Week_012

Think I'm still on track with the weeks... I hope.

Just picked up some new content from HACER. Haven't had a chance to look at it yet because I've got a million and five other things to do, but I have confidence that Alyssa has things under control. They really have been good clients.

I've been coding coding and have all the pages but Contact and the individual Publications pages finished. My goal is to be done by Monday. It's gonna be hard work, but I can do it!

Saw Jeff Coffey last night at the Ignite Minneapolis / MIMA Spring Social and talked about how much his UCON class a year ago has helped me since. It's serious been one of the most practically useful classes I've taken. Learning about web design workflow and all involved was a really good primer for this challenge. It has allowed me to attempt to focus more on my skills as a leader and project manager than at trying to learn how to design, text, and develop a site. I can already think as a web person, but I've been trying to expand my thought process as a leader.

I've been trying really hard. Is it working? Maybe? Amy has become very motivated, but whether it is partly because of my input is debatable. I think she is just a hard worker and cares. I'm not exactly sure how to approach engaging Barbara at this point. I feel like she wants to do well, but is too distracted by other things in her life to really immerse herself in the project. Ivona has been taking some great pictures lately, so I just hope that she is enjoying what she is doing. I do wish I was getting larger amounts of results, but I can tell she is trying. I don't always get decent feedback when I ask about how things are going for everyone. Maybe I should start reading their blogs for clues... Duh! Why didn't I think of that before?

Conclusions:
> Read group member's blogs for insight into how to bring their interests into the project.
> Get the Vis. program to develop a system of pre-recs.

Week_011

Wow... I feel like I've been in a total whirlwind. I went home again this weekend to see my family for Easter. All this driving around is confusing me. Oh well. I'm good at adaptation.

Website click-through prototype is a GREEN for tomorrow's class presentation. No Ivona at the meeting today. I'm a bit disapointed with the progress on her picture choices... I've been asking for testing of pictures and multiple choices for two weeks now, but I've only seen one option and no testing or reasoning behind the choices. Not to mention that the pictures were not sourced from iStockPhoto as we established needed to be done.

That on top of Barbara being MIA in Brazil with very little communication for the last two weeks has put us a little behind schedule in terms of testing and content organization. I'm a little worried.

At least Project Tracking has gotten us started on the client manual with the accumulation of the all documents for our Project Plan last week. It's pretty chunky at 11 pages. I'm proud!

On a positive note, Amy has been super helpful and is doing an excellent job at user testing. Go Amy!

As for myself, I've been working on design prototypes and thinking about how the end of the project will progress. I still don't feel like I've been able to find a viable niche for Ivona to thrive. I wish I could figure out what she could get really excited about in this project... Barbara is really good at copy writing, but I get the feeling that's not what she's really excited about. Hopefully I can find a way to involve her in the design of the final client manual. I bet she'd provide some interesting insight on that.

As a leader I end up being a little disapointed in myself sometimes since I am not always the most efficient about getting everything that is on my mind communicated effectively to the group. I see the big picture of the project because I have done this before and I end up talking with all the group members individually, so I know everything that is going on. However, a lot of times everyone goes off and does their thing for the week, and then there is no time to debrief what has been done for the previous week, as we dive into work for the next week. I've been trying to do a better job of keeping everyone on the same page by doing different things with everyone involved as a group. This seems to help along with just asking general questions to make sure everyone is together.

I'm working on becoming a better facilitator. It's not easy...

Week_010

This past week or two including Spring Break has been pretty hectic. Went home for break on Saturday morning and ran straight to work at noon when I got back to Baraboo. Work work work until Wednesday when I packed up and drove to Minneapolis with my Dad and brother to fly out on Thursday morning and snowboard in Utah for a few days. Got a cold on Thursday and fought it snowboarding the whole time. Lots of meds, high altitude, a lot of adrenaline, and a few cans of Red Bull kept me shredding. 12" of new powder Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Sick.

Got an email back from Elise yesterday pretty much approving the major direction of the visual design. I feel like they may come back and want a thing or two tweaked though... Wish they'd understand that there is a point at which changes can't be made anymore. I told them the deadline was this coming Monday. Maybe that was too late... but I really didn't have any other choice to ensure a quality product. Oh well. It'll work out.

Christine Daves was informative in class as usual. Etiquette was pretty common sense, but a good refresher.

Presenting in class got us some good feedback and helped me define direction for the next week to lead up to prototype presentations.

I will be completing the visual design, creating the prototype, and hopefully starting to code.

Ivona will be compiling pictures and doing testing looking into which ones identify most with our audience the topic they describe.

Barbara didn't return from spring break.. lol! But she will be auditing content as soon as she gets back.

Amy will be doing lots of user testing. Yay! We need more hard data...

Good stuff. Look out next week!