Nick Orton's IT Blog

In my Spring 2018 semester (the current one as of this post), I will be taking the Information Systems Capstone, which acts as a replacement for my internship requirement to graduate. This means the class will involve a full-semester-long project that replicates something we would do in the working world. As a group, we must propose to a Fortune 500 company why they should invest in Augmented Reality to help them save or earn more money. This involves a 10,000 word report detailing the opportunity, an explanation of the proposed solution, technical architecture, financial justification, and the implementation plan, an interactive dashboard that assists our argument to implement AR, and a manual detailing dashboard use, underlying financial analysis, and technical infrastructure. The project overall is quite the undertaking, requiring us to form a Sprint Workplan to stay on track during the semester, as well as weekly status reports with the professor. Everything is on us to researc...

During my Fall 2017 semester, I took Information Security. The final project for this class involved contacting a local business and conducting a free IT Security Risk Assessment. Once chosen, the group meets with the selected business to ask a bunch of security questions to perform a risk assessment. The answers are then analyzed by the group, and feedback is given to the business on what kind of risks are apparent in their security. My group's business of choice was Sora Medical Clinic, a small walk-in clinic. They operate by accepting clients without requiring insurance, but fees and such are paid by the client. Upon scheduling a meeting, we came up with a list of questions based on our lectures from the class. Linked here is the very list (with answers omitted for privacy reasons): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J941GwBvj8M-jcaAfCAjlWFyF6DghXJ-/view?usp=sharing To my group's surprise, the clinic was VERY secure, and had a ready answer to nearly every question. This...

In my Fall 2017 semester, I took Data Visualization. For the final group project in that class, we were tasked with selecting a location in the United States that tech companies are looking to locate to. From there, our group would find data sets to create an argument for why a company should move there. After presenting to the professor, three groups from all the sections were selected to participate in the competition. One additional group outside the class would also be selected to participate. The top three placements receive a cash prize: 1st gets $3000, 2nd gets $1500, and 3rd gets $500 (awarded to the group, so split among the group members). The judge and sponsor was a representative from Power BI! Our group chose Atlanta, Georgia as our location. Much to the professor's dismay, no one picked Dallas, Texas as everyone thought it would be too obvious of a choice with lots of groups picking it. For our data, we chose airport traffic, cost of living with median rent and ho...

Hello there! My name is Nicholas Orton (also known as Nick), and this is my ITSS blog detailing some experiences and stuff I've worked on during my time at UTD! I'm currently pursuing my bachelor's degree in ITSS, and plan on graduating in the Spring of 2018 (this semester)! Hopefully this will give some insight on some of the work and such I've done that can't be properly conveyed in a resume. This will likely include school projects and anything else that deserves mentioning. I'll do my best to include details such as dates, but I may leave out names for privacy reasons. This blog will also be used for my Web Analytics class, which will mean certain website usage data will be recorded to see and analyze traffic data to this blog. This data will be used for class assignments and projects. Thanks for reading!