This is the overview on how communication in the development cycle works online.
The blog system (Moveable Type) is the main collaborative tool we will use. Any useful project information either goes in here or is referenced from here. Public information on the subjects we are exploring goes in the Massive blog, this projects get developed in the headbin.
Rather than pre-empting how all you folks will want and need to use information, the plan is for people to PULL content rather than there be any great system of pushing content to you.
The aim of this post is to give an overview of how the system works and why, if you're envisaging having to wade through yet more bloody websites to find anything, you may be pleasantly surprised.
The available channels and how to tap into them:
1) Alerts - all project communication will be done via the blog. Project-wide announcements will be sent out as emails (like this) but these will be used increasingly sparingly so that the widest possible group of advisors and contributors can deal with the volume. For more regular email alerts, we are going to tap into syndication.
The blog system is set up to take advantage of syndication using various "aggregators" which are little programs that track syndicated web content on any number of sites you are interested in. These aggregators dump headlines into whatever software you organise your life around, putting pointers to relevent information (you choose to receive) wherever your eyeballs are.
What aggregator you use is down to your role and personality. The information can appear as
e.g.
a) Web page(s) with automatically updated links to the syndicated content you need to track (for web people like me, here's mine)
b) Emailed updates (for Outlook folks, tools like NewsGator exist)
c) News tickers for people who like Stockmarket style information direct to their desktop (AmphetaDesk)
d) Mobile alerts, iTV whatever
The beauty of this system is that it doesn't rely on you getting all your project information from one website or on thequality.com building some great big amazing cross-channel broadcast system. Whatever device you have now or in the future should be able to tap into this. It also means that, in theory, we can get on with the job of making some kick arse interactive entertainment without turning into librarians (like me! {:-).
2) Posts - articles, key references, etc... need to be posted into the headbin so they can be searched/browsed/referenced
3) Blog comments - anyone in the team can post public feedback on any post. A smaller circulation list is notified of each comment. Some comments (e.g. errata) will be removed once what they describe is dealt with. Others will be left up as a discussion thread. Use comments to this post to provide feedback.
4) Email - keep sending emails. Use your discretion whether something is appropriate for public filing or not. Email bits that should be filed, can be transferred to a blog post.
The overall aim here is not to get lumbered with maintaining a dinosaur document management system (ever seen one of those?) but at the same time take full commercial advantage of online publishing. Suggestions and logic bugs received gratefully.
Posted by .M. at September 26, 2003 10:23 AM