Inside View from Ireland

Four Years of Basecamp

I AM TRACKING several important projects with Basecamp at the moment and believe that if you need a minimalist project management program, you should try Basecamp.

For creative multimedia students who are new to project tracking, Basecamp provides simple e-mail advisories and easy tick-off boxes that require minimal effort to use. I like seeing my Basecamp projects on my Xperia Arc handset and also find the RSS feeds of the projects very helpful. I have seen more complex project management tools before but Basecamp has all the fundamental parts: multiple user management, task management, milestones, message boards, whiteboards and file upload/download. I am currently tracking seven projects within one major tasking. I like the way Basecamp's web-based service works fast and without any sort of software. And I also like how quickly you can leave Basecamp and never get a nagging email trying to get you back on board. That's been my experience after working with Basecamp on and off during the past four years.

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GTD

GANNT Works

THE FASTER WE GET to a shematic view of group project management, the more efficient our creative multimedia project becomes. I made a five-minute Camtasia clip (see above) that points to Delicious links supporting group project management at LIT-Clonmel. Three main points arose in my lecture, related to the value of GANTT charts (and the usefulness of Gantto.com), the relationship between primary and dependent tasks and the usefulness of the Model-View-Control design pattern.

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Planning Strategy Sorting Tactics

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I TEACH A project management module in the creative multimedia degree programme at Tipperary Institute where I've discovered the importance of highlighting the difference between strategy and tactics. I think it's useful to point to established professionals like Keith Bohanna, especially since Keith has a track record for getting things done. My operational definition of the words "strategy" and "tactics" reflect my background, so I have to lay the seeds for meaningful classroom discussion where both practical examples of well-founded strategy and tactics come into the open for clear understanding. My first port of call in this classroom exercise is my blog, where I've noted a few public references to both strategies and tactics in the mainstream Irish media.

Strategy and Tactics

 

Learning Project Mgt by Reflecting

I LEARN A LOT by reflecting on what has gone before. At the moment, I'm listening to audio tracks made by students as they highlight items of information from their first week on a project management module in Tipperary Institute. I'm teaching a basic module, with an emphasis on agile development. I've asked students to offer up their own viewpoints next week because I want to learn from what they cite as the high points of the first four hours of directed classwork.

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Direct link to YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut7yw6JTXgw

 

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Creative Multimedia Project Management

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I STARTED THE 2010 autumn semester at 9AM with a two-hour session covering multimedia project management. I made an 8-minute Audioboo about the main points and a five-minute screencast too. I'm asking students to provide reflective feedback via audio and their commentary will influence how far we can push out the boat this semester. The best result was getting an Audioboo from Helen Murray because she did not attend class but her thoughtful comments suggest she has caught up with the flow. I'm looking forward to continuing this kind of creative recap and I'm trying to figure out if I can get students to produce the four-minute summations throughout the next 12 weeks. Stay tuned for the result.

Project Managementboo

 

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View on YouTube or see related links.

 

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Managing through Handheld Touchpoints

WITHIN A FEW WEEKS, my creative multimedia teaching workload at Tipperary Institute will spin up to its normal pace and I'm trying to manage my interaction with the flow by porting as much of it as possible onto a handheld device. The first step involves creating a mobile learning scratch space. I'd like students to access the learning materials on their mobile devices with the minimum specifications being (1) a browser, (2) MP3 player and (3) Bluetooth connectivity on the device. We meet for 12 weeks. I want to beam audio revision notes to the classrrom via Bluetooth. I want to offer an RSS feed that prefaces each class with working notes and follows every class with lecture notes. I may use InsideView.ie as the main hub of activity since the information flow should not bother the long-standing readers of my blog. The photo at left shows one of the views of the project management module. The N86 handset is looking at a working Google Document (bit.ly/tipp-pm) that will be revised during the academic term to show what's up next.

Without Me (Ragtime Mix)

 

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Seeking Stable Three

I FIND CREATIVITY in serenity and just down the street from my assigned work desk at Tipperary Institute, I have walked through some of the most serene spaces in County Tipperary, Ireland. The spaces form part of the Ballingarrane Estate, a large piece of land safeguarded by South Tipperary County Council for use as a science and technology park. It will take some time and money to operationalise the vision of a thriving industrial park and along the way, some of the special character of the place might be subordinated. So I take a half hour every week to walk the grounds of Ballingarrane, thinking of the creativity that could thrive inside Stable Three, a notional place that's actually a stable for horses, complete with bales of hay and rusting door hinges on the gates. I can hear creative voices in that space already. I can see the simple steps necessary to convert the stables into an audiovisual workspace. I know the people on our third level teaching staff who are able to specify how to renovate the space with insulation, overhead windows, and 21st century fittings while also keeping the character of the premises intact. So I'm going to document my vision on my blog, including ideas that will fit into a third level project management module, knowing that creative ideas often spark collaboration when shared.

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Bonus Link: My photos of Ballingarrane.

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Working Within a Group

A GUEST POST from the Tipperary Institute project management Skunkworks.

Several things become very obvious when working within a group. On one hand, there are things you expected along with things you did not. Things you thought you knew quickly become things you don't know. On the other hand you can find a subject you like and become quite good at it. As a mature student in a creative multimedia project group, I mingle with men and women of mixed ages and differing backgrounds. Most of us are mature students and we find it can be difficult to touch base outside of the classroom. We have, however, achieved several important initial goals by using a number of tools. Our success goes beyond diligently managing our e-mail. We attribute part of our success to Skype. Free online conference calls through Skype have proven invaluable to us. Skype is free, easy to use, and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Google Talk and Google Groups have both been useful too. The great thing about these forms of communication is that if you use text it will save it for you and you have your transcript ready to drop into your weekly or monthly diaries.

Marking Cashel Heritage

IF I DRIVE near Tipperary Institute and ask Google Maps to find "Rock" the result on my car's dashboard offers a pinpoint that dead centre in the middle of the image at left. Within a few weeks, the search engine results will also point to a very clever interpretation of the town's heritage trail because several creative multimedia students in Tipperary Institute plan to make a short video clip that will play on phones, the internet and on television sets. The idea germinated during a tasking in a social media module in which Laura Hobson made a storyboard that showed what someone could do when alighting from a bus in County Tipperary. In Cashel's case, it might mean ascending the Rock and walking the grounds where the photograph was taken. Or it could mean following prominent signage around the town to see the oldest remnants of the town wall and other artefacts from 700 years ago. If this creative multimedia project pans out as promising as it appears, I hope it suggests a day's worth of walking about Cashel. Several families visiting my adopted home this summer would like that suggestion.

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HennessyBen and Project Mgt

BEN HENNESSY gets a place marker on Inside View because he took the shortest route from tasking to completion of an academic assessment. Asked to gather information relevant to building a personal profile, Ben went to the top of the PR mountain and asked Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their feedback on an FIR podcast. My first reaction was it was rather cheeky because FIR is one of the top-ranked business podcasts in the world and getting in the earbuds of nearly 2000 practitioners with an academic tasking seemed rather precocious. But Neville and Shel acknowledged the question and put it into the FIR Friendfeed room (a private room but open to most requests for entry) where it's getting traction. If you're interested in adding to the discussion, feel free to join the thread. I imagine some will want to know more about the source of the question. That's why I've bumped HennessyBen onto the front page of my blog for 15 minutes of fame. Expect to see more of Ben in the "project management" category as he embraces a very creative work placement programme during the summer months.

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