Building content for New Media

{ December 6, 2007 @ 11:58 pm } · { newmedia, oldmedia }
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Writing old media content, in the new media world, is not easy as it seems. Working for the largest public broadcasting service and providing the tools to produce online content, my team has some great ideas in producing great online content. But working with old media, has some of the expected and unexpected difficulties:

  • Most old media journalists lack the experience of online content
  • Old Media business requirements have higher priority than new media
  • Difficulties in taking risks in the online world

The main steps, my team is working at, is explaining and providing knowledge on Web 2.0 applications, like Flickr, Digg, del.icio.us,…. My objective in the coming year is to provide expertise to editorial and journalists, to start using Web 2.0 applications so that they can understand to whom they are developing content for.

I expect my department to be making several mashups and also contribute to the social network community within the next year. And hopefully by discussing with journalists, we can improve what we put out onto the internet, and contribute more to our users.

I believe old media will gradually catch up to the Web 2.0 atmosphere and will succeed on the web front.

(Picture from Laughing Squid on Flickr)

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Being successful as a manager

{ November 30, 2007 @ 11:25 pm } · { project manager, successful }
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There are many books about being a great manager, fortunately I never read books on being the best successful manager.

But starting of as a manager is very difficult , and here are several points you should consider to being a successful manager.

Don’t expect the company to change overnight. A lot of us have great ideas how we can improve performance, cost and time to our department or to the company. The situation is you need to convince everyone to your idea. This takes time and effort to convince people, specifically stakeholders if you want your ideas to succeed. I have seen very aggressive managers trying to push their ideas and agendas to the company, and yet it takes a company to approve the idea approximately 6 months to a year. Don’t expect the company to change overnight.

Be a good role model. If your department is working long hours,Successful manager by Delgoff [Easy] you should as well. You need to be showing that you are doing more than they are. By doing so, you are showing the team, that their manager understands the needs of the team. This may sound like common sense, but we have all met many managers who just have no idea, what their team is doing. These kind managers get little respect from their team. Of course, having a drink or two with your team, definitely does not hurt.

Be communicative. When things are going bad, speak up. Tell your manager, or the project manager, but tell someone. You may be blamed, but most likely not because you are confronting situations which are occurring in your team. By speaking up, you are giving the opportunity for other people to help in resolving these issues. If you do not communicate, and you reach a point that the project is doomed to fail, you will be blamed for the project.

I will write additional tidbits with real examples, during the next week or so.

(Picture is done by Delgoff [Easy])

Yahoo Pipes

{ November 18, 2007 @ 8:28 pm } · { barcamplondon3, pipes }
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Spending the weekend at barcamplondon3 was a great experience. Having the opportunity to learn a couple of development techniques and meet many campers.

So for the last couple of days, I have been spending time, learning about the community using Yahoo Pipes. I have entered a lot of feeds, then order the feeds and then truncate the list to about 60.

So, using the feeds I am getting a feel about the English communities many projects. It sounds very interesting what everyone is doing, and I hope to be part of this community.

4thwave