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From Editha Ong:

After going through the Kuwentong Kalye experience, it occurred to me that making this project successful requires two components: efficient technical side (uploading) and quality of stories.

The efficiency of uploading greatly depends on the coordination of the encoders and of course, their proficiency in HTML. The division of labor also speeds up the process but sometimes, overlapping and sudden changing of jobs also occurs. Like in my case, I was supposed to do the photopage for all the stories but in the end, I became somewhat the photo editor and the uploader. This kind of changes in responsibilities should not be a matter of problem among the encoders. They should be flexible, versatile and fast in the transitioning of responsibilities.

This brings another factor that affects the overall performance of the mission control: the overall disposition of the control center should be cheery, enthusiastic and professional. I know it sounds cliché, but really, having funny co-workers could surely make one forget that he’s doing a page for the nth time already. Going back to the technical aspect, having the computers networked is a big savior to all of us, making our files readily accessible to all controllers. All the computers, in my shift, are all working well, although, I’ve heard of stories from the other mission control groups where a PC would suddenly hang up, slowing their pace considerably.

The time limit imposed provided challenge. The rate of submission of the stories, one thing that normally is not within the control of the encoders, is one of the causes of delay in uploading. I think two students can manage to do one story (with photopage and index.html) and upload them in one hour. But because the stories are submitted almost all at the same time, the uploading throughout the whole mission control time happens at the most thrice. What I envisioned before I took part in the activity was it would be like inq7.net. Uploading happens so gradually that a surfer would actually notice the slow ‘descent’ of news stories within a page, due to the input of new headlines. What happened during my shift is almost half of the page is completely changed because two to three stories are uploaded all at the same time. This is not really a problem; it is just far from what I benchmarked.

Regarding the articles, making the mission control reject stories in the latter part of the week, proved to be a test to both controllers and field groups. Having your articles and photos rejected is a learning experience. In a way, it elevated the status of the Kuwentong Kalye site, as well as the student’s standard on his/her work. Now that I’ve thought about it, I don’t have an idea how news-related sites (inq.net and cnn.com) make their photos good and at the same time, minimize their file sizes.

Now that I’ve finished this activity, I wonder did 24 Hours in Cyberspace ever did some re-uploading of their pages. We certainly did, quite more than a few times. One thing for sure, the Kuwentong Kalye activity, both as mission control and field group, is a good learning experience.

From Maricris Simon:

The first thing I wrote in my reaction on '24 hours in cyberspace' is "24 hours in Cyberspace is almost unthinkable." I know that 'that' mission is not an imagined story. It exists, it happened; therefore, it is thinkable. But what made me declare that it is unthinkable is the effort that people need to extend for the operation to actually work. How could the hundreds of people cooperate in the job and no one messes with it? There is a need to experience it. By actually fitting in to what they experienced (through the 6-day live web site updating), I realized that some of my insights about '24 hours in Cyberspace' is unsuitable. I know updating a website in six days is undeniably a lot easier to do than do it within 24 hours. We had at least four hours (not to mention another four hours of extension) to wait for stories, do the editing, encode it with html tag, upload and fix everything. Still, the effort cannot match that of '24 hours.'

As I've mentioned in my paper, "division of labor is indeed necessary because with this, people would focus on only one kind of activity. There would be less hassles, distractions and disorganization of thoughts." Before we start working, we decided to divide the load according to the workflow: two people to edit the stories, another two to edit the photos, one to encode html tags and the last person to upload the files. It was, at first, working well. But after several hours, people seem to realize that they must be doing someone else's job. As a text editor, I just stare at the monitor or gaze around while waiting for someone to send their story. I used to believe that sticking to the workflow would lessen the trouble but it seems that we would not finish the mission if we will not help each other. Doing someone else's job is not a good idea. The problem I got when I tried to place the photo in "hired gun" is the fact that I do not know the filenames of the photos.

From Al-Al Diaz:

I really didnt like the idea of a live website where it would be updated everyday or even every five hours and I dont like the idea still but not that much as before. I guess working on it makes you understand what its for, in a way.

The activity, eventough I didnt like the idea was fun to do. It wasn't like working at all, It was like we were just playing and fooling around with the site. But ofcourse, we encountered some problems like missing links, wrong filenames and more but it was alright, we were able to get through with it smoothly. It was great working with my mission control mates Mike, Che, Agnes.

There are also somethings about this project that I still dont get. Like the number of people or should I say, the lack of people, that will be able to view the site because the articles there will be only posted in a days time. I guess it would be better if the articles were online and live for about a weeks time or three days at the least. I also dont get the point of some of the site's section like the tao and the lugar section. What does the articles have to do with being live? People wouldn't really care if they read those articles ten years ago or today. It wouldn't matter much. But the pangyayari and the others are pretty much alright and well justified to being live.

But everything else about the concept and the project was great. I liked how the site was constructed and how easy it was to upload stories into the codes. We didn't have problems looking for the place where to place the text, the photos and the other stuff.

I think the website would be a real bomb if it was about things that only happens once like accidents, crimes, political issues, events, sporting events and the likes. Those kinds of stories would be perfect on a live website.

To sum it all up, I believe this project wont be as fun as it is if it were an individual thing and your the only one to do the work. And this project makes me want to work in an Internet based company. All the operations were smooth in the site from the articles to the site it self. But I still think that such a project will be a waste of time and efforts but its a must for some sites like CNN, Eonline, GameCenter, Newsweek and the likes.

This project was ok for me besides those things i mentioned. The stories and the site still has a lot of room for improvement but its alraight, i wont be complaining about that. The things on the 24 hours in cyberspace article was applied very well on this project. The article was given some sense to me because of this project and i felt great i was able to apply my web designing knowledge.

From Jopet L. Ventanilla:

The final group project was really tiring but fun. The article, "24 Hours in Cyberspace", told us how webcasting works. The final group project showed us how it really works.

There are a lot of problems that I've encountered in the project. I think that the group is not really that organized in handling the work. In "24 Hours in Cyberspace", everything really ran smoothly because everybody did their job properly. Also, the people, in charge, organized everything properly. The problem in the final group project was that we lacked the teamwork that we need. Maybe this is so because we really did not know our fellow batchmates that well. Thus, the work load was not that arranged properly. That was where the problem arises. However, I think that there are a lot things to be happy about besides the project itself, and that is the value that this project gave to our batch.

All in all, the experience of webcasting was very helpful in giving the students a real background about the Internet. Another thing is that this project gave the students the chance to know the fellow batchmates. Everybody was really helping each other to produce a nice story and photo. Although we had a "not so good" project, I think the experience gave us one important value among batch mates...camaraderie. I think with this achievement, the project can be considered successful for everybody benefited from it. I hope this project will serve as a first step for the batch to have teamwork in order to survive Communication Arts.

From Pamela Bondad:

The project, 24 hours in cyberspace proved to everyone that it is possible to have an online, real time publication. the idea of templates helped a lot because obviously, it maintains uniformity and you don't have to keep typing the same thing over and over. before i was actually assigned to mission control, i thought it would be easy because there were already templates. all we had to basically do was put the new information in. i was wrong. it was a lot more complicated than that. i wish html codes were easier to read. all of the brackets and everything got pretty overwhelming. the solutions that the people came up with for 24 hours in cyberspace were the same solutions that we used for kuwentong kalye, 6 years later. after doing mission control, i thought that doing field work would be a lot easier. it was in a way, but it was still stressing. i thought that since we had digital cameras and since there's internet cafes practically everywhere now, that our work would be easier but it wasn't. we must have gone to 4 or 5 different places, all kinda far away from each other before we got a story. no one wanted to let us interview people or take pictures. some even said that we should have gotten a permit first or made an appointment which didnt make much sense to us. the point of kuwentong kalye was to try to do a real time publication and i thought that we'd have it easier than the people who worked on 24 hours in cyberspace since we have so much new equipment in terms of technology but i was wrong once again. it all really depends on the people out doing the work because if they can't get a story, then its all over. mission control has no job if the field reporters don't do theirs.

From Michael Clemente:

Kuwentong Kalye – Metro Manila Stories, the Prinpro group final project, required not so much workforce. A minimum of 4 members and maximum 8 members in mission control is proportioned to the number of fielded groups scheduled each update day. The web site structure was simple and can easily show the workflow to be accomplished by each group.

Before a story gets published on the web, the graphics and text fall in the hands one person in mission control, who is in charge of processing the graphic for the web using Adobe Photoshop. The work was generally concentrated in the mission control where people had to collect and edit the incoming text and graphics. Several problems experienced by mission control was regarding incomplete data being sent by the fielded groups. Some groups forgot to include picture captions. The workflow of Kuwentong Kalye webcast project is quite organized but requires a lot of coordination. Since mission control had each person perform a specific task for each story. One person had to check the e-mail for incoming stories, and be in charge of updating the index or splash page and the section pages. Another person was in charge of the text or the story page. One person was in-charge of processing the graphics using Adobe Photoshop. Lastly, one person was in charge of the photo page of each story.

It was ideal that the mission control handled one story at a time. Since, the distribution of tasks of mission control was designed for a person to specialize on one task. This has an advantage and a disadvantage. A person in mission control can be efficient doing his designated task. On the other hand, he tends to miss out on the experience of performing other tasks involved in mission control. Also, if the other members of mission control perform tasks correctly and efficiently while one or two persons encounter difficulties with the designated task assigned to them, it would cause the delay of the update of the whole story. Time is very important in the webcast. Mission control has several stories to upload.

The Kuwentong Kalye had templates to start from. This idea would make things faster for mission control. The mission control just needs to insert filenames, text, and links to the template. One person had to be sure that the editing of the template is correct. One problem experienced by mission control was that information was inconsistent between the pages of the site. Communication plays a very important role in the webcast. The usual errors occurred were in the date, time, and place of the stories.

The task of mission control requires enough knowledge about what to do. Knowing the workflow and site structure would make it easier for the mission control because they would already have an idea of the task. In my experience as mission control, at first, not knowing what to do because of the lack of knowledge of the workflow causes the delay of the update. The task of mission control for the Kuwentong Kalye web cast involved a team effort. Each person should work dependently with each other.