Production Lab Week One

MA Media Suite - Production Lab

Production Lab
Towards the MA by Practice
How we will organise ourselves
Example of a Lab project

MA by Practice
Plan and implement an appropriate production project.
Utilise a knowledge and critical understanding of professional conventions and possible innovations.
Solve contemporary problems of professional practice.
Deal creatively with complex issues.

MA by Practice
Critically evaluate project products and processes
Communicate their conclusions clearly to specialist and non-specialist audiences
Reflect and evaluate

Towards the MA by Practice
Production Lab:
Testing stuff out
Space to get things wrong
Emphasis on process and critical reflection
Stepping stone to MA by Practice

Organising yourself
Undertake a placement
spend time in an organisation
Work on a ‘live’ brief
produce professional work for a client
Work on an industry-focused project
Create a project related to your sector

Phase 1: Audit
What have you learnt so far on the course?
How can you apply that to a new project?
Submit an idea for a project (project initiation)

Phase 2: Exploration
How can I use my skills to innovate?
How can I create a lab for myself?
It shouldn’t matter if things go wrong.

Phase 3: Consolidation
How can I learn from what I did?
How can I apply it in a bigger project context?
How can I articulate this to my peers and to industry?

Timetable
Feb 8th - Phase 1 (class)
Feb 22th - Phase 2 (class)
Project management workshop
19th April - Phase 3 (tutorial)
May 10th - Lab conference
tutorials

Assessment
Lab report and evaluation (60% 14th May 2010)
Project Initiation Document
Highlight reports
Blog posts
Evaluation
Proposal for a MA by Production (40% 4th June 2010)

What’s your lab?

Bournville is my lab
http://bournvillevillage.com

Bournville is my lab
Undertake an industry placement
Work on a live brief from an industry client
Develop an industry-focused project
Initiating the project:
http://bit.ly/plform

Project summary
“ Edit a local website for a period of time; try to innovate around content; shape an editorial stance; consider how to make the blog sustainable”

Context
Lots of debate (research)
Different Models (example)
Independently Funded News Consortia

Objectives
Experiment with different media
Make an attempt to get readers more involved
Create a clear editorial stance for the blog

Project Approach
Create a small team to help me work on the blog (especially as Cadbury story is about to go HUGE)

Partners
Other than co-workers? None.

Risks
My day job gets in the way.
A stronger editorial style puts readers off.
Mitigation:
Work as a team.
Consult locals before publication.

Exploration & Reflection
Use bournvillevillage.com for exploration
Use daveharte.com for reflecting

SUCCESS

Gritty Bournville
Applied new skills (Google maps)
Innovated around user needs
Took a current issue (data re-use)
Reflection and discussion with peers
http://daveharte.com/bournville/data-is-the-new-grit/
10 comments
Wide-ranging debate
Linked from other blogs

Cadbury takover Coveritlive
Applied new skills (aggregating content, covering ‘live’ event)
Identified gap (no-one else ‘live-blogging’)
Failed to understand event-blogging
Failed to understand the story
Failed to engage readers (stats)

Highlight report
Let my tutor know what’s happening with my project. What’s changing on it:
Project status:
Produced x amount of stories. Cadbury thing increasing attention.

Highlight report
What you’re going to do next
Try using video
Avoid standard news reporting style
Risk update
Failing to engage a team - out of scope
Difficulty in identifying an editorial stance - need tutor support

Turing this into a MA by Practice
How do I make this blog a sustainable hyperlocal news blog for Bournville?
How do I ensure that it continues to innovate going forward? (examples + strategy)
How do I get it noticed by industry?

Production Lab
What you need to do now:
Join the ‘Production Lab module on Moodle
Talk to your peers, your tutor, yourself…
Submit Project Initiation Document by February 19 th 3pm - http://bit.ly/plform
Be here on February 22 nd – Phase Two

http://moodle.bcu.ac.uk	25
http://masocialmedia.posterous.com	10
http://justblogging.co.uk	1

Production Lab Week One

by Paul Hadley on Feb 10, 2010

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Production Lab Week One — Webinar Transcript