Spring Quarter and Out of the Gate

School is back in session and we have a lot to organize now to get our project from start to finish in just about 8 weeks. We will be having a group meeting on Thursday to decide on our final logo and talk about the four or five projects we will be pursuing in the coming weeks.

We also started to brainstorm ideas on what we feel our designers should design for when it comes to the user interface of our web site. (see the images below)

In the last two weeks we have actually figured out our financial benefactor that is able to hold our donations for this project. Once we have the final thumbs up, we will be sure to make this information public.

Also, We have also finished the project proposal which better explains what our project is about. I will paste some of the document below:

Our Mission

To create a multimedia-based project that informs, inspires, and calls its audience to become more involved in their local community.

Project Description

As students of the local university, It is easy to become so engrossed in our studies that we overlook the issues in our community and those around us. Our group of visual communicators has become aware of these issues that have directly affected the quality of life in these areas. With this in mind, our team has a goal of giving back to the community that has welcomed us with open arms.

The Project C team will develop a website featuring short documentary videos and informational graphics. Each story will be paired with a nonprofit organization in the region that supports, or is the direct focus of the story. Using our website as the outlet, we will give community members the ability to support the organization of their choice without having to donate money.  By utilizing a voting system built into our site, users will have the ability to vote for the documentary story (and nonprofit organizations) with a click of their mouse.

Before the site launch, we will be securing funding through private and public donations, which will then be divided and distributed according to the voting percentages. For example, if a story receives 20% of the sites’ overall votes, that same percentage of the funds is donated to the corresponding nonprofit organization. This is not a competition for funding; every organization will be given a part of the donations.

Target Audience

Our target audience is the local community members who will come to the site to vote. With this in mind, we will be utilizing web-safe standards that will allow this project to be accessible from all operating systems and browsers, old and new. We will also optimize the site to run smoothly even on dial-up connections. We understand that with an economic gap also comes a technology gap, and we will address this issue as this project develops.

There is a secondary audience of outside communities and students. We want to set a model for how people can give back to their communities with projects and efforts such as Project C.

Timeline

Project C will be a 10-week project taking place this Spring. The launch of the site and the beginning of voting is set for May 23, 2011. The voting will close on June 6, 2011*.

*We reserve the right to extend this date if we feel it is necessary.

Project Branding!

In our last meeting, the team talked about the direction we would like to take in our branding. Our designers brought in their rough designs and we decided on the directions we liked best. We will choose our final brand as a group at the start of next quarter.

Photos from March 3rd Meeting

Meeting before the meeting at Tony's house.

Kyle tells Tony and Annette about Community Food Initiatives before the group meeting.

We had another great turnout with about 20 people.

Brainstorming documentary topics.

Kyle and Max engage in conversation.


The results of a dynamic brainstorm for branding.

March 3rd Meeting

Another successful meeting! We talked primarily about stories of interest in the local area and about the branding of our project. On Sunday, we should have an array of logos to choose from and to critique as our designers submit them to our Facebook group.

We also have a tentative schedule which we showed the group as well:

Before Spring Break - Project Proposal, Find partners, Story Topics and teams finalized, Branding

March 28 - Funding secured, stories are shooting ready
April 15th - Final Design for web/print
April 21st or 22nd - rough cuts of all work
April 23rd- Begin Marketing (print designs done and printed, short video for web marketing)
May 16 - All Stories edited / integrate with website begins
May 23rd- Launch site (voting begins)
June 6th - Voting Closes (we reserve the right to extend this date)

We also got in contact with an alumni from PhotoPhilanthropy in San Francisco and we are going to be sending out a project proposal to be considered for a possible partnership.

Brainstorm #1

By the end of our first successful brainstorm, we were able to fill in the blank and take a large step toward branding the project. Project C, that is. Tagline: "Clicking Creates Change"

First Group Meeting - Thursday, February 24

Our first informational meeting was really successful! We asked anyone who was interested in Project C to drop by my(Tony) house to talk about their thoughts, fears, and interests in the project. We seem to have a really strong team of 25 talented students and non-students, with skills that vary from story-telling, photography, web development, design, videography, and even marketing.

We explained the project and started to talk about our next steps in the process. For the rest of this Winter quarter, Project C will be meeting every Thursday in order to brand and prep the project for next quarter. In order to keep in close contact with the team, we will be creating a secret group on Facebook.

The team is getting excited, we could all feel it in the air.

Clicking Creates Change

The Project C blog is going to be used in order to show the process work and progress of our project which is ultimately aiming to give back to the community of which we are a part. (More on our project concept to come soon)

Our first major meetings were used in order to layout the business plan of our project, initially dubbed the "Help Athens" project. A quick thank you is in order to Brandon Logan for helping us set up the outline of our business plan. We will post a PDF version when we are satisfied with its content and wording.

As we (we being: Tony Guglielmi, Annette Drupac, and Kyle Ackley) sat in a meeting last Sunday, we found ourselves becoming more frustrated with the name "Help Athens" because we know this project was something that won't just necessarily stop in the Athens community. We want it to grow.

So how did we come up with the name Project C?

We pulled up the whiteboard sitting across the room, and began writing down keywords that came to our mind about the project. Some examples of our key words are: community, change, world, life, cause, create change, people, culture, social, motivate.

After taking a step back we noticed that we had actually created a list of words where a majority started with the letter "C". As we pondered this thought, the three of us all asked the same question, "What do we ultimately want our users to do? . . . CLICK!" Thus our motto "clicking creates change" was created and Project C had a name which was more fitting to represent its motivation.