The logo is chosen.
The website is up and running.
The storyline has been chosen.
A draft of the script is posted (it was already written).
I've learned a good bit, too. In fact, here's another list:
1. Sometimes you just gotta make a call.
The graphics team told me none of the logos were good enough for the project. I listened. In fact, I probably agree. But I should have forced them to pick one then. Instead, I went back to the participants and basically said, "Try again." Needless to say, no one was interested.
Later, when it was apparent that there were no more logo submissions to be had, I realized that we needed to tie up the loose end and move on. I recalled that the graphics team had unanimously voted one particular logo as "Use It If You Have To" or "It's Alright I Guess." So I used that one. I think this was almost therapeutic for the group: the problem was solved, and they didn't have to risk their egos again on another submission.
I think it will be even more important later on for someone to just step in and "make the call". I'm sure that "someone" will be me. The challenge is figuring out how to force the decision-making process without actually making all the decisions.
2. Websites are a full-time job.
I seriously spent 40 or so hours building the website the first week. Lately I spend upwards of 15 hours a week, tweaking, editing, polishing, et cetera.
3. There is very little you can't do for free if you put your mind to it.
The biggest problem I've encountered thus far was how to get a form submission working, since I don't have a server or any possibility of adding database support to my hosting site (Googlepages). Another problem I faced was scalability: even if I could get the forms to submit to my email inbox, how would I ever keep up with the workload that could potentially cause? Think of it--what if I had to manually copy every form submission into whatever application it needed to appear in?
I found solutions, sure. But they all wanted my credit card number. And since I don't plan on making any money with this film project, I'm certainly trying not to waste any on it, either.
I finally found a third-party form submission site that did what I needed (form to custom email format), but it was ad-supported and included an ugly ad table at the bottom of everything it sent. This was not the kind of thing that made it simple to copy and paste. Not to mention, I really didn't have any idea where I should be copying and pasting to...I needed an application that was online, scalable, automatically indexed, searchable, and allowed for immediate response to anything published on it, with bonus points to an application that would allow email forwarding for publishing content.
Then it hit me: a blog! It fulfills all the requirements, including the bonus points, and it's free to boot! So my ultimate solution combines the following applications:
- MailMyForm Form App with custom email format.
- The discovery that MailMyForm can be hacked to create dynamic links in its resulting email.
- Gmail's built in Filter: Forward To app.
- Blogger's built in Mail-To-Blogger address for publishing.
The result is slick. Users can submit the forms, their comments are sent to Gmail, which forwards them to Blogger, which publishes them immediately. The post includes dynamically-generated links that allow a user to see other related comments, by user or topic.
Using Gmail as a middle-man has several benefits. First, it automatically archives all of the comments made. Second, it allows me to include other information in the original form submission after a [pound]end tag (which forces Blogger not to post anything after it is invoked), such as the IP address of the commenter, time of comment, a unique ID, et cetera. And of course all of this extra information is thereby indexed and searchable, which allows me to perform rudimentary identity verification if the need should arise.
That's all for now. My next big project is the publicity aspect. We'll see how that goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment