We discussed the audience - I felt we should aim it at 18-29 yr olds rather than 16-25 for two reasons. 1) If we include the under 18's will this restrict our content. It would only take one mistaken article/comment on the website to put us in trouble. I looked at the Exeter City Council website which includes local demographics. The site suggested that in Exeter we have a high proportion of this age, group, that they are mainly the one's working or are students. As the theme of our project is Work, Rest & Play I feel this age group would be more likely to show an interest in the website.
As the discussion progressed I felt we could fall into the danger of making the project all about the website rather than it's content and concept. I mentioned the Headliners website which is a website for 'young people aged 8-18 produce articles on issues that are important to themselves, but of interest to everyone'. http://www.headliners.org/
We briefly talked about using consumer content. This element really excites me. I think it would not only be great to include content from other freelance journalists/students and local people, but would also fit better with the idea of interactive multi-media. We cannot make all the content ourselves and if we were doing this for real, it would be an impossible task to go out research the features and make them quick enough to keep a floating audience interested. I say floating as I feel people rarely stay loyal to a website unless it grabs their interest or has something entertaining or useful to them on an ongoing basis. The success of social-media sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Twitter seems to be about the ease of communicating with the wider world and friends about what people are, what they like, what they want to share, what they need. This is why this element of the project excites me as it appears to be part of a new and growing industry at a time when most industry's (such as print media) are failing due to the 'credit crunch'.
It was interesting to note that two of the small, but long term businesses we interviewed about Princesshay last year have closed down (Clayhanger/Orange Blossom) and the other has been taken over by an international company Ranstad (Calibre Recruitment). Most businesses are moving their shop-fronts online. Even the local driving school Elliscars which has been next to the central station for around twenty years has closed the 'recently refurbished' office and moved to online bookings.
If our project was real we couldn't afford to make a website which is just a 'shop front' for entertainment and information. I feel in order to make it a success and used regularly we need to make it as interactive and consumer-led/contributed to as possible. By having the 'publics' content published on the website it means that each piece of work/photo etc will be automatically advertised to probably at least another five people. If they were then able to share this information with the social networking sites, this number is then infinitely multiplied. At the moment I have 163 friends on my facebook account. This is a relatively small number as I restrict my friends to people I have actually met/know or spoken to. Looking through my friends the person with the least friends has 63, the person with the most friends has 1108 friends, but most people appear to have 200-600 friends.
If I was to share one article/photo with all of my friends and then ask them and their friends to go to the website perhaps half of them would do it and another half would pass it onto their friends who would also do it. That is approximately 81+40 =121 people advertised to 'virally'. When you take into account groups on facebook which I also feel we should double up and make another copy of the site for a group on each of the networking sites, the hit rate could reach 1000 people.
Jaime arrived at 11:30pm and we then drew a 'tree' diagram on an A1 piece of paper of the site, what areas it would include, how many pages it would have.
We have the main areas work, rest and play, but as it's only a first draft, I feel the site is wishy washy. It will have an article on what the best festivals were this year, how to get work at a festival. A video of a cook-off between David and Jaime for 'Cooking on a Budget'. Jobs, Gap Year, Photo Competition.
My concerns: I feel we are going about it the wrong way. I feel we should agree a 'statement' for the website - What is it about? Why is it there? What do we want to offer, service/entertainment/magazine? If we agreed this it would help us to decide content and what content to ask for from other people. At the moment it feels like the project is about the website rather than the fact it is a vehicle to display work/information/photo's etc for public viewing.
We agreed to do a poster to put up, which will invite students/journalists to contribute to the site - allowing them a place to publish their work. This will enable us to fill the whole site, rather than having unfilled holes which looks unprofessional. David, Mary and Jaime disappeared at the end of the session I assume to produce the poster.
I have asked each of them for contact details (emails/mobiles) which they are not willing to give. Richard and I talked about communicating through facebook as there's a problem with me. He has added me as a friend and he said he set up a group which he's invited the others to join. It will be very difficult for me to break into the group work if I am unable to contact anyone. Jaime is still not speaking to me at all, which Mary and David appear to be falling in with as they all went to the same school and live in Ottery, but I hope the childishness will not continue.
The group did not wish to split the project up into jobs - deja vu - so this week we're to research job roles and come back to the group with what roles we think we'll need. I've already done this as I thought it would be a good thing to agree those things today. Next week is hopefully good enough, but I am worried it will become too late and we'll all be panicking to get things done at the last minute. I need to ensure everything I need to do is done early. Hopefully this year it will be easier as we're not making ONE video the main element to go on the website. I am hoping this will allow me some space to make some creative decisions about multi-media products to include podcasts/video vox pops/quick how to's.
Richard was an absolute star. He started the session having produced a complete schedule of what we'll have to do over the coming weeks and I hope he is one of the people chosen for Editor as he has a very logical mind and is obviously quite efficient.
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