Tag Archive for 'feedback'

Ideas for transitioning new web staff

Published
by
Andrew
on November 2, 2009
in Medium Priority
. 4 Comments

We now have at least one school transitioning to new web staff and it’s something that we’re going to run into frequently in the future. As part of our efforts to keep knowledge from vanishing into the ether we’ll need a process of getting the new staff up to speed.

While simply having the incoming staff members fill out a survey is certainly the easy way to get a sense of their abilities I have a couple ideas as to how to make it a more engaging and active process.

  • Have the outgoing staff member write a blog post about their experience – This would cover what they learned, what they wished they had known going in, and perhaps get into the technical side of things as well. It’d provide a resource for not only that school’s incoming web staff but would be a model for others as well.
  • Talk with new web staff – This would not even have to be an orientation to Wordpress. I’m thinking it could almost be a good idea to treat it like an interview that they would go through as part of working for the news organization. We’d just talk over what they know, their past experience and projects and then discuss what they hope to learn in the next semester/year.

Those are just two ideas that I have right now. Basically I’m looking to find a way to transition new staff so that the information remains somewhere that is public and searchable (i.e. more than just a survey submitted to us). Thoughts?

Reflections from the first newsletter

Published
by
Andrew
on October 8, 2009
in Low Priority
. 1 Comment

Yesterday morning we sent out our first CoPress newsletter to all clients. We worked quickly in order to push it out this week and there’s definitely some things that we’ll be able to do better next time. This is sort of a mind dump of those ideas so that we have them around and so that everyone can add to them.

Somethings that will be done in the future…

  • Graphics and layout - We definitely need some things to spruce up the newsletter. The text seemed a bit heavy at the length that we did. Lauren will be creating a sweet banner graphic and we’ll need to use some section headings for the next newsletter.
  • The small things - Among other things we should be signing these either as from the team or as from the individual team member that sent it out. I forgot to do that for this one and it seemed a bit unprofessional. I’m open to suggestions though as to whether these should be signed by the team, CoPress Hosting, etc. Thoughts?
  • Keeping track of usage - We’re using bit.ly for tracking the links within the newsletter and since yesterday most of the links in the email got at least a half dozen clicks. To gauge our effectiveness we’ll want to keep close watch of these.
  • More fine-tuned settings - Hopefully future versions of Courier will be adding more fined tuned subscription and mailing settings so that those who are simply users on our site but not clients will have the option to unsubscribe. This will help make it so that people don’t view the newsletter as spam.

That’s all I got for now. Any thoughts and feedback on the email are much appreciated and will be taken to heart for future newsletters. At least we now have a way to reach out to our growing base of clients and community.

September 17, 2009: First weekly hosting meeting

Published
by
Daniel
on September 17, 2009
in Medium Priority
. 0 Comments

On Tuesday, Andrew and I had the first of what will be a weekly series of check-ins for hosting. We have a pretty distributed approach to support and managing work, so it will be good to check-in regularly and talk about what’s working and what needs improvement.

At this point in time, we’re in the process of launching the last of the sites that started over the summer. Once that’s done, the normal workload should fall back to support requests as issues come up. Andrew and I will split up the work week such that responsibility will be divided based on when the support request comes in. Andrew is going to take Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, and I’ll take Wednesdays and Thursdays. Our goal will be to respond as soon as possible to all requests during the work hours, and then as needed after hours. There’s a balance we’re going to have to strike between responding quickly to client requests and maintaining some level of sanity.

Continue reading ‘September 17, 2009: First weekly hosting meeting’

TWIC Guest Wish-List: Who would you like to hear from?

Published
by
Vanessa Bezic
on September 7, 2009
in High Priority
. 2 Comments

Who would you like to hear from on TWIC?? Please add on…

–Craig Kanalley (Breaking Tweets)

–Kim Sommers  (EIC of the Whitman Pioneer)

–Michael Poppel (Breaking News Online)

–Alex Klein (Duke Chronicle)

–Adam Klawonn and Aleksandra Chojnacka (2009 Knight Foundation News Challenge Winners)

TWIC Topics

Published
by
Vanessa Bezic
on September 7, 2009
in High Priority
. 0 Comments

We are digging for new topics especially for this week’s show!

–HTML v. CMS

–Twitter/Breaking Tweets

TWIC: Name Ideas?

Published
by
Vanessa Bezic
on September 7, 2009
in High Priority
. 2 Comments

I know we are trying to stay away from “This Week” and “CoPress” but Greg and I have been brainstorming and like the sound of :

“CoPress LIVE”… thoughts?

TWIC Show Rundown–Thoughts?

Published
by
Vanessa Bezic
on September 7, 2009
in High Priority
. 0 Comments

Publication (aside from CoPress.org):

Just an idea because I spent most of my morning snooping around this site. We could add ourselves to Techpodcasts for more exposure?

STRUCTURE:

AUDIENCE: I think a big part about determining the structure relies, as Daniel mentioned, on figuring out our audience.Are we appealing to:

–tech-savvy college journalism students and journalism professionals?

–the average college student with not much tech knowledge?

–anyone interested in the integration of tech and journalism?

Thoughts? If we nail this one and know our niche, we can solidify the show rundown.

—–SHOW RUNDOWN ROUGH DRAFT: Here’s a format we could follow—-

MUSIC BUMP with voice…This is XYZ the podcast about Episode #X, for Sept XYZ 2009…(title of show) brought to you by CoPress.

INTRO: Hello and welcome to CoPress’ XYZ I’m Greg Linch and I’m Vanessa Bezic.

TEASE THE SHOW’S CONTENT: The typical tease. Maybe insert a factoid. (ex. Did you know that X number of colleges have switched to XYZ this last year?) Ask a question. (What does a pound of butter, a monkey and a group of peruvian nuns have in common?) Ah! But stay tuned and you will…On the show today we’re gonna be talking about AWESOME XYZ. Remember you can chime into the discussion by calling 800-000-0000

QUICK UPDATE OF THE WEEK: Anything pertinent worth mentioning about tech news/trends off the bat in the past two weeks.

BACKGROUND EXPLANATION: This part is only really needed if we have to explain or define the topic or an element of the topic we’re touching upon in the show. Again this depends on our audience. For ex. if we are appealing to the average college journo with not much tech info, we might have to define something as basic as to what is a CMS?(Definition Play-off  “What is that, Greg?” “Well, Vanessa XYZ is…”)

DISCUSSION: In today on the podcast we are gonna move toward and talk about XYZ…We’re joined by Moto Moto (introduce guests and give info on their website links)

REFECTION: So in relationship to XYZ, how does this relate to the bigger scheme of things

CLOSING: Thank the guests and say we’ll attach their links (name it) to our blog (name it). And keep sending comments and xyz to this link (name it). Like to join our conversation? Have suggestions for our next podcast? Let us know! Add comments to our blog (name it). Remember you can always call in at 800-000-0000 to chime into the discussion.

UPCOMING SHOW TEASE: Join us on Sept XYZ again at 2pm PST for ANOTHER REALLY COOL TOPIC

OUTRO: I’m Greg Linch and I’m Vanessa Bezic thank you for listening to this weeks XYZ podcast.

MUSIC BUMP

Goals for This Week’s SHOW:

–Tons of energy

–Better Production–will add to Google calendar (dividing up editing, show notes tasks)

–Better Preparation–guests, topics, name

Feedback for TWiC

Published
by
Joey
on August 30, 2009
in High Priority
. 1 Comment

I jotted down a few quick notes for TWiC after doing the show today that I thought I’d share. Sorry for coming off heavy-handed, I put my editor hat on for this one.

We need a brief written up well ahead of time. This can be a FreindFeed room, or a gDoc, but it should have topics, listed in order of priority. Sample questions wouldn’t be bad. Relevant links are a must!

DEADTIME DEADTIME DEADTIME. Brief Joey anecdote here. I used to work at a summer camp where we put on weekly campfires. (done laughing at the quaintness yet? Click that link. You’ll ROFL) Watch the first minute of this video.

Here’s the point: we were professional campfire-skit-doers. We were rockstars who are were just enfused with the zany power and …

…k, I’ll come clean: we practiced, a lot. Practice was tough because every moment that the stage is empty, where the audience doesn’t have something to look at, the guys in charge would shout “DEADTIME, DEADTIME, DEADTIME.”

Here’s how this gets back to TWiC: campfires have visuals and audio to work with, TWiC has just one. Deadtime is even more noticeable on a podcast. It just sounds bad to have anything more than a second of dead air. Talking in the text chat is not a good solution. You’re doing something but the audience here’s nothing.

Someone needs to be in charge. If conversation dies, that person must move on to the next topic, keep it lively, keep it engaged.

There’s lots of CoPress folk. Don’t get me wrong. I like doing TWiC, but 3 CoPress peeps to one or two guests doesn’t help our tendency to turn the podcast into an interview session. Perhaps we should cut back on the number of folks and try to encourage discussion.

Tech issues on our end is in-excusable. We need to have voice, from everyone, 10 min before a call. This also should mean having guests on the line 10 min before. Communication with the guest should be done well in advance, with a quick follow up the day of. They’re our guests, but they need to be on time.

Offer to post on copress as a reward. If we liked what the guest had to say, we should offer them the opportunity to write a post for CoPress. It’s actually PR for them – we’re doing them a favor.

Incorporating search into the new website

Published
by
Daniel
on August 10, 2009
in Low Priority
. 4 Comments

I think that it’s going to be pretty important to integrate search into our website in a highly-functional fashion. The tool I propose we use for this is Google Custom Search because it will be easy to set up a search engine to index the main website, the forum, the wiki, the microblog, and Inside CoPress. The bigger question is how we incorporate it into the design. I bring this up now because MediaWiki has a built in search that is currently in the sidebar of the new theme Andrew is building. One idea is to have it in the sidebar, but we could also try to incorporate it into the header. Thoughts?

Internal reflection results, May 2009

Published
by
Daniel
on May 31, 2009
in High Priority
. 2 Comments

A few weeks ago, I put together a Google Docs survey as a sort of internal reflection for the end of the school year. Five people responded out of a total of 11 people that are on our internal list. For each question I presented in the survey, I’ll add several of what I think are the most telling and useful responses.

What are a few of our strengths?

  • Core team is dedicated, puts a lot of energy into content, new ideas.
  • Amazing group of people with a diverse range of talents and abilities
  • Our services are clearly needed and in high demand
  • We’re high profile; there are a lot of people aware of and interested in what we’re doing
  • We’ve started to recruit new blood; we need to keep that up

What are a few of our weaknesses?

  • Too much talk sometimes, but usually better to have more than less
  • A little too much bickering at times, but that goes with the territory. Too much content to sustain.
  • WAY too many unnecessary tools and arbitrary deadlines
  • Delegation and responsibility of tasks. There’s a certain percentage of tasks that either don’t get done or are passed from person to person
  • Stackoverflow is dangerously close to what we want to build, the good news is that they’re proprietary, and run on a MS stack – we can be the open source alternative
  • We don’t have a clearly defined future

Continue reading ‘Internal reflection results, May 2009′