Back

Next

From Dian Yu:

I have seen 24 hours in cyberspace as merely an exciting challenge to the crew of the live webcast and the viewers themselves. Yes it is indeed a helpful newscast of what is going on around on the spot. The participation of the crew and the viewers are also very crucial. News that is happening at the very moment is brought in the Internet for the public. No more waiting.

It did seem important and critical to me before I had the experience. But the difference is I thought that it was merely technical. The only aspect that worried me was the time and how fast I can make it, how quickly I can submit my stories. It seemed more of an adventure to me than work. After the experience, I found out that the webcast was more than technical. It was not all about the number of stories that I submit but the essence of it. What I admit was difficult for me and my group mate was thinking of an interesting story. Out of the four stories that we featured, only one was chosen. In the technical aspect, out of excitement, we did not bother to read the manual of the digital camera. We went around and took pictures of two of our stories only to find out that the pictures were not saved in the diskette. Our first day was a failure in terms of technical. When we got around into re-shooting, our stories were rejected. One important thing that I have also learned is that your mind should be quick. One story that was chosen was the one that we did not plan to feature. One unpredictable situation that seemed to be in our bad side became a blessing in disguise. We were in the LSGH library, trying to borrow a 220V transformer to charge our camera when we came across "Tatay Nick" and interviewed him. Also, the presence of mind is important, "walang hiya-hiya". Being able to manage and look for resources to solve problems that come up is important. I also learned about "pakisama" and resourcefulness. It became important for us to relate to different kinds of people to be able to accomplish our goal. One example is when we went to LSGH. Incidentally, the day we went there was the last day of Rico Yan’s wake. It was really difficult to enter. I had to talk with the security guard and reason out with him for us to be able to enter the premise. When we got in the school, the battery of our camera died and we realized that we did not have a 220V transformer. We had to go to the library and borrow from the librarian. The librarian then was really not in a good mood, but I made a little conversation with him and he allowed us to borrow what we needed.

All I was expecting to learn in this project was less that what I have. More than the technical, importance of time, and the value of the project, I have learned lessons in life that I would most definitely need in the future. The experience gave me more self-confidence and drive to pull my resources and achieve my goals. Also, more than my academic grade, I give more value to the experience itself.

From Diorella Tan:

I wrote on my reaction paper that there were too much people working on the website, such as proofreaders and mission control. But after working on Kuwentong Kalye for just a night, I realized that a live webcast should always have as much people as it can get. For one thing, proofreaders are really important, because mission control will not have the time to check the articles that they'll be uploading; they'll be too busy making sure that the tags are correct.

As for the number of mission control people, I think the group should get as much as it can, because the stories always come at the same time. If there are more people, it would be easier to update and upload.

My turn as mission control also confirmed the importance of having tech support. If you, Sir, had not been there that first night, I think all of us would have gone ballistic with all the things we had to do.

If I would get a second chance to have a go at mission control again, I'd probably work with the same group of people, because working with a group that I dont mesh well with wouldn't make the website successful.

From Richard Horn:

After experiencing something that came close to a very live webpage, I have learned a few things from it and I also had fun doing it as well. I found out that for a live webpage to do well, alot of things must go well together to make this thing work out well.

Mission control must be quick and responsive with whatever story they receive. They must alert their fellow mission control people and inform the sender of the story, as well, that they have receieved their story already. The groups doing fieldwork must also do their job. They must send their stories on time to aboid any further delay with the updating of the webpage.

Keeping a webpage updated 24 hours a day is not as easy as it seems. If our class had a pretty difficult time updating the paes and putting the appropriate designs on them, imagine what the actual webmasters or webdesigners must be going through everyday. From the comments that have been sent to our class, though, it seemed that our class did not do that well with regards to the live webpage project.

From Joann Cruz:

How does it feel to be in a webcast? Alfred Lord Tennyson in The Charge of the Light Brigade says:

Cannon to the right of them,
Cannon to the left of them,
Cannon in front of them,
Volley’d and Thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
boldly they rode and well

Let me cut the quote, for the succeeding lines lead to doom, which is not the webcast.

For an amateur group, the webcast is truly amazing, "astig" as my classmates would put it. Kuwentong Kalye is, like 24 hours in Cyberspace, more than what meets the eye. Beneath the fancy layout and the interesting stories are html codes. Beneath the pages are our very own stories of field outings and mission controls. Field and mission has its very own "kuwento" to tell.

Kuwentong Kalye is 24 hours in cyberspace, in installments. We are micro, they are macro. We are Manila, they are the world. Davids and Goliaths, but at the end of the day, we are no different from each other. The figures may not meet, but the fact is, we are but frail bodies whose minds work up stories and whose fingers never leave the keyboard to produce a story online. At the end of the day, we all value the same team for a job well done, for preparing the templates, gathering the story, editing the text, pixelating the pictures, encoding the text and dealing with the technical glitches and mood swings along the way. For all we know, we share the same prayers come glitches and last minutes. Amidst the idealism, we realize that we can never be sure of our equipment, and even ourselves.

We are, as if, in war. We go into battle with our battle plans and our arms. In the battlefield, we face what we expected, and those we had not. We are bombarded with questions and choices, left and right. All these under time pressure -- time pressure coming from the "enemy" at the fields and the time pressure that is universal at three hours per mission. Under these circumstances, we are at mercy.

Since my reaction paper on 24 hours in cyberspace, my views have not changed. "Enough" is an understatement. The setup of the given limited team is workable and okay, but along the way, we come across our limitations and "challenges" that we will not leave unsolved in the open -- thus, our website. Like a true soldier, we do not leave our comrades in the field. We work as a team and try to arrive at an output.

And from the words of Gen. Douglas Macarthur, we "shall return" to edit and upload for as long as the site needs to be.

From Janmi Niro:

I am still not able to view the web site of 24 Hours in Cyberspace, but from what I have seen of Kuwentong Kalye and from my experience of working for its cmpletion, I am more confident to say that I can just see a clear picture of the site, which Rick Smolan headed.

Basically, what we did as the team behind Kuwentong Kalye is similar to what the team behind 24 Hours in Cyberspace did. First, the people asigned for field work gathered and documented stories, arranged the(text and photos), and sent to the Mission Control for final editing and uploading through electronic mail. Th difference though, is that there were only few people assigned in the Mission Control of Kuwentong Kalye compared with the other. Also, there were no teams in the Mission Control Kuwentong Kalye. It was only made up of people assigned for uploading, photo editing, and text editing (proof reading). The Traffic Team (or person) did not exist too in Kuwentong Kalye's Mission Control, or if it did, I was not aware that it was the Traffic Team.

The day that I worked for the Mission Control was the last day of uploading the site. I was originally assigned as the photo editor, yet later on, we realized that we all have to do all the other works too. The reason for this is simple: at first, we almost died of boredom waiting for the other stories to come, but after 2 hours, the stories came unendingly, so we started to panic. The "arrival" of stories was also the reason why our group had to extend for 5 hours to finish our jobs.

Distorted photos became our group's problem, but that was easy to fix. The problem that our group faced that ate our time was that the photos did not show up in some of the pages. But then since there were 2 people assigned for the photos (editing and uploading), we were also able to fix it. The problem was with the naming of files. The person assigned to upload the index page typed in different file names for certain pictures that did not match the original file name of the photos. It was really a good thing that we were able to double check everything because we were able to find out what the wrong thing in our process was.

Personally, I did not really have a hard time on uploading because I familiarized myself with the templates already before I worked for the Mission Control. Uploading was the easiest because the templates were prepared and what I had left to do was cut and paste. The editing of the photos became easy because the photos that the groups sent in were mostly in jpeg format.

In my experience, I can say that what spoils up the process in when other people do not contribute to the group. I was really pissed with the others who were there but were contended sitting and doing nothing while all the others were panicking. Another thing is when the people assigned for the field work send stories that were not thought of. It was hard for us to reject stories, but we did, all because if we did, it will be a harder process.

Yet, I really enjoyed working for Kuwentong Kalye (honest!). Though stressful, it was fun especially during the field work. :)

From Antonni Cuesta:

I don't mean to brag but I honestly fell proud of having been a part of the Webcast. When I read the article before about the 24 Hours In Cyberspace, I thought: How could we possibly do the same thing? But then I realized, it doesn't need 3M dollars and 2M dollars worth of equipment to do a live Webcast. Of course, there is a big difference in the update time and the area of coverage, but the output are basically the same. The quality of work is not dependent (or at least, is rarely directly and considerably affected) on the resources put into it. Of course, it should be taken into context that the writer is speaking of the Internet wherein there is a virtual leveled plain for anybody to play in. If funds needed, they are needed at the basic level -- a workstation connected to the Internet with the necessary hardware and software. We could also look at the side of the field reporters (having to need a digital camera or any device that can digitize a picture. But again, they are at the basic level. Quality is almost entirely dependent on the effort, dedication and competence of the people behind the project.

If there is an aspect worth giving the most attention, it is the communication lines that exist behind the making of the Webcast. Coordination is very important in a decentralized working system. When the writer says "decentralized," he means that although there is a mission control who handles the processing of the information and uploading them to the Internet, there is no defined geographical place where they can be found. Therefore, coordination with respect to the delegation of jobs (in the field as well as in Mission control) and the time period when to send the data should be made clear, first and foremest, in the planning stage. Also, going back to the communication lines mentioned, there must always be a way of talking or informing the different elements in real time. One topic of conversation that proved to be problematic in the Kuwentong Kalye Wedcast is in data delivery. And since there is no such thing as a perfect plan, it is good that the system be tested before the actual Webcasting. this is the problem I had during our manning of mission control.