So I was a little nervous about this guest speaker and his presentation. When I sat down in class and the slideshow was titles "databases" I figured it was going to be a lot of detail oriented information and quite possibly over my head. I do have a background working with databases when I was active duty in the military, but it has been years since I worked in the field.
I was pleasantly surprised when Joel's presentation was the complete opposite of what I was expecting. He was very personable and kept the information on a basic type level so that he wouldn't lose the whole class with glossed over looks.
I think my favorite part of his presentation was when he spoke about the NCR (National Cash Register). When he explained how grocery stores use to operate, I was blown away. The system 50 years ago seems more simple, but also that there was a huge margin of error. Lots of money could be lost very easily just by counting wrong or human error at checkout. With the advancements of databases and being able to electronically keep track of inventory and prices for everything, the margin of error was significantly reduced. Also, there was a huge increase in the number of products and brands that were now available to the consumer. Pretty amazing!
It's things like the advancement of NCR that people don't think about, but most people would not be able to do much throughout their normal day if databases weren't around. They help this scary world of technology be more organized and filter the mass amounts of information in an instant. Joel had a great presentation! I would definitely like to learn more from him.
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