% more likely to have a negative outlook and sense of hopelessness about the world when you consume traditional 'scaremongering' news outlets (everything from the BBC to Fox News), something like Positive News becomes all the more prevalent.

Lateral Thinking and the Extensions of Man

I have invested in two new books on Ebay, The Use of Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhuan.

I am not one for glorifying film and media theorists, because as soon as you start glorifying them you usually end up becoming a disciple to their ways of thinking.

However, that being said, I make an exception for Marshall McLuhan who quite literally wrote the book on understanding all of media and film AND much of which is still applicable to the technological and sociological developments of today...

"Art as anti-environment becomes more than ever a means of training perception and judgement. Art offered as a consumer commodity rather than as a means of training perception is as ludicrous and snobbish as always... The power of the arts to anticipate future social and technological developments, by a generation and more, has long been recognized. In this [the 20th] century Ezra Pound called the artist "the antennae of the race." Art as radar as "an early alarm system," as it were, enabling us to discover social and psychic targets in lots of time to prepare to cope with them." 

- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1966:ix-xi

Equally, lateral thinking is something that I am very big on and it is something that I am incorporating into the format of the Breaking Cinema podcast. I saw de Bono's book going cheap on Ebay, so I though, why not?

"Since Aristotle, logical thinking has been exalted as the one effective way in which to use the mind. Yet the very elusiveness of new ideas indicates that they do not necessarily come about as a result of logical thought processes. Some people are aware of another sort of thinking which is most easily recognised when it leads to those simple ideas that are obvious only after they have been thought of. This book is an attempt to look at this sort of thinking and to show that it is quite distinct from logic and often more useful in generating new ideas. For the sake of convenience, the term 'lateral thinking' has been coined to describe this other sort of thinking; 'vertical thinking' is used to denote the conventional logical process." 

- Edward de Bono, 'The Use of Lateral Thinking', 1967:5

I have already got stuck into both of these and I suspect that Understanding Media will greatly assist with the Mass Communications major of my MTA; likewise, The Use of Later al Thinking should assist with the development of Breaking Cinema.

Ways of Being - the primary progenitor for Ways 2 Interface

Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle is my award-winning graduate theoretical dissertation, that is itself the culmination of a seven month research project. 

As the name suggests, Ways of Being is the primary progenitor and the prelude for Ways 2 Interface.

The paper is devoted to Douglas Trumbull, for his innovating efforts, inspiring persistence and words of wisdom. 

"The mark of 85 is an exceptional mark, rarely awarded, and only to work of exceptional quality. I am pleased to say that both examiners agreed that this was the case with your work."

- Dr Suman Ghosh, guiding tutor and primary marker.

The masters length paper was praised for its boldness, progressive thinking and received the highest mark that has ever been awarded to a Film and Screen Studies dissertation at Bath Spa University; as well as being awarded the Media Futures Research Award for Excellence in Film and Screen Studies research.

"This is certainly one of the best FL dissertations I have read for many a year."

 - Dr Terence Rodgers, Head of Department and second marker.

The paper is a consideration of the epistemological, ontological and metaphysical downfalls of film theory’s understandings of the spectator and the spectacle; with particular emphasis directed towards the neurobiological implications of the spectator’s body.

The thesis argues that these shortcomings are representative of wider ranging issues of complacency engulfing the film industry and film exhibition as a whole. Furthermore, the fundamental disruptions of the digital upgrade of cinema, and the expanding means through which film content can be experienced, are explored in relation to the pressing need for film theory to reassess itself.

Drawing on a plethora of empirical and non-empirical research, the dissertation is a highly progressive expression of how film experience has always been about transcendence and, as a result of its digital re-birth and diversifications, it is now becoming even more so. 

   

Other materials pertaining to this project can be viewed in this Google Drive folder.

On top of my other final year projects, getting the paper up to the standard I wanted was a tall and exhausting order, but it was worth it!

"This is a well researched, conceptually sound and cogently argued dissertation which is striking in its originality of argumentation and in its nuanced reading of a wide range of film and critical material.

It draws on a plethora of examples from traditions of visual culture from prehistoric cave art to contemporary film, the IMAX experience and future practices of audio‐visual consumption in order to examine traditional and contemporary theories of spectatorship and the spectator’s relation with the spectacle.

The introduction clearly sets out the structure and methodology of the dissertation and provides a useful overview of the technological shifts which have resulted in a reconfiguration of the relationship between the viewer and the viewed.

This is clearly an ambitious project.

It makes a passionate case for the revival of grand theory in studies of Spectatorship in particular and Film Studies in general and sustains this case through argumentation of an exceedingly high order.

It acknowledges the need to expand the scope of such studies beyond film, in its reference to a wide range of media texts as much as to critical literature, all of which are directed towards an understanding of spectatorship from points of view as diverse as the sensory, experiential, philosophical, spiritual, metaphysical and neurological."  

- Dr Suman Ghosh, Senior Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies.

  

As a result of my enthusiasm for the project, I unearthed so much data that the first draft I assembled warranted a request for a larger word count submission. As such, the primary content I eventually submitted totalled just fewer than 15,000 words, with the Appendix and other supplementary material bringing the overall word count to over 30,000 words! Furthermore, I still had additional ideas and data that would have allowed me to write more - hence my reasoning for orchestrating Ways 2 Interface.

One of two hard copies I submitted on 6th June 2013.

The copy of Ways of Being that is included here is a refined draft that I produced between July and September 2013. As it became apparent that the research project had attained a longevity greater than the paper itself, I decided that I would produce a polished draft to exhibit online; both with the aim of including it as an additional component of this website, but also as a dissertation example that other students could scrutinise. 

The research content and argumentation has not been altered or added to in anyway; rather, the refined draft includes additional polishing, proofing and initial page material. Key among this new initial page material is the marking feedback I received and a new Foreword section in which I reflect on and deconstruct my process of assembling the paper. 

If you would like to view the original submitted paper, then you can do so here.

The study of looking is a recurrent interest for me.Why? Search me...

Additionally, the Ways of Being research project had a huge influence on my EYES web series project and vice versa; in fact, I refer to EYES, my practical dissertation and creative enterprise project, as being the practical expression of what I explored in Ways of Being. I believe the high marks both projects were awarded - EYES was also awarded the highest mark of its module - stand as testament to their mutually beneficial relationship.

Initial Ways 2 Interface focus and About #2Interface page

Since building my personal portfolio website, PeterOBrien.me, and retroactively constructing my Masters of Transdisciplinary Application, which is itself being housed on my person website, the focus of Ways 2 Interface has greatly shifted from a transdisciplinary research project and study log" into "a personal journal/blog of mass communications and media studies 2.0" 

In short, the load on Ways 2 Interface has now been greatly eased into a much clearer and actionable focus - my personal reflections on all things mass media and progressive, but less so on film, because that is what my film focused blog, Something to do with Film, is for. 

However, detailed below is the original focus of Ways 2 Interface as it was laid down on the initial version of the About #2Interface page...


 A  transdisciplinary research project and my study log. 

 The Project: Something New and Fantastic 

Is it actually something new and fantastic?

I don't know.

But from my point of view it is, because this overall project-and-blog-thing is very much tied up with my larger personal development aims, so naturally I have a great deal of enthusiasm invested in the overall focus of Ways 2 Interface.

It's about finding my focus.

This blog started its life as a research focus extension of the concerns of my First Class BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies and, in particular, the focuses of my two final year dissertations: EYES (practical dissertation) and Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle (award-winning theoretical dissertation). 

Hence, the name of this blog: Ways 2 Interface a.k.a. Round 2.

Welcome #2Interface - my original intention for this blog.

However, the initial focus of just presenting my extended research and considerations never felt quite right - it always felt incomplete. After essentially writing another dissertation spread across the first four posts of this blog, I decided to reassess its situation and where exactly I stood in regards to my academic interests.

Why #2Interface: expanding my focus + focusing my interests = mastering the enterprising researcher - my reassessment of this blog and its focus.

Ultimately, this project was always building towards a masters degree in Creative Technologies and Enterprise that I was very interested in undertaking (there is still a huge maybe hanging over this, but the option is still open) and, when I reassessed the situation in regards to my postgraduate education, it occurred to me what was really missing from this blog - MOOCs!

The many different MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) I had undertaken throughout the later part of 2013 and the full breadth of 2014.

Follow Peter's board MOOC-tastic on Pinterest.

From the many different disciplines of the MOOCs I have studied, it is clear to see that I have a hybrid transdisciplinary focus that extends far beyond the creative writing and film focus of my BA (Hons).

Basically - my MOOCs, the vast swathes of time they have eaten up and the reflections they have encouraged me to produce on the various different aspects of my overall education and creative application - are very much an expression of my expanded hybrid focus.

It's about re-thinking traditional paradigms.

Additionally, I am finding that my creative entrepreneurial focused practice and self-directed postgraduate study is proving to be vastly more beneficial and fulfilling than a pre-arranged masters degree. Therefore, for the time being, I am staying off the conventional path, while I continue to explore the wilderness.

It has taken me quite some time (nearly a year) to realise that I could utilise this blog to further consolidate my learning by using it as a reflection space. Therefore, I have quite a large backlog to get through, but as the content of the blog becomes more fuller and more widely representative of all the studying I have been doing, I will gradually tie its relevance back into the original research focus of Ways 2 Interface.

Welcome #2interface.

Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle - the award-winning primary progenitor for Ways 2 Interface.

E Y E S - A Web Series Concept Proposal Package - the sister dissertation project of Ways of Being.

For an overview of my wider research web and the philosophy driving it, see Smartlife: my philosophy + my research web = why I am doing, what I am doing and why it just might help you to fulfill your potential...

If you would like to get in touch, please feel free to do so via the contact form.

 

 About Me: Something to do with Film 

My name is Peter O'Brien, I am a Creator, Writer, Filmmaker, Personal Developer and award-winning Researcher based in Bristol, UK. 

In July, 2013, I graduated from Bath Spa University, where I gained a First Class BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies; as well as a great deal of recognition and heartfelt encouragement of my overall potential.

I am currently embarking on my own self-directed postgraduate study that Ways 2 Interface is chronicling.

“I can't help but feel your careful consideration and reflection has developed formidable power. I wish that all my students had a fraction of your application and drive to dig deeper.”

- Mike Johnston, Senior Lecturer in Creative Media Practice.

My theoretical dissertation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, the primary progenitor for this project, is a Masters length paper that gained the highest mark ever awarded to a Film and Screen Studies dissertation at my institution.

It has also been bestowed with the Media Futures Research Award for Excellence in Film and Screen Studies research.

"This is certainly one of the best FL dissertations I have read for many a year"

- Dr Terence Rodgers,  Head of Department: Film and Media Production.

My practical dissertation and creative enterprise project, EYES, a web series concept proposal package, a reflexive expression of contemporary networking attitudes and their implications on our ways of being, was also awarded the highest mark of its module.

"These materials are comprehensive and strong, showing a close attention to detail throughout... verging on the overwhelming, from an assessor's point of view."

- Professor Kate Pullinger, Lecturer in Creative Writing and Digital Media.

My temperament is a fusion of creative and academic. This  project will very much employ the full breadth of this combined expertise; as well as nurturing it and growing it in new areas.

My two dissertations very much serve as testimonies of these two key facets of my character. 

At heart, I have always been both a  deconstructor and a builder.

"You're a really good builder." 

- Charlie Driscoll, Nephew and fellow Lego builder.

My philosophy is simple: utilise everything that you are, to achieve everything that you want to be; while helping others along the way. I very much took this to heart while undertaking my degree and I do likewise here.

All of my exploits are feeding into this project. 

"That is so typical of you, that you work while you work."

- Mykel Elledge, friend, fellow student and actor in EYES 

I have something of a special relationship with stories and it has something to do with film. 

I have spent all of my life building a foundation of knowledge that, in the broadest sense, lies somewhere between stories and film.

In other words: how we make sense of the world through the stories we tell ourselves and what role mass entertainment and branding  (film, being a primary example) play in this inherent narratology. 

“Pete, you have a fantastic dissertation which deserves the highest possible grade. Really, it is brilliantly written which displays your thorough research and passion for the topic and, most importantly, it is original and not something that people have written about tens of thousands of times. You've done something new and fantastic.” 

- Matt Coot, friend and fellow student.

Between June 2013 and January 2014, I wrestled with the best way to orchestrate Ways 2 Interface. Should it be pure academia, devoid of me and my journey? Or should it be more of me and my story?

Ultimately, I have decided on something inbetween. As a creative and an academic, Ways 2 Interface is an extension of my story, an exploration of my path and an expression of my overall drive to dig deeper. 

"The most motivated individual I have ever had the pleasure to meet... I have never met an individual so driven and so likely to succeed and push the boundaries of which ever field he chooses to go into." 

- Tim Bradshaw, friend and fellow student.

Between June, 2013, and January, 2014, I evolved the focus and aesthetic of this project from its origination in Ways of Being. It was a process that made me reflect deeply on the growth of my own story. I have come to realise that if we persistently invest ourselves in the things that we are passionate about, the things we are passionate about will empower us to achieve great things.

I hope you enjoy coming on this journey with me. 

Posgraduate 2.0 Studies & PeterOBrien.me - October, 2015 Update

Every good day, every bad day; complex and simple at the same time - that's very me, that's PeterOBrien.me.

Considering that my last blog post was posted towards the beginning of August, I felt it was time to provide a brief update in regards to my ongoing studies or postgraduate 2.0 studies, as I have now come to call them. 

This new title for the combined online learnng via MOOCs that I have enrolled myself in, since graduating from my BA (Hons) in the summer of 2013, has come about as a result of finally getting my personal website, PeterOBrien.me, of the ground.

It is still being constructed, but it is now live.

The primary purpose of my personal website was to establish a personal brand identity under which I could bring together and unify all of my other focuses and online endeavours.

One key aim of the purpose behind PeterOBrien.me was to create a space where I could showcase my online learning achievements which is how the Postgraduate 2.0 Studies page on PeterOBrien.me came about. 

It's really strange seeing yourself objectified into a website!

I figure that Postgraduate 2.0 Studies is a good name, my studies are postgraduate and they are online.

As a result, I have shifted my focus away from Ways 2 Interface while I have been building PeterOBrien.me and organising everything that I have going on. One key implication that has now become clear as a result of this organisation is that PeterOBrien.me will unload the burden of my Postgraduate 2.0 Studies on this Ways 2 Interface blog.

As I continued to study new MOOCs (now over eighty) and add them to my portfolio, the study page on this site was getting ridiculously out of hand. It was a problem I had previously encountered on my LinkedIn profile where I would add each new MOOC to my education section and watch my profile struggle to load as a result.

Unfortunately, this is the reality of Big Data that human beings are now having to face.

"Big data is a broad term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate. Challenges include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, and information privacy." 

- Wikipedia

What to do with it all and where to put it?

However, the configuration of PeterOBrien.me has now solved this problem, as I believe the layout of the Postgraduate 2.0 Studies page is much better suited to present a vast array of information in a concise form.

It has two slideshows...

A slideshow for the courses I have enrolled myself in.

And a slideshow for the courses for which I was awarded a certificate.

Simple.

Additionally there is a link to an Excel spreadsheet that lists all of my MOOCs in chronological order together with other relevant enrolment details, if a user wishes to examine such details.

There is also a traditional list at the bottom of the page numbering all of the MOOC I have enrolled in with hyperlinks to their respective course pages. 

Therefore the Studies page on Ways 2 Interface will soon be disappearing. 

Make the most of it while it is still here.

Additionally, while I will still continue to blog about my studies on this site, the content of those posts will be focused more towards being in relation to my larger transdisciplinary research project, for which the Ways 2 Interface website was originally established.

For more general MOOC reviews, reflections, recommendations, insights, etc., the blog of PeterOBrien.me will take of these. 

As PeterOBrien.me will demonstrate, the only way in which I can organise my life and my focuses, while retaining my sanity, is by compartmentalising everything; this is why I have various different online platforms (or filling cabinets) for different purposes...

• Ways 2 Interface - transdisciplinary research
• Something to do with Film - film-centric
• Breaking Cinema - to host my podcast (not up yet)
• Forward Facing Visualographer - my visual creations
• DigitalMarketing.me - one-off blog created as part of my Digital Marketing studies
• 366 FRAMES 2012 - one-off self-contained project
• 365 FRAMES 2015 - one-off self-contained project
• EYES of a Storyteller - one-off self-contained project

... and PeterOBrien.me is the main hub (or office) that brings them all together into a unified overview.

Crucially, as the name of my personal website should indicate, they are all me, everything that I have created online is me, so I am going to insure that I keep a firm grasp on it all. 

Another key aspect of myself, or the digital extension of myself IS all of the MOOCs I have enrolled myself in, these are parts of myself as well, and, in particular, clusters of related MOOCs naturally come together to represent specific focuses of my career focus and wider interests. 

It is for this reason that if you examine PeterOBrien.me you will note that in addition to my Postgraduate 2.0 Studies page, there are additional pages devoted to specific MOOC and study focuses.

I have individual pages for...

• Entrepreneurship
• Digital Marketing
• Emerging Technologies
• Career Success
• Web Science
• Solid Science
• Big Data
• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Filmmaking
• and I am probably going to add another one based around Digital Making, that may just be combined with the Filmmaking one, because the fact that I am a filmmaker kind of speaks for itself. I have not decided yet.

It is should be noted that one of my focuses is Digital Marketing and this is not accidental. 

Digital Marketing is something I wanted to get to grips with ever since graduating from my BA (Hons) and it is not accidental that I have spent the last two years exploring and defining myself in order to construct an appropriate unified brand to encapsulate it all. 

A value driven brand is essential for success in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship is the primary objective of my postgraduate 2.0 studies, everything is working for everything else, that is the point.

"Entrepreneurs are competing for resources and opportunities that enable them to tell their story and build their reputation. If you’re an entrepreneur who isn’t actively branding himself, rest assured that your competitors will waste no time in branding you, which may hurt your image, company valuation and bottom line." 

- Michael Georgiou, Entrepreneur

PeterOBrien.me is a fusion of personal and professional and my key driving impulse in making it was to produce 'an online portfolio to end all online portfolios'.

A similar phrase, 'the film dissertation to end all film dissertations', worked in producing my award-winning undergraduate theoretical dissertation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle (the progenitor for Ways 2 Interface), so I do not see why it will not work for producing a personal website that utilises the entirety of my professional portfolio and personal life experiences as a combined visual-centric portfolio of my values, my character, my strengths, my skills, myself.

If you do not know what you are, then how will you know what to do with yourself?

With the design of PeterOBrien.me, the idea is that you click on what appeals to you and within that page there will be details and links to other relevant and related components of my overall portfolio.

Or you can just have the brief visual-centric storyboard overview of my overall portfolio on PeterOBrien.me's main page.

Every good day, every bad day; complex and simple at the same time - that's very me, that's PeterOBrien.me.

However, going back to my Postgraduate 2.0 Studies and as they are now organised and collected on PeterOBrien.me, I am no longer going to be providing periodic progress updates or MOOC by MOOC reflections on Ways 2 Interface.

There are two reasons for this...

1. I do not need to provide periodic progress updates because the MOOCs as arranged and detailed on PeterOBrien.me speak for themselves. If I do provide a periodic update I will do it on the blog of PeterOBrien.me and I will only do it on Ways 2 Interface if that progress update is immediately applicable to the research concerns of this platform.
2. It is becoming impossible to provide periodic updates and reflections on each MOOC because I study so many! I rarely find the time to provide updates or to author reflections; unless, of course, those reflections are required exercises of the MOOC I am studying, such as is currently the case with the DigitalMarketing.me blog I had to create for my Digital and Social Media Marketing MOOC. I do not underestimate the power of reflection and of getting your head in order by objectifying it, but I also always respect the concept of time and realise that I only have so much of it! However, I have now started to produce video reflections and reviews of my MOOCs as evidenced within my 365 FRAMES 2015 project, which is a quick, easy and spontaneous way of generating reflection material. As a result of this, I will continue to produce these videos instead of lengthy, time-consuming written reflections, such as I am doing now!

However, I will provide one final and very brief MOOC progress report right now.

I am currently enrolled in...

Priority:

• Digital and Social Media Marketing - as part of the iversity Marketing Toolkit
• Logical and Critical Thinking
• Understanding Video Games

Secondary

• The Importance of Money in Business
• What is a Mind?

Tertiary

• Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance
• Introduction to Big Data - as part of the Coursera Big Data Specialization
• Quantitative Methods - as part of the Coursera Solid Science Specialization
• Marketing in a Digital World - as part of the Coursera Digital Marketing Specialization
• Fundamentals of Neuroscience, Part 1: Electrical Properties of the Neuron
• The Mind is Flat: The Shocking Shallowness of Human Psychology

Finally, I will very shortly be reconfiguring the Ways 2 Interface website to be bring it into line with the changes I have cited in this blog post and some additional ones I have not detailed.

In particular specific changes concerned with the transdisciplinary research of Ways 2 Interface and how that will play into the content of Breaking Cinema, the podcast I have been developing.

But more on this later...

Emerging Technologies & Career Success: Expanding my Entrepreneurship Specialization

The entrepreneurship specialization sequence of courses I have been studying on the Coursera platform since December 2014 I consider to be representative of the three courses + one capstone that form the specialization in addition to the further self-directed entrepreneurial studies, research and practice I have been doing around it. 

I have previously described this self-directed study as being equivalent to undertaking a traditional masters course and I certainly see my current learning program as fulfilling the function of the MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise I had initially planned to undertake (before coming to my logical senses). 

However, being an online entity that is constantly growing and something that I can very freely mix and match, my online studies are never a fixed and pre-determined course of study, as the ongoing evolution of the research and study blog over the past two year-and-a-half has shown.

Certainly, this is one of the great redeeming features about online learning - the student can take a much or as little time they feel is necessary in order to come to terms with as many or as few disciplines they feel the success of their end goal(s) requires. 

To this end, I have added to two further Coursera Specialization course sequences to my self-directed study portfolio:

Emerging Technologies: From Smartphone to IOT to Big Data

As offered by Yonsei University and composed of the following courses:

1. Smartphone Emerging Technologies - done
2. Big Data, Cloud Computing & CND Emerging Technologies - done
3. Internet Emerging Technologies - doing
4. Internet of Things & Augment Reality Emerging Technologies - to-do
5. Wireless Communication Emerging Technologies - to-do
6. Emerging Technologies Capstone - to-do

Emerging Technologies: From Smartphones to IoT to Big Data

Career Success


As offered by the University of California Irvine and composed of the following courses:

1. Project Management: The Basics for Success - doing
2. Work Smarter, Not Harder: Time Management for Personal and Professional Productivity - done
3. Finance for Non-Financial Professionals - done
4. Communication in the 21st Century Workplace - done
5. High-Impact Business Writing - to-do
6. The Art of Negotiation - to-do
7. Fundamentals of Management - done
8. Effective-Problem Solving and Decision-Making - done
9. Essentials of Entrepreneurship: Thinking & Action - doing
10. Career Success Capstone Project - to-do

Career Success

I have decided to commit to completing these two further specializations, because:

1. They further adhere my self-directed program of study closer to the one I would have undertaken in my MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise, emerging Technologies was a major component of the MSc.
2. Emerging Technologies in relation to the skill-centric focus of the Career Success specialization greatly enriches my overall program of study to the point where it is actually become a superior program of study to the one offered in the MSc in Creative Technologies and Enterprise.
3. The courses within each specialization are self-paced, so I can very easily spread the workload around my other commitments.
4. The courses within each specialization are incredibly short, so I can very easily complete each course component in a relatively short space of time (I am already well over half through both specializations), which is useful considering I want to get the specializations done by the end of September.
5. Exploitation of emerging technologies and updated career success skills are essential for future success in entrepreneurship. The business idea I am developing within my entrepreneurship specialization also relies very heavily on the focuses of emerging technologies and career success skills.

Between them, they will cost just over £600 but I am thinking of the long-term value the successful completion of these specializations will bring to my larger postgraduate portfolio. 

Furthermore, there is an additional self-paced and incredibly thorough Digital Marketing specialization (that is itself one module of a larger online MBA) I have been seduced by and plan to undertake once I have my Emerging Technologies and Career Success specializations out of the way.

As with emerging technology and career success skills, competitive exploitation and implementation of digital marketing practice is absolutely essential for entrepreneurial success! I have been looking for a decent and thorough online digital marketing course for over a year now (I was always confident a new one would pop up at some point) and FINALLY I have found it.

But digital marketing is not the current focus, emerging technologies and career success with entrepreneurship is.

Ultimately, when all is said and done, I can see now that all of my self-directed postgraduate study will be collected together on this Ways 2 Interface website as one cohesive portfolio with various specializations and discipline concerns outlined and detailed within, opposed to just one very expensive single piece of paper that students typically like to think proves they are fully capable and competent in their respected studied disciplines.

However, as our changing times are increasingly showing, this is proving to be more and more not the case.