So I've been off the radar for a while now because I was entering the stressful time that is the end of the year. With deadlines looming everywhere I barely had time to sleep let alone blog. But it's all over now.
So I had two major projects on the go at once and one smaller one bubbling away in the background. The big ones were NPD, a massive group report and presentation proposing a new project to a board of investors, and a day of pitching for journals where we had to take on the role of a publisher and a society. And the one in the background was adapting a fixed layout ebook frmo the reflowable one I had already handed in for my digital publishing module.
So let's start with the biggy - NPD (New Product Development). In a group of seven working as the Art Architecture and Design division of a publishing house we had to come up with a project, write a report about it and pitch it to a board of investors.... all in 12 weeks. Each person in the group took on roles such as head of editorial or finance but with only seven of us there was a lot of doubling up. I ended up as Managing Director of the group for reasons I'm not quite sure of and with the Project Manager we were in charge of overseeing the welfare of the project and of the group. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of stress but
So I had two major projects on the go at once and one smaller one bubbling away in the background. The big ones were NPD, a massive group report and presentation proposing a new project to a board of investors, and a day of pitching for journals where we had to take on the role of a publisher and a society. And the one in the background was adapting a fixed layout ebook frmo the reflowable one I had already handed in for my digital publishing module.
So let's start with the biggy - NPD (New Product Development). In a group of seven working as the Art Architecture and Design division of a publishing house we had to come up with a project, write a report about it and pitch it to a board of investors.... all in 12 weeks. Each person in the group took on roles such as head of editorial or finance but with only seven of us there was a lot of doubling up. I ended up as Managing Director of the group for reasons I'm not quite sure of and with the Project Manager we were in charge of overseeing the welfare of the project and of the group. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of stress but
eventually we pulled it off and proposed a subscription-based website on smart city projects for architects and urban planners. Exciting I know. I have learnt a lot about working in a team, stressing over deadlines and about architecture doing this and in the end was genuinely proud of what we produced. And other people must have liked it too as our presentation came second in the popular vote on the day based on votes from our fellow students and lecturers.
For Journals we had to research a society and a publisher and then work with other groups to perform pitches in front of our lecturer and some industry professionals. We took on the role of Taylor and Francis when we pitched for the Society for the Study of Social Problem's journal Social Problems. We gave a good go at trying to cover all the needs they had set out in their Request For Proposal (RFP) and came out of the meeting with a tentative yes if we worked on our financial projections a bit. We then shed our T&F skin and became the American Dental Association putting our journal out to tender and receiving a pitch from Elsevier (or three of our colleagues pretending to be Elsevier). After a good pitch and a lot of deliberation we gave them a yes but pointed out a few misunderstandings we'd need to iron out. It was a really interesting day and I really enjoyed doing this assignment. And on a plus side I was able to use all the research I'd done on T&F in a job interview (more on that another time).
My fixed layout ebook wasn't as big a demand as the other modules because while those assignments were worth a large percentage of the final grade, for the digital module the heavier parts were out of the way. In some ways it was nice to have just a little thing that I could work on when I needed a break and I think the outcome was good. My digital assignments (and some others) may make their way on here at some point in the future.
So that's it. All the formal teaching for the year is over and now I just have a long summer of dissertation work ahead of me. I have already started interviewing people from journals companies as part of my primary research but can't reveal too much this early on. Instead I will distract you with this picture of all the MA Publishing students this year. Lots of them look a bit green but that's because this photo was taken before a full day of scary presentations. We could have taken it afterwards but the wine seemed more important.
For Journals we had to research a society and a publisher and then work with other groups to perform pitches in front of our lecturer and some industry professionals. We took on the role of Taylor and Francis when we pitched for the Society for the Study of Social Problem's journal Social Problems. We gave a good go at trying to cover all the needs they had set out in their Request For Proposal (RFP) and came out of the meeting with a tentative yes if we worked on our financial projections a bit. We then shed our T&F skin and became the American Dental Association putting our journal out to tender and receiving a pitch from Elsevier (or three of our colleagues pretending to be Elsevier). After a good pitch and a lot of deliberation we gave them a yes but pointed out a few misunderstandings we'd need to iron out. It was a really interesting day and I really enjoyed doing this assignment. And on a plus side I was able to use all the research I'd done on T&F in a job interview (more on that another time).
My fixed layout ebook wasn't as big a demand as the other modules because while those assignments were worth a large percentage of the final grade, for the digital module the heavier parts were out of the way. In some ways it was nice to have just a little thing that I could work on when I needed a break and I think the outcome was good. My digital assignments (and some others) may make their way on here at some point in the future.
So that's it. All the formal teaching for the year is over and now I just have a long summer of dissertation work ahead of me. I have already started interviewing people from journals companies as part of my primary research but can't reveal too much this early on. Instead I will distract you with this picture of all the MA Publishing students this year. Lots of them look a bit green but that's because this photo was taken before a full day of scary presentations. We could have taken it afterwards but the wine seemed more important.
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