Tag Archives: start trek

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"