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From Pinky Tupas:

After being the mission control and being in the field, i came to understand more the article "24 hours in cyber space." For one thing, it was really hard to cope with the process of updating a website if a person is not acquianted with how it works. In my own experience, I learned that to be able to build a website, one should be very careful in naming the filenames to avoid confusion and missing files. A part in the article stated that when the 24 hours in cyber space was launched in the net, many people complained due to some late responses that they've encountered while visiting the site. Now I know the reason for that. One is that some stories came in late, that is why the mission control had a hard time fixing things because of those late articles. Aside from that, some stories are without photos, while others have too many typographical errors that still need to be edited taking much time for the mission control to finish the task. The problem basically is about punctuality and the quality of the stories coming in. Some didn't have captions in their photos so the mission control have to provide the appropriate captions when the photos and the stories are published...

Having been in the mission control for the kuwentongkalye website, i find it rather amazing how the "24 hours in cyberspace" was able to feature the whole world with 30 minute gaps for every deadline... If kuwentongkalye had put us through a lot of pressure, i can't imagine how much the "24 hours in cyberspace" work force managed to put up with its pressures and deadline... But still I believe that everything can be learned and that there is always room for improvement, that it is why I also think that once a person has mastered the cyberworld and has developed the proper attitude and mindset for it, nothing is impossible...

From Agnes Tapia:

I said in my reaction paper that too many people doing the job is just a waste of resources. I wrote there that 80 news gathering groups were was pushing it a bit too far. I would now like to revise that.

Now, I realize that you can never have enough people. In our live webcast, we had around 4 people on mission control and around 5 groups sending just one story each. We had only those human interest stories in Metro Manila and there wasn't really much pressure to track down every human interest story and yet, it seems that everyone was in a whirlwind come webcast time.

I guess it's really not that easy to look for stories and input them in the website. What I want to say now is that too many people who don't know what to do is a real drag but if each person knows specifically what he's there for, then there won't be much of a problem and he will actually be a helping hand.

Also, given that the scope of the geography we had to cover was extremely minimal compared to what the people in 24 hourse in cyberspace had to deal with. I thought about it and I realized that 80 groups spread out around the world was still a minute number if your goal is to be eble to cover EVERY story there is. I don't think anyone can do that but it would sure be nice if someone were to try their hand at it and ending up being farther than if they hadn't tried at all.

However, I believe that what I said about the nature of the news being presented still stands. I still believe that the 24 hours in cyberspace isn't really the best idea because the nature of their news are feauture stories meaning that they aren't really current events that people need to know immediately.

It wouldn't really make much difference if people read the stories today or tomorrow. I believe that if 24 hours in cyberspace had the format of CNN wherein they have live updates about NEWS that are relevant to each person's life in one way or another, then it would be more useful.

24 hours in cyberspace still seems to me like the discovery channel having live updates about the kangaroos in Australia every 30 minutes or so.

From Kim David:

I never imagined that being mission control was such a stressful job. I realized that things in this kind of field are easier said than done. When i wrote my reation paper about the article "24 Hours in Cyberspace", i had numberous suggestions in which work can become easier for the mission control.

I suggested that the lesser the number of people there were, the lower will the posibility be at having problems in technicalities. This was, based on my first time experience as a mission controler, not absolutely true. First fact: the four of us (Paolo, Richard,Djong and myself) were all beginers. Second; the number of articles that were send in were all too numerous for them to be handled comfortably by for people, let alone four beginners. Third; we were pressed for time and the articles were sent in late. Fourth; the articles themselves needed revisions. This meant more work for us. Imagine this; some of us were still editing the main articles while in fact they could have already uploaded their work. In other words, editing the articles gave us loads of problems in terms of time and work load. Contradicting my what i wrote in my reaction on the said article, i think having more people would help ease the work load of the group.

As for being a field worker, i found out the importance of the digicam. What one needs in this kind of job is that sense of being immediate. Again according to experience, it would be very stressful to take picture using a normal camera, develop the film, scan the needed images, save these scanned images as .jpg on a diskette and finally send these fils via email. Using a digicam turly makes work a lot easier.

The number of people assigned for field work was just the right number, for me. As a pair in each group, i think that work load is maximized. In my group (Djong and I) one of us was the article writer and the other one is in charge with the camera (this meant that he/she will be the one responsible for reserving the mavicam and go through the hassles of getting its permit). And the both of us brainstorm for what kind of article we will write about. The only probelm is when the one of the group members is lazy. The other group mate will end up doing all if not, most of the work. If we are to look at it individually, it is indeed a bad thing to happen. But, if we look at it as a whole, it will really will not make much of a difference because the work was still done. This another thing that i learned; because of the fast paced demand of this job, we have to accomplish our work at all cost! It doesn't matter who did what. As long as the files were sent, then well and good.

These are my insights on my experience as i worked on a website. It was tiring and yet fulfilling at the same time. Like what i wrote in my own website: Practice is the key. Determination its backbone. Freedom its reward.

From Jes Cruz:

For me, doing a live Web site made me feel that there are many things happening at the same time. It seems that a lot of tasks are to be finished in a little time so that more updated news are broadcasted via the Web.

The work force behind the project (the field groups together with the mission control) were the core of this job,without them, there will be no live Web cast.

Also, there is actually NO authorized number or group of people allowed to do this particular job. Its just like any other project that is done through hard work and determination but with the appropriate knowledge in web designing.

Teamwork really played an important role in this project. It served as the key to its success, thus, passing it.

Lastly, doing the specified jobs assigned to each of us really added in the success of the group project. Doing a live Web site is really a tedious but satisfying job. Its like hell (the updating-mission control work) with angels(especially when the Web site is already finished).

I think that there is no direct contradiction from my personal experience with the live Web site project and the paper i passed, they're just confirmation of what i wrote in the paper.

From Rachel Villanueva:

As I was reading the article of 24 Hours in Cyberspace, I never thought that we could do the same thing. Yes, the article presented it as a rather simple process, but if you think of the vulnerability of web publishing, you would think that our class would be far from reaching success. However, it was proven that the procedure was very much effective and the training we had helped a lot in making the work easier.

I was right in considering the division of labor as a very important component of 24 Hours in Cyberspace. In the duration of the Kuwentong Kalye web cast, organizing the news would never be possible without the careful division of labor (and of course the ready-made templates). Since high quality graphics and creative layouts are hard to maintain when publishing on the net, a person specializing on a specific task is very much needed. This, I noticed, most especially with the photos. The pictures coming could never be as perfect as you wanted them to be. There are times when the picture would look better if you crop it or thanks to Adobe PhotoShop, you can actually add contrast to your photo. Furthermore, the brightness of the picture can be easily adjusted. There's so much that the mission control can do, to improve the quality of photos to be published on the net. However, I believe that this can never be done in an orderly manner without the benefits of division of labor. If it not for a separate photo editor, the pictures in our Kuwentong Kalye web site would be given due attention. Another benefit of division of labor is, it prevented us from losing our track with our work. It was a new thing to us and it is not hard for us to end up in a situation where we would not really know what to do. The hardest part of all is to determine which area the error occurred. However, since there is division of labor, we would know whom to ask whenever a problem arises and it would easily be solved. Furthermore, since there is a division of labor, the area of our responsibility is lessened. It would not be daunting enough for us not to know where to start and end up aggravating the problem. One thing that I consider the most important is effective communication. The article may not have dwelled on the issue but, based on my experience, effective communication is a must. Whenever a job is done, the person on the next step should be informed immediately. If ever there is a problem that occurred in the job done, the person who worked previously should also be informed promptly. Since that person was the one who committed the mistake, it would be a waste of time if you try to solve the problem yourself. Where do all of these end up? They only mean one thing: Teamwork is the key to a successful Kuwentong Kalye.

24 Hours in Cyberspace may have established the freedom of speech in the cyber world. With the experiment, it was proven that broadcasting could meet the demands of real-time publishing on the net. Our Kuwentong Kalye has proven something more than that. Aside from the co-existence of content and technology, Kuwentong Kalye has also proven that on-line publishing is not limited to the experts. The process can be easily understood and if you've had proper training, organizing news on the net would not be a very hard task. You may see it in a way that amateurs like us can also make it happen or better yet, there is a possibility, that we can call ourselves "experts".

From Dolly Chotrani:

In anything new you do, there will always be those initial jitters, especially when you are not sure how to carry out the task. That's how it was for me in Mission Control. Although, as I said before, once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to work nonstop.

Collecting the stories is another thing. It could feel like an adventure, setting out and trying to look for a good story. Of course, without having an idea of what you want to look for, you'll get nowhere, unless you're really lucky. You realize though that in such an unsuspecting thing, person or place, you can find a really good story hidden there somewhere. You just have to know where to look. That's why the idea of writing stories about the unknown things in Manila was so much fun. I happen to even learn new things from my classmates' work. Now, I can't wait to check out the Nature Church.

Of course, the time pressure is ever present. That is why it is good to prepare ahead. For my partner and I, we decided to already cover our stories before the assigned period so that we had more than enough time to write the story and edit it. As for mission control, since our group had nothing to do at first, we studied the templates already and the way the site was set-up, to make work easier. Definitely, organization was needed, because without the delegation of tasks it would be hard to get things done efficiently. It didn't take long to master doing a certain job, and as we did, we accomplished work faster.

So basically, one just needs time to familiarize themselves to the work, and then it becomes easy as pie. Although, it is advisable to pay attention to the little details when uploading or updating a website, because it only takes a slight error to ruin the site.