Tag Archives: project management

Reading Rebus work plan

READING REBUS WORK FLOW VISUALIZATION

READING REBUS General Outcomes (Deliverables):

1) Outreach; 2) Research 3) Website 4) Group Project report

Outcome 1: Establish and start Social Media Accounts: Twitter, Instagram (possibly Tumblr): Weekly postings to be determined on Sundays and uploaded.  Rachel & Matt to maintain. by March 8

Outcome 2a.  Corpus of 15-20 18th-&-19th-century rebuses with permissions to reproduce: Ostap to contact archives & special collections and oversee permissions.  Rachel to explore French collections.  Bianca to explore Italian & Spanish supplementary material. by March 29

Outcome 2b: 2-4 essay-length general analyses of rebuses history, theory, material production, and relation to other visual culture (heraldry eg).  Matt, Rachel, Ostap, Bianca to provide. by April 12

Outcome 2c: specific short pieces (“wall labels”) for each featured rebus, with links to further information.  Matt, Rachel, Ostap, Bianca to provide. by April 19

Outcome 3: design and upload the following web pages: Patricia to design & develop with content providers:

        • About/intro: Rachel  by May 3
        • Contact: Bianca & Patricia by April 26
        • How-to-rebus & interactive tutorial: Matt & Patricia by April 12
        • Object pages: Rachel, Ostap, Bianca by April 19
        • Further Reference & Bibliography: Ostap, Rachel, Matt, Bianca by April 26

Outcome 4: circulate, revise, edit, submit group project report: Bianca by May 17

“Project = Process” (personal journal 1~23 Feb)

Not quite sure what, if anything, is necessary for the Tuesday personal journal this week.  I’m completing this late (technically we are 3 minutes into Wednesday), as I just got finished proofing and posting our revised RRW project proposal in my combined role as Project Manager (dreams of grandeur) and Copy Editor (reality of comma insertion).

To try to speed-learn more about what the former job entails, I attended  the ITP Skills Lab/Kimon Keramidas (NYU) Project Management workshop on Monday which was helpful and reassuring.  Kimon K. provided his signature blend of examples of gorgeous and robust projects he’d produced, basic knowledge told in clear and non-patronizing language, and back-end details for those who could handle them.  His comparison of the stages of crafting a project to those of writing a long paper I found apt (having written a number of overly long works myself) and I assume helpful for those unused to large, multiform projects that can take months if not years (!).  While “more fragmented and modular” than a paper, according to him (he obviously hasn’t read my dissertation), a project benefits equally from preplanning, “ideation, iteration, critique,” and repetition (“planning loops”): in short, prepare to “plan, organize, change, replan, reorganize” . . . . and do it all the way through the project (hence “project = process”).

Most helpful for me, given my lack of official management background (teaching undergrads and bossing my relatives notwithstanding), he ran through a number of different tools both for project management in its purest form and for citation organization and editing.  He is a big fan of Basecamp (while acknowledging that it’s expensive as a rule–we had a quick discussion about whether Office 365 Planner could serve as a cheap alternative) but also demonstrated Trello (again, the tile-formation vs Basecamp’s “hill” curve led to an interesting conversation about organizational styles and visual inclinations); Redmine (“good for techie back-endy projects”; on a LAMP server; natively digital; what CUNY Grad Center uses for systems admin/bugs & features); and Slack (“envisions everyone working around a table” in real time– this was the tool about which he knew the least).

We then compared Zotero and Endnote for shared citations, images, and bibliographies (while costing $50 a year for advanced features, Endnote “grabs more than Zotero” works well on multiple platforms and constantly syncs–hence it’s his preference).  We also looked briefly at the possibilities of using Wikidot.com/Wikis and Scrivener (plaudits) as alternatives to Google Docs ( a productive if brief gripe session ensued in the chat).

I had to leave before the breakout-room section but I strongly recommend attending this when it’s offered again and, as well, taking the opportunity to attend a Keramidas instructional session of any sort: he’s generous, theoretically sophisticated, responsive, and practical.  And entertaining besides.

Oh, and, I’m more inclined to use at least one of these tools for this or other project(s), although I don’t know which one yet and it’s not my unilateral decision to make in the case of RRW.  TBD Thursday. Stay tuned.

Herding the Kittens

What a busy first week! It’s always a slog to get the initial admin and organization tasks set up, but I think we’ve really established a rhythm that will work for the team. We’re all onboarded with Discord (thank you Joanne!), trello, and some organized Google docs.

I volunteered to be PM because of my professional experience working in this area. I’ve gotten pretty good at herding the kittens to the finish line over the years. But I also jumped at this role because I don’t have another super strong skill that would be applicable to this specific project. I am really looking forward to providing support on our content/editorial strategy and hopefully shadowing some web development. I think I’m suffering from a bit of imposter syndrome and not giving myself enough credit because I know that I could pick up any skillset quickly if I dedicate myself to it. It’s fascinating to see what each of our backgrounds are and what we all bring to the project. A few things that kept me busy this week as the PM: setting agendas, scheduling the weekly meetings, sending out notes and action items, and putting the final tweaks on our group project proposal and collab agreement.

We met on Sunday afternoon for our first out of class sync, and we were very productive. A few high level bullets on what we discussed:

  • What’s our goal number of submissions to the archive? We’ll need enough submissions to allow for the user experience to be compelling. You’d scroll more or go to a second page.
  • It will be very important to ask everyone the same controlled, open-ended questions. Editorial control is important here.
  • We looked at the site coronastories.world. Model for us to see the pros and cons.
  • Explore and decide between using Adobe Portfolio and WordPress for our prototype.
  • Thinking about longevity of the project: How will the archive live on after this semester?

We covered a lot. And we know we can’t yet come up with the perfect plan for all of this right off the bat. But it’s helpful to keep a running list of open questions to guide us both in our initial work, and over the next couple months. Trying my best not to get overwhelmed.

I’m inspired by our team’s willingness to jump right in. So far, we’re doing a great job of balancing expectations and scaling small. Scope creep is real, y’all.

Journal #1: Project Management Styles and nerdiness

Like many people in our class, I was nervous about doing a group project. I even shared this meme above with my teammates because I thought it expressed my anxiety at been the project manager (and my deep nerdiness) pretty well.

 

After two meetings, several Slack messages, and a dozen Trello cards, I have to say: I feel a lot less nervous about this. I have a great team, where everyone brings something different to the table, and not only in terms of skills. Every team member has a specific style and their own way of doing things. This is great, because it ensures that I don’t miss any fundamental detail in my project management. Moreover, it’s incredible to see how much enthusiasm we have for the project, and how everyone wants to contribute to make it happen.

I’ve been thinking a lot about project management styles. I know I can be an organization freak, but I don’t want to end up micro-managing my teammates. As prof. Maney said, the project creators need to let go and welcome contributions from the rest of the team, even if the project goes in a different direction than we thought. I tried thinking about examples of good teamwork from pop culture, and – as always – Start Trek came to the rescue.

The Enterprise could not function without Geordi. Or Commander Data. Or Dr. Crusher. Everyone is necessary to the mission, and when one of them gets in trouble (which is the narrative device of 80% of the episodes), everyone comes to the rescue. I know it’s early in the project, but I’d love to create a climate of support and care where everyone is involved and isn’t afraid of asking for help.

I think that we’ve laid some important groundwork for the NYC Community Fridges Archive this week:

  • We wrote the Collaborator’s Agreement
  • We had two meetings (one in class and one on our own)
  • We finalized our roles and the modes of communication
  • We started contacting community members that can contribute to our archive and help us out
  • We thought about some outreach strategies that can have a real impact
  • We discussed hosting and long-term plans for the archive

I’m really looking forward to seeing where this project can go. Yes, you guessed it:

a still image from the Star Trek intro. The starship enterprise sails through the dark space. In the foreground, yellow letters spell "Where no man has gone before"