15/5 #12

As the showcase looms in the shadows and is now less than 24 hours away. I reflect on the past week and almost shiver. Everything that possibly could have went wrong did. Our ability to think quickly and on our feet was definitely tested as we had to make reassignments and basically redesign our initial plan of action to prepare for the showcase dress rehearsal.

The root of the problem centered around one of our most critical elements: access to the server. For some reason, no one on my team, besides, myself was able to gain access to the remote server. Therefore, everyone’s role moving forward in preparation for the dress rehearsal had to be changed. I now had to be responsible for creating all the HTML pages, which means importing content and embedding all the animations and videos that we needed for the lessons we planned to complete. It may not seem like a lot of work, but trust me, it was, especially embedding the videos. This was a challenge for 2 reasons:

1. I had never done it before in Dreamweaver so I was forced to go in and do some research on how to do it
2. I do not have the software required to view the video file type we use for this project, therefore, I had no way of checking to see if any of the videos were correctly embedded.
   

However, despite all the setbacks, I was able to complete 3 of our 7 lessons in time to show for tomorrow, so I think we did pretty well. Depending on how much time I have tonight, I may even complete a 4th lesson (no promises here).


On top of all the problems we encountered this week, we also had to take time to try and plan for our 8-min presentation. Seeing the events of the week, I decided to stray away for the typical showcase format, where the PM leads out the entire presentation. This time, everyone in the team will participate and will present a different aspect of the project. This format was essentially helpful, as I have just been too busy with other project activities, it would have been almost impossible for me to create and prepare for the entire presentation myself. Also, if tomorrow’s presentation goes well, we may just use the same format for the actual showcase in a few weeks,, and who knows begin a revolution for future 6210 teams, where the PM is not the only one in charge of the presentation.

In the upcoming weeks after the rehearsal, we plan to:

• Figure out how to allow everyone else on the team access to the remote server
• Complete the remaining 4 (or 3) sections
• Make revisions (based on feedback) to lessons 1-3
• Begin and finalize the photo and video galleries
• Create transcripts for all the remaining videos
• Conduct evaluations
• Complete remaining documentation