Saturday, December 19, 2009

Final Week

Well, I will be doing a re-cap here of what all of this sabbatical ("sabbobical") was all about for me, but in the interim while you wait to see that, check out the work:

aifreelance.com

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Weeks 11 & 12

I am doing a compilation summary of the past two weeks, including the holiday.  Steve R and I have been working very hard on the website and we know that there is much more to do.  I have started a final "scrub list" of the site and on first pass we had 55 open items to attend to.  Will this ever end?

On the one hand my sabbatical was great.  I can't say that I enjoyed the time as it was and still is alot of work, but it has given me a renewed look at many aspects of what I do in the classroom and as a consultant out in the world.

There are soooooooo many logistical things that happen between a developer and a client that never truly get discussed in the classroom that I am now going to be able to bring in for discussion.

Some things to look forward to for further website development:
  1. We will be getting new and better photography from an unexpected source
  2. We are looking at the "information architecture" trying to decide if chronological is better than alphabetical
  3. The "permissions" nightmare is s-l-o-w-l-y resolving itself
  4. The transition of responsibility from the development team to the client will be slower than we expected
  5. And Joomla! was a great choice for learning a content management system --- Steve R has gone above and beyond the call of duty to find amazing plug-ins and add-ons that are making the development process tres facile!
Check it out: aifreelance.com

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Week 10 - Aifreelance.com

Well, it's not completely done yet — in fact, it has a ways to go design-wise, but the content is coming together.  As we still wait for many of the content authors to get back in touch with us I decided to let everyone take a peek at the site.  We have been working very hard on this and we have not done a quality assurance check of it yet, but take a look at where we are going, and have a great Thanksgiving holiday!

aifreelance.com

Monday, November 16, 2009

Week 9 — What a Difference a Week Makes

Well, I'm a bit late this week with my update, but  I have been very busy trying to ameliorate the situation with The Freelance Guide and I feel like the emergency is quelling down a bit.  I tried, in vain, to get in touch with the original holders of the mis-cited content— and to my surprise only one out of more than a half dozen contacted me.  In some cases the source website doesn't even exist anymore, and in other cases (after checking) the original content was actually taken from somewhere else, which is public domain material.

The one who did contact me, Peter Woodford, advised me I could use the content from his site http://www.creatework.com, and he also sent me a fantastic video about something he is working on: Layar, the world's first Mobile Augmented Reality Browser.

Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08&feature=player_embedded#

Everyone who knows me in the classroom knows about my rapt devotion to the notion of "locative art." This is the closest thing that I have seen to that — more about that after I speak more to Peter about it.

I also got in touch with Tim Frick, the author of my introductory text (Managing Interactive Media Projects, Cenage Publishers) and we spoke about me using some of the content from that text (with his approval and permission) to fill in the gaps that I have in The Freelance Guide.  It was so good to speak with Tim after teaching from his text for a couple of years, and he was truly supportive and helpful.  He is working on another text that he hopes to finish for an April 2010 publish date.  I hope to actually be able to use that book in my e-commerce and marketing communication course, and he is sending me an outline of that book so I can take  a gander at it — exciting stuff!

Well,  a week ago the citation violation was at 52%.  I put the document into  "turnitin.com" again today, and after deleting things, re-writing things and getting permissions — the total is now at 38% with known permissions.  I will have to  look at the actual analysis to feel good about that number, but as I said, I now have various permissions and if need be — I have learned that I am a pretty capable writer myself.

hmmmmmmm?

One last thing.  I haven't been really talking about the personal things that I have been doing for myself during this period and one of the healthy things — in addition to eating more  healthy — I have been doing is a regular practice of yoga.  Not only that but when I have had free time I have actually been studying the practice of yoga (not just doing it).  I can see myself some day, turning to this as a side-line.  It  grounds me, makes me more focused, makes many of my aches and pains go away, and sometimes, just sometimes — when I am doing a perfect downward facing dog pose I think I am 40 again.

It must be paying off as I have been doing this daily since the end of August and I recently had a physical exam and ALL my numbers, I mean all of them, came back great!  Weigh (lost 5 lbs) Blood sugar, liver function, cholesterol (both good and bad where they should be), psa and vitamin levels — all great.  Hey!  My next vacation may be in an Ashram!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Week 8 - I Need a Citation Vacation

What a week this was!  I will remember this past week for a while.  I finally got the Freelance Guide table of contents set.  We basically used the results from the websort, which — by the way — we achieved our target audience response of 100, and as the result of that understood that the original line-up for the table of content was a bit “off.”

We added in a new section called “Career Services Listing,” which basically, as it states, is a listing of all of the staff in Career Services with a notation of who they serve.  We kept the "FAQ" where it was, and then basically took the section that was called “Keeping up with Trends,” and melded it into a new section called "The Resource Center" together with the content from “Helpful Resources.” We then ended up with four main sections.

Three of those sections were also renamed, as follows:
  • Section 3 — Getting Established → Getting Started
  • Section 4 — Finding Work → Finding Work
  • Section 5 — Finances & Legal Issues → Learning About Finances & Legalities
  • Section 6 — Helpful Resources → The Resource Center
From an information architecture point of view it is always good to keep your labeling in perfect syntax, such as getting, finding and learning.  But, when you want to make an emphatic gesture, so to speak, (with your labeling) it’s ok to change that (The Resource Center).

When "Helpful Resources"was listed in the prior document, the categories were separated by subject matter and grouped together by major.  We decided to undo that so that in the new version, all resources will be first —grouped by major —and then sorted by subject matter. The subject matters are conferences, industry directories, useful periodicals, professional organizations, recommended reading, and useful websites.
 
Anyway, I thought that was going to be the end of the formatting and fooling around with the actual content.  I thought that I was going to be able to concentrate on creating the complementary website that goes with this guide.  But one of the last things that I went to do was to take the document and send it through “Turnitin.com” to check the references and possible citation violations. 

Did I say possible violations?   After getting the document back and scrubbed through “turnitin” — it was determined that 52% of the content was taken from other sources that were not accurately cited.
So, the notion of me being able to do parts two and three (extensive training and white paper) of my sabbatical are probably going out the window — for now. 

I am going to have to spend a good deal of time ensuring that all the content for this document (and subsequent website) is cited and permissions have been obtained.  If the “owners” of the content are not inclined to give it over for free, then I will have to figure out either a way to pay for it, or write the content myself.

The listing of content owners is quite large, and in some cases very vague as to who “owns” the content. For example, many sections of the Freelance Guide were taken from state and federal government websites, and I am less concerned about those as we are doing a public service through re-purposing the content.  Where I am concerned is content that expressly states that it is copyrighted and permissions are needed.   I have started to write all of the owners, and it hasn’t been easy figuring out who they are. In some cases I have to write the webmaster of the site that the content came from to figure out who the author or writer was.  And because this is the third time that the original content has been edited, the results from "turnitin" have been vague.

Well, the good news is I am spending down-time learning Joomla! because I do have to go back into the web content to cite everything. And I must thank my best pal in the world, my colleague, Marlyn Tadros, for helping me learn the more difficult parts of this software.

I am not going to list out the past week’s activities because I literally worked on this document, every day, for nearly 8 to 10 hours in one activity or another. And I know that there’s a thought that sabbatical periods are a breeze, and for some, maybe that has been the case, but for me this has been hard work and a good understanding of what can happen in a large project such as this.

Hopefully, my news will be better next week!

Monday, November 2, 2009

Half-way Through

Techno-gibberish 
Last week was an interesting week. I tried to do something that I hate, which is dealing with technical gibberish.  Or, I tried to move my domain names from Network Solutions to Blue Host. And before I say anymore, I know that this process has to be secure, but why does it have to be difficult? If I published each company’s directions of what to do to make the transfer — either coming or going — the content couldn’t be more different. And that, by itself, is enough, but I loved the statement toward the end of the conversation that I had with customer service rep,  “If you do everything correct your domain names should transfer between 36-48 hours.  If it doesn’t work, you can try it again or give us a call.” Great.

My issue with technology is often the variance in “verbiage” from manufacturer to manufacturer and from company to company in trying to discern what they want you to do. It’s very frustrating.  And I can’t imagine that they want it that way — and yet it persists.  Just try hooking up a television to Comcast cable.  I can’t deal with that, so recently, when my mom needed one of her additional tv’s to be linked to the system it took my brother nearly an hour to do what was said to be a “simple” procedure.

Segue one: Social Media and Gold Star Moms 
I met this week with a Gold Star Mom, who is a member of the American Gold Star Mother’s Club. Wiki says the following about the club, “It was formed in the United States to provide support for mothers that lost sons or daughters in the war.”  The name came from the custom of families of servicemen hanging a banner called a Service Flag in the window of their homes, and a gold star for each family member in the military who died in service. 

She told me that her local mother’s group stays connected through social media (Facebook), and she is going to speak to me more about how it all works.  She lost her son in Iraq about two years ago, and so it was an emotional meeting.  I have decided that my research on “content” and social media is going to be a continual pursuit. At least it won’t end at the end of my sabbatical period.
 

Segue two: Freeland Guide Update 
And speaking of my sabbatical period, it’s half-way over. I realize that I am probably not going to have the time to finish all that I had proposed.  And that is because the work on the Freelance Guide is taking much more time than I ever suspected.  I nearly spent all of last week typing the new content and original edits.
 

We have more edits to come from the websorting analysis and from content experts, so we think that this is probably not going to be done until right before Thanksgiving. We met this week with Career Services and advised them of our progress. We spoke about finalizing the analysis, and initial edits by next week. We are moving certain sections of the content to other parts of the document and we are asking for all of the department chairs to assist us with missing information. We are also renaming certain sections to be more effective.  The focus for the guide is to help students understand how many different things are involved in the process of “freelancing” without scaring them away.
 

We broke the main sections down into four areas: 
  1. Getting Started 
  2. Finding Work 
  3. Understanding Finances and Legalities 
  4. The Resource Center
Once we have the document complete we will be creating a complementary website. We are beginning to “set” content into a template that we have chosen, and if you want to see the process in progress (and it is not going to be pretty) — you can go here to watch.
 

We have also initiated a "Photography Contest" through the Photography Department to help populate the website with interesting photos. More to come about that.


As I said, I am halfway though the sabbatical process  and I am going to re-calculate my proposed list of things to do against my available time and publish that update next week with some realistic hope and potential of getting it all done and still being rested to start next semester.

I will post my weekly summary notes here as soon as I have the time









Saturday, October 24, 2009

Week 6 - Twitterdum and such

Before I start with anything else, if you haven't done the websort for one on my projects — please go to the following website to do the websort.  It would be much appreciated.

http://websort.net/s/A38653/


Ok. Sometimes you can't tell if something is a fad or a trend.  Supposedly, a fad is something that comes and goes whereas a trend is something that is here to stay. Barbie (TM) was a fad that became a trend — I guess.  And Tickle-Me Elmo will hopefully be a fad that stays a fad — who knows?

But I recently read the "Twitter for Dummies" book by Fitton, Gruen and Poston, and I looked at the Glossary — trying to find all of the different entities that have been spurned by Twitter.  Here's an incomplete list in no particular order:


CoTweet, Digsby, EpicTweet, ExecTweets, StockTwits, FollowFriday, FriendorFollow, FriendFeed, HelloTxt, HootSuite, LocalTweeps, Mr.Tweet, 100TXT, 140Story, PocketTwit, SecretTweet, TalkShoe, TinyTwitter, TipJoy, Topify, Tweecious, TweetDeck, TweetGrid, Tweetie, TweetLater, Tweetree, TweetScan, Tweetups, Twellow, 12Seconds, Twestival, Twhirl, twInfluence, Twinkle, Twistory, TwitBacks, TwitPic, TwitScoop, TwitStory, Twittelator, Twitterati, TwitterBerry, TwitterFeed, TwitterFon, TwitterFox, TwitterGrader, Twitterific, TwitterLocal, Twittermail, TwitterPatterns, Twitter-speak, Twittervision, Twobile, twoof, TwtVite. . .

Twell,  how was that?  That's alot of secondary digerati to digest.  I am thinking, at about three and a half years-old, Twitter has gone from a fad to a trend — most definitely.  I have been tweeting for a couple of weeks and without really trying I have 14 followers, and I am following 17 people.  I'd like to tell you that I have had the time to go through all of the above, but I am afraid I haven't.  Will I?   Probably not, but I am definitely going to pursue the ones that use marketing ploys.  And there are some fascinating ones that allow you to manipulate the Twitter API — so those I'll check out.

But this week I have spent most of the time working on the actual text of the printed version of the  Freelance Guide Project (aifreelance.com), and we made alot of progress with that. And I gove a shout out and props and thanks to Brian Bram, Michelle Yaiser and Tom Gentz for checking content for me — I really appreciate it!  And thanks to Steve Rudolfi who is the most excellent project manager in training. Check out his blog and his side of the story — it's great! 

I  also met with one of my clients this week — Carol Zander, who is the Bralady! (http://www.braladybiznewsletter.blogspot.com) and discussed how Twitter could increase her marketing mix.  We talked about a Twitter strategy and I showed her how to connect Twitter with Blogger.  She is on her way.


I thought I hit my reading-threshold  (I know that's not really a word, but hey — I am on sabBOBical — and you get what I mean), but I am going to try to tackle a few more books (in this order):  
  • "The Social Life of Information" by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid; 
  • "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Asriely;
  • "Remix" by Lawrence Lessig; 
  • "Code: Version 2.0" by Lawrence Lessig;
  • "Thinking with Type" by Ellen Lupton, and quite possibly 
That's it for now.  I am a bit tired — I admitted to someone this week that I thought that the work I have been doing for this sabbatical is a bit more tiring than regular work.  Hmmm.  I think I have to look at the leaves next week.

Last Week's Daily Events 

Friday, October 16, 2009 
  • Project Management Meeting:  With John Lay, Carreer Services, and Steve Rudolfi — we accomplished much and hope to meet again on October 30th
  • Meeting with Steve Rudolfi: Freelance Guide — we completely reformatted the FLG docuemnt and setup style sheet for it
  • Wrote this blog
Monday, October 19, 2009  

  • Student CD Project: Edits
  • Email-a-rama 
  • Content Expert Requests:  Brian Bram, Sam Roache, Michelle Yaiser. 
  • Freelance Guide: Edits
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 

  • Client Meeting: BraladyBiz
  • Twitter Research
  • Freelance Guide: Edits
  • Websort: Sent out  invitations
Wednesday, October 21, 2009  

  • Websort: Sent out  more invitations 
  • LinkedIn Work 
  • Freelance Guide: Edits
  • Content Expert Requests: Tom Gentz  
Thursday, October 22, 2009   
  • Freelance Guide: Edits
  • Websort Work
  • Content Expert Requests: Dave Griffin, Joe Griffin 

 C'est tout!