Make-up Blog (Social Text/Eugene Lee)

I forgot to reflect on Eugene Lee's presentation, so here goes:

I'm happy that Eugene allowed us to have free accounts on SocialText - great way for us to see what he was preaching about. I think Social Text is good - a bit difficult to get around in, but design-wise it's clean and to-the-point. As for his presentation, I enjoyed hearing about his background as well as his experiences in the corporate world. What I took from it was that the corporate world is diving deep into web2.0 land and folks are providing solutions for them (such as SocialText). The open-source community really pioneered wikis, blogging, and other tools that are ubiquitous in the corporate and commercial worlds nowadays.

Group Project: Who are ITECers?

Here's our group project kudos to my group mates Brian, Lance, and Jonathan!

INTERFACING JOOMLA

INTERFACING JOOMLA

Firstly, what is Joomla. Their about says it best:

"Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone." from the Joomla website.

In our art-filled and high-touch world, the importance of a well designed website can often make or brake a user's decision to adopt or not adopt something. This overview of Joomla's main site focuses on its top level pages. With so many CMS systems (free and pay) on the market, a first visit can make be crucial.


WHO ARE THE USERS?

Joomla's users run the gamut from expert site designers to novice accidental techies looking to set up a website. No matter who, all users are looking for an easy, fully-controlled way to set up their own web2.0 feature-packed website.



INFORMATION DESIGN

The main banner holds the three most important ideas:

- Get Started With Joomla
- Create and share with Joomla
- Contributing to Joomla

Each is represented by a web2.0-style icon - this is good. It draws the eye, however, the most important one - "Get started with Joomla" is not colorful and does not say "click on me, I'm interesting" like the other two. The text for each button could be a few font sizes larger. The subtitle explanations for each icon are probably not necessary - just having the main ones are enough). "Joomla Announcements" in the body of the text are good to have though the icons are ugly screenshots. It may do better to have icons that are somewhat similar to the banner icons for more consistency. Also, the abundance of blog posts and news, while it shows that the site is fresh and alive, may be too much - it forces the user to scroll down which is not ideal. Lastly, a tradition menu a top mankes for good alternate navigation.



INTERACTIVITY

On this "Getting Started with Joomla", and on the overall navigation of the site is not laid out into a clear navigational hierarchy. The navigation sidebar doesn't allow user-controlled nesting. The main body has links but should really continue with icons. The overall layout evokes that of a newpaper or news site. The navigation is functional enough, but far from ideal. The banner rotates to show testimonial quotes which is good, but rather than show screenshots and laptops, there should be pictures of people or perhaps links to examples.Examples are the first thing that I look for when I go to something like a CRM.


SCREEN DESIGN

My first impression of the site is: somewhat interesting but not "eye-popping". Most elements seem constrained into a grid. If there were more elements of roundness, this would allow the eye something more interesting to look at. There is a weird mist in the background of the main screen of which I'm not sure the function. Color-wise, orange and blue are excellent complements.


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Final Project Idea

Gaginang, the nonprofit I co-founded and run, is applying for a grant to do an e-learning project (guess who thought up the idea?) for an introduction to Teochew culture/language. This project actually builds off the flash project I did back in ITEC 823 which was basically the same thing. If I continue doing this through the 830 final, I think I'd wanna do the following:

Create a super basic intro to what Teochew is (There is a great need for this I think) that covers all the basic aspects of Teochew culture/language. I'm thinking something very lively, colorful, funky, and fun. Also, I'd love to use just web2.0 tools + maybe Captivate. I'm thinking map mashups, bubble-pop-ups, and storytelling.

4/9 Class

Reflection: For me, Rodney's presentation was good in the sense of "wow, so that's what the corporate world is like". I guess I've been in nonprofits and academia all my working life so I was a little perplexed by Rodney's comment about Chevron. He urged us would be PMs to just focus on the people, nevermind the nasty things that the company does. Elsewise, I think there were some good nuggets about the importance of how project management pervades most of the endeavors of our lives nowadays. Also, I wonder how others felt when the hourly rates were mentioned - I was like... hmmm wow money, but also at what cost? Sigh.

- Ty

Rodney Dunican Background
- ITEC grad (1999)
- Wrote a lot of online learning courses, Instructor Led Training (ILT)
- Different roles: Project Manager, Instructional Designer
- Business of learning is very different from learning itself ($, numbers of learners through a course, training = less lawsuits)
- Ex. of what Rodney has done: "Change Management", year-long Management Immersion, soft/hardware, softskills, sales

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
- Do the things that turn you on.
- "Temporary endeavor undertaken to produce a unique product or outcome".
- Defined set of tasks, timeframe, milestones. Desired results.
- Almost all jobs are project-based.
- Billing project milestones
- Project Managers are in charge (finances, etc.)
- In the business world, its about the learning bottom line.
- Grease (keep things moving), glue (keep things synched), ring leader (time management).
- Scope, time, cost, resources, quality. Leadership + team building
- Project Management Certifications available
- Desired learning results, client goals, communication, internal business needs, development team needs/goals, cost/time/quality
- Risks are potential problems.
- Kim: AGILE Model (throw all the folks together and brainstorm)
- Applying specific parts of past knowledge to problems OR creating something brand new.
- TEAM: ID, SME, Web Designers, Web Developers, Solution Architects (LMS), Clients, Talent, etc.
- Collaboration, shared vocabularies, using people's expertise (to inform and enhance the project)
- 5 Phases: Initiate, Plan, Execute, Monitor, Close

INITIATE
- Sales, solution planning (key stakeholders, needs assessment. Sometimes its not a training issue, but an incentives issues). SOW (Statement of Work- Contract, $60, 80, 100/hr. Average ID: $90. PM: $100+). Contractors - Professional/General Liability, Insurance, Marketing, etc.) Identify the person to do the final sign-off on the project.

PLAN
- Solution design. MS Project: for mapping out the project.

EXECUTE/MONITOR
- Solution development. Task updates, status mtgs, change requests, issues/risk log, milestone sign-off and documentation, QA testing. Alpha+Beta TEsting. Report project to finance. Early changes easy, later changes difficult. Signing off helps to allow for invoicing and project flow.

CLOSE
- Celebrate success

Resources:
- PMBOK - www.pmi.org (Project Mgt Body of Knowledge), certification
- www.4pm.com (Newsletter w/ articles on best Practices)
- "Making It Happen" fictional account of project mgt. 180pp.

Other
- Each team member does PM on their own.
- How does one brag in a good way?

A Whole New Mind

I'll use this blog post to collect thoughts for Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind". I'm about 2/3rds through now, so look for changes/additions:

- STORY-TELLING: Something we learned about back in ITEC800, I love Pink's example of the Hero Story. As a student of Anthropology (that was my BA), I definitely recall talking about how knowledge is passed down through stories. Morality is often taught through folktales, songs, chanting, etc. It only makes sense that that is how our human brains are wired to process when it comes to complex amounts of informaton.

- RESURGENT ART/DESIGN/AESTHETIC: I attended the HS of Art & Design which Pink mentions in the book. It's great that in NYC everyone has the opportunity to apply for High Schools outside of their zone, choosing something they want to focus on (art, music, science, vocations).

4/2 Back from Web 2.0 Expo

Unfortunately I didn't get to catch any of the presenters on the upper levels, mostly because they were mostly over by the time I was able to get out of work early. With that said however, I did enjoy going to the expo. There were a ton of social networking apps, mashups, and other cool things. Here's what I liked the best:

- Yola (They recently changed their name from synthasite), allows you to build your own site online. Very awesome. Nice t-shirts too!
- YouCity.com a 3D Modeling and Mapping service. Not exactly Web 2.0 on its own but one can see how it easily could be very interactive. Actually, they do mention how its used with schools, real estate, games, etc.
- Grou.ps was a free create-your-own social networking site.
- OER Commons - freely available and open source education resources for all. I'll have to look into them more.

The one thing I also noticed was that a lot of the booths were enterprise focused and business focused. Our friend SocialText was there. Also, I was expecting something called JomSocial to be there (for Joomla), but they weren't. Wonder what happened... Overall it was a fun expo to attend. Did anyone have the appetizers? They were yummy! Perhaps I'll catch something tomorrow...