Quick roundup of the week.
TEAM
Valiant effort hooking everyone up with Alex this week. Last minute replacement, Soren from Myspace, last night was entertaining but no substitute for the real thing! {;-) We'll get you guys together next time.
Still scouting for finance and sales stakeholders for the team so keep them leads coming.
I'm getting runner/work experience enquiries from broadcastfreelancer.com. Who posted there? Good idea!
COMMS
The message is clear. Too many systems. Too confusing. No one wants to wade through lots of places looking for updates.
A number of suggests have been made including relying more on emails and having "one place" for all uploads/sharing etc.
http://modfilms.com/twiki/bin/view/Sanctuary/ProjectIssues#Too_many_systems
More direct comms via email is a no-brainer. But not so clear is what "one place" we should focus on.
We've tried most approaches now for this elusive "one place" and it's clear that different folks gravitate to different ways of communicating, and also at different points in the project (e.g. concept artists and developers happy with forums, no one else!). Hence the proliferation of SMS, blogs, forums, wikis, chats, community sites, image galleries...
As always, wiki changes are a good barometer of what's going on day-to-day.
http://modfilms.com/twiki/bin/view/Sanctuary/WebChanges
Interested in your thoughts...
PLANS
Would like to launch a revised and reskinned (beta) of modfilms.net in two months.
We've got a stack of suggestions, bug reports, wish list items collated
http://trac.modfilms.com:7861/trac/sanctuary/report/1
Soren, I'll bring you up to speed when we catch up and let's work out some target dates. Steve, Alex, Julie and I have been mapping out the activities across all areas (Information Architecture) and discussing next steps. We'll need another session to wrap this work off ahead. Alex has volunteered to focus on the graphic redesign this month.
FUNDING
A number of leads still active awaiting follow-up. There's some work to do on the budget and biz plan to satisfy these. Aiming to prepare Enterprise R&D grant materials for Tues meeting with Costas from the Thames Innovation Centre.
FILMS
Sanctuary post prod tootles on without funding. I've been neglecting producer duties somewhat, immersing myself in Shake and Maya, but lots of promising developments. Chris's nanobat prop is taking shape (in a French country-side barn) and Jigesh is starting to send me camera tracking data. I need to get back to Soren in DK (yet another Soren) re. character animation.
NEXT STEPS
* Determine funding and team building next-steps - Michela, Soren
* Revise and circulate Information Architecture - Michela, Soren, Julie
* modfilms.net development