From Lyzender Zapanta:
The Kuwentong Kalye live webcast is just a small
project as compared to the 24 Hours in Cyberspace
project. But the most important aspect of live
webcast, regardless of size and fame, is the
delegation and organization of tasks.
The Kuwentong Kalye live webcast was such a great
learning experience for aspiring web designers and
news writers. From experience, I have encountered lots
of problems especially in the delegation and
organization of the mission control. For projects like
this, appropriate delegation must be considered to
ensure an efficient workflow. Each element of a
website must have its corresponding committee who are
experts in that particular element. For example,
writers for the news articles, graphic artists or
photographers for photographed images, artists or
painters for vector graphics, layout artists for the
web templates, writers, researchers and photographers
for the field work, these people who are experts in
their fields can efficiently manage and accomplish the
tasks. After enhancing and developing the elements,
one group must be responsible for the integration of
these elements to be uploaded on the web. Extreme and
detailed specialization is a strategy in ensuring
faster and accurate uploading. These people who work
with their particular element will have difficulty in
communicating with people who work for the other
elements. Thus, it is important that an integrating
team will be in charge of the smooth integration of
the elements to be shown in the website so that the
"elements team" can focus on their task well.
A technical staff is also important because computer
malfunctioning is likely to occur. In my mission
control experience, some computers are malfunctioning
that is why the delegation of tasks was altered. The
technical staff should be knowledgeable not only about
computers but also electrical connections on the
Internet, because sometimes the malfunctioning comes
from the Internet itself. A sample viewers group, who
are knowledgeable in HTML and the over-all web
designing, must also be established to check for
minute errors on the final product, so that errors
will be detected earlier before it reaches the actual
viewers.
Aside from the mission control part, the field
workers must also have organization and delegation of
tasks to lessen the burden of harassed and confused
mission control people. Field workers must have
laptops and other communication equipment for faster
information transmission. Moreover, field workers must
be competent in their particular task to ensure
quality news and stories. The field workers must also
be knowledgeable of the environment assigned to
him/her to have better control and easier search for
interesting news.
The success of a project does not depend on the
quality of the people but more on how the organization
and delegation maximized the strengths of their
qualities.
From Lew Anne Cruz:
When we were asked to assess the workflow of the 24 Hours in Cyberspace, I
honestly had no idea whether we should adopt their system or not. Thus, i
proposed that our work as part of mission control team would be similar.
We were tasked to be in the mission control team on a Wednesday, as early
as Tuesday, I talked with the fielded groups and arranged a schedule with
them. Each fielded group has to send at a particular hour, primarily to
avoid cramming. We had 8 hours and there were 6 groups. In short, we
allocated one hour per group. In that way, our workload will be organized.
During that day we were assigned to be part of the mission control team,
the team was actually arguing on how to divide the jobs. In the end, we
settled that one would take responsibility for the photos, one for the
section pages (the synopses), one for the story page (whole story) and one
for the index page (that's me!). Anyway, assigning the groups to send at a
praticular hour proved to be effective. We contacted them regularly to
make sure there will be no delays.
I leaned a lot of things during the shift. First is the value of time. We
know that every minute counts and that each moment wasted will perhaps
result to dead links or distorted photos or mismatched alternative text.
Next is coordination and communication. At one point, the team became so
busy, and we were not anymore aware that some jobs have become redundant.
(too bad) Last, and the most important of them all is presence of mind.
I was lucky to be part of a very effective and efficent mission control
team. We avoided pressure by laughing at our own mistakes and helping each
other.
Funny but after the work, I have been thinking of being a web page editor
someday.
I mentioned in my paper that I think it would be a tough job finding the
stories. Well I guess it is 50% true now. We usually take for granted the
things we see around, and little do we know that it is interesting and
would be helpful for other people. It was enlightening, entertaining and
educational at the same time.
Over all, I had fun doing the project. Maybe because it stretched to six
days, which makes it less pressuring.
From Almarie Lumbad:
Now that I've actually undergone live webcast updating, I can say that my
expectations are met. I know that the activity is not an easy task. Teamwork
and communication are the keys to its success. The article on
"24 Hours in Cyberspace" is very helpful because we were able to use its
efficient division of labor and workflow as a benchmark. Moreover,it gave us
a preview on what to expect in the activity proper. Overall,the live webcast
was a fun activity.
From Cla Ganzon:
The way the workflow was done in "24 Hours in Cyberspace" was effective enough in organizing and defining peoples' assigned tasks. Kuwentong Kalye is distinctly patterned in this kind of web cast but was only consists of smaller groups and a particular place to cover.
The templates prepared ahead of time are very useful in processing the story in a convenient manner. Though Kuwentong Kalye did not make use of the SitePublisher, still, its templates played just the same role as the SitePublisher though the uploading is done manually. Truly, it became easy for the editors to focus more on the content of the story than on its layout because they do not have to devote time in generating HTML codes.
Basically, the division of labor is efficient enough for a smooth operation. Its results are seen with the Kuwentong Kalye activity. It was good that editors are assigned just to check the content of the story, its grammar as well as its typographical errors; photo editor in choosing from a variety of pictures, cropping, doing some improvement on the pictures, and eventually uploading them; lastly, the uploading team in updating the index and the story pages.
Truly, clearly defined roles made it easy for the members to master a certain task making him familiar with the assignment and eventually doing it effectively and fast enough to be published in the Net on the right time serving just the same purpose of newspaper publishing and broadcasting.
The important factors in web publishing are mostly focused on the knowledge of one's task- planning ahead of time on the things that should be done, organizing people and assigning jobs for better concentration and execution of tasks, controlling the kind of information that is published by reading and editing the stories submitted, and at the same time, leading the members of the group to work as one through communicating effectively with one another, and doing properly the task assigned with responsibility.
From Katrina Guanio:
The fact that 24 Hours in Cyberspace was staffed by professional editors, photographers,computer
engineers and technicians is only one of the many differences between Kuwentong Kalye and 24
Hours in Cyberspace. 24 Hours in Cyberspace used a more complex information path due to its
highly compartmentalized structure. Work was divided among the staff in such away that each unit
need not worry about other units' tasks. The editors did not have to bother with HTML codes and
the reporters did not have to bother with uploading and publishing their articles. Whereas in
Kuwentong Kalye, every person in Mission Control had to know how to input HTML, edit stories,
and edit photographs. Our group opted to distribute work by assigning each person to an article and
concentrating on the editing and imbedding HTML codes on the articles. We also had to deal with
editing the photos that come with the article. Some reporters were very kind in imbedding the code
<p> in places where a paragraph break should be.
In 24 Hours in Cyberspace different units judge whether an article is worth publishing, edits text and
photos, updates the Homepage, and makes the Table of contents. Though both systems have similar
workflows, which is to create reports, collect and edit the reports, and publish, there are still slight
differences as mentioned above.
This is so probably because of the larger amount of information that each project receives at a time.
Kuwentong Kalye can only expect a maximum of 8 to 9 stories per Mission COntrol, while 24 Hours
can expect thousands of articles and photographs. 24 Hours in Cyberspace used more advanced and
more (in number) computer programs compared to Kuwentong Kalye. We only used a text editor,
Adobe Photoshop, and an Internet connection. 24 Hours had to make use of more programs such as
SitePublisher, to aid the editors in imbedding HTML codes.
Templates were already predesigned for both Kuwentong Kalye and 24 Hours. The Kuwentong
Kalye templates were provided by our professor, Mr. Groyon. There were also instructions included
in the templates so that we would know where to put what.
Despite the differences between Kuwentong Kalye and 24 Hours, both have proven that computer
technology and human skill, when well coordinated, can produce something exceptionally brilliant like
Kuwentong Kalye and 24 Hours in Cyberspace.
From Ria Rebano:
Now that I have actually experienced live web site updating, I can say that the people in
mission control should work as a group and not as individuals so the updating can be done faster but
the group is only as fast as the slowest member. If the slowest member takes forever to set up the
photo page, the story page or whatever he is assigned to do, it will also take forever to upload the
updated version of the web site. Therefore, the person who is the most knowledgeable about a
certain area should be the one assigned to do the corresponding section.
It helped that there were already templates to work with because the templates cut the time
spent on the updating itself. One just has to fill in the appropriate filenames and text to the templates.
About those doing the stories, it would really help if they would not wait until the last possible
minute to submit their articles and photographs because work can pile up and mission control can be
rattled and panicked enough not to do a good job updating the web site. They may still be able to
update the web site at record time but the quality of the update may not be as good because of the
overwhelming work. This may include distorted photos, typos and grammatical errors.
Overall, live web site updating is interesting and actually fun to do because there is always
pressure to do the updates at the shortest possible time. It is also fun to hunt for stories, even if a
number of the stories are rejected by mission control. The experience makes everything worthwhile.
