This document provides an overview of a proposed project to support online colloquia and conferences. The project aims to expand the audiences and scale up recording efforts for more events. It would provide a unified online presence and streamline the workflow for hosting events. Key aspects that are discussed include the benefits, team roles needed, technical architecture, required resources, risks, and milestone dates.
2. Support for Online Colloquia and
Conferences
John MacDermott, Warren Petrofsky
3. Why are we here?
• Expand the potential audiences of colloquia and
conferences.
• Scale-up our recording efforts to larger and larger
numbers of events.
• Reduce the workload involved in recording individual
events on campus
Increase SAS’ scholarly presence online
4. The elevator pitch
• For Centers and Departments
• who host colloquia and conferences
• the result of this pilot
• is a solution
• that both increases your presence online and
expand the potential reach of your research.
• Unlike your current solution,
• our project will scale-up and reduce workflow
involved with hosting such conferences.
6. The NOT list
IN OUT
Unified online presence for SAS Efficiently manage admin functions such as
conferences and Colloquia registration, call for and evaluation of
papers
Streamlined capture workflow
Facilitate asynchronous and synchronous
online activities.
UNRESOLVED
tagged and searchable video
7. Your project community
Centers and Departments
<team#2> Your core team
<group#1>
Everyone else !
... is always bigger than you think!
10. What stuff do you need?
Resource Where will it come from?
11. What keeps us up at night
• Can we build something that is more branded
that a YouTube Channel
12. Trade-off sliders
The classic four
ON OFF Feature completeness (scope)
ON OFF Stay within budget (budget)
ON OFF Deliver project on time (time)
ON OFF High quality, low defects (quality)
Other important things
ON OFF Ease of use
ON OFF Don’t make me think!
ON OFF Detailed audits (log everything)
ON OFF <insert yours>
13. What are your key milestone dates?
Milestone Date
e.g. Project initiation Xx/xx/2012
Start first test user
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
This is a guess. Not a commitment.
Editor's Notes
Project name – pick a cool sounding name for your projectSponsors – list your project sponsors here (the people with the money)Putting your sponsors name boldly out there for all to see is a great way to get their engagement and attention (necessary for any successful project).
Write down all the reasons why your team would wants to engage this project in the first place.Then pick and highlight the most important one.
This one is optional. Do it if you think it’s fun or helpful. Otherwise skip it.If you could walk into a store, and buy the shrink wrapped version of your software, what the design of the box look like and what would it say?Point here is to get your team looking at your project through the eyes of your end customer.
List all the items you think you are (and are NOT) going to deliver within the scope of this project.Remember, that your deliverables may change as you get into the project. The deliverables you cite here are initial goals – not necessarily commitments. You may find that you will adjust your deliverables as you discover more about user needs, what works and what doesn’t.
List everyone you are going to have to interact with at some point during the course of your project.Goal is to start building relationships with these people and let them know we are coming down the tracks (before we actually get there).
Set expectations around who you are going to need and what kind of skills they will need to have to pull this off.Use names if specific people are important (i.e. Billy is the only guy who can do X).
Make a simple sketch showing what you think will be the major features of your project This is about letting people know how we plan on approaching this thing.Check your clip Art Libraries or Smart Art graphics for components to a a diagram. Or just had-draw a diagram and scan it. Do whatever works best for you.
What are the resources (equipments, services, etc.) you think you’ll need, and where do you think you’ll get it?
This is your chance to call out any craziness you’ve heard while building the deck, and having a frank conversation with your sponsors and your team about how you are going to handle it.This is perhaps on of the most powerful slides in the deck – it’s your chance to ask for whatever you need to be successful and the consequences if you don’t get it.Use it!
This one is optional. Use it if you think it’s helpful; otherwise skip it.When push comes to shove, something has to give. Here we want to be clear on what that is.On agile projects we flex on scope. But there could be others factors at play here so get ready to listen as you customer tells you which forces can bend (scope) and which are written in stone (usually budget).Slider rules:1. No two sliders can occupy the same level.2. List other important project factors down below.
Give your sponsors some idea of timeline for this thing. When will it start? What are the major milestone dates (e.g. relation to the academic calendar)?This isn’t a commitment (too many unknowns). It’s just a really rough guess. Don’t treat it as anything else.