Week 8: Online Multi‐Media Presentations

We are almost at the end of our project and now we have to set up the video for the Foundation. I believe it is going to be amazing. This module I spent with my team mates made me become more responsible of the task I have to solve and helped me to understand a lot about my personality in a group work. Therefore, which is my role and how I can be useful at the best for the others.

Personally, I think that the most important thing I have learned about using communities and network in innovative design is that it makes it work better and people have more fun. By using online tools even more people can join the project and many ideas and feedback can come out. I believe working with a group of people rather than working alone is better, since the work can be observed from different point of views and different opinions can be given. A designer usually realizes what people would like to have and therefore something innovative and attractive. If this work is solved by implementing the use of internet and online platforms such as 'forums', everything will be easier and the route to the success will be closer.

Week 7

So this is almost the end and we still have a lot of work to do!... Me and my team work mates have come up with a lot of interesting and original ideas but still most of them have to be more detailed and put in an organized way.

Evaluating all the things we have talked about during this weeks, the most important theme I can find out is that of crowd sourcing. Me and my team work mates were trying look at a really good site which could help the Gogorobì Foundation to become better known by the other around world. What we did was to try to analyze it in detail by pointing out all the strengths and weaknesses and coming up with a conclusion with the respective motivations.

Personally I consider crowd sourcing a really good way to make an organization be known by other people and sometimes it could be a good help for fundraising and since the Gogorobì Foundation is looking for fundraisers this is a good opportunity. I believe there are some people that are able and would like to donate and help this organization but first of all it has to be attractive. People should see it clearly and understand everything about it and this is another reason why it should be helpful for the NGO. Through the use of the crowd sourcing sites people can see exactly what is the organization like and what are their needs. It is also possible to put the contacts which is extremely important to have everywhere.

Third reason why its good for the Gogorobì Foundation is that there are also free crowd sourcing sites where the companies don't have to pay anything to make an advertisement about themselves and I consider this an excellent possibility. Not all of the organizations, especially those that have just being settled up, can spend a lot of money and having some helps from other people/experts around the globe is convenient.

The key role in all this thing is to make the organization really interesting and well presented at the eyes of the audience and accept and analyze all the possible ideas given from outside. However, I think the solution for the Gogorobì Foundation would be just to make it more popular and 'catchy' by putting, for example, on the website many more videos of the events going on and even a time table of the future ones. I suppose the organization should consider also the choice of spreading out the voice even in its country and making some invitations for the people that are willing to join, by leaving them at the hotels, restaurants or even bars.

Week 6: Crowdfunding Network

Before starting to talk about crowd sourcing itself, its damages and benefits in design, let's first find a definition and try to explain why people or designers choose crowd sourcing to improve their business activity.

So, crowd sourcing can be defined as "the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers." [1]

What does it mean? It means that the individual or group of people working on a project, choose to gather some ideas and further help from other individuals (most of the times experts) that are linked to an online community. Therefore, this can be viewed also as an alternative way to spend as less as possible, reaching the deadlines, increasing flexibility and mobility of operation in general in today’s competitive business environment.

Typically, by online communities it is meant forums or websites that work for the individual as a platform. By choosing these sites that offer different packages and formats to put together contests, foundations or companies have various ways of expressing their ideas and their needs.

Those companies that are seriously working in developing their business and know exactly what they want to receive, can choose the best settings to meet their requirements and needs and even post their goals/tasks with description and in detail at the websites to open contests and invite submissions.

Hence, my question is: Might every business developer go for crowd sourcing to improve their design and be known by the others as fast as possible?

On the one hand, the answer is yes because it is possible to choose the amount of money that an individual wants to spend. It means that you know exactly how much you will be paying for design / graphics work. Hence, this is really good for those that have to start with very limited budgets and in particular it could be a really good way to save the money.

Secondly, if a company has to set a very strict deadline for a design project, crowd sourcing could be the solution to see the results on time. Once every aspect and priority has been settled up, online communities can start to help you as soon as possible and this is great since a lot of work and especially time can be saved.

Team!

Working in a team is not something that I usually did in my previous studies. Most of the times I worked alone and all the responsibilities relied on me. I had some good experiences but it is from the beginning of this year that I seriously started to understand what it means 'team work'. I believe working well in a group means coming up with good ideas, creating, making the day productive, having fun and enjoying our own role. If this last two things do not exist it is not possible to set up a good team and the work will never be sufficient enough.

When I entered this group I wasn't really convinced about the team work activity. I found it a bit boring and sharing my ideas and objectives wasn't really something I wanted to do, but, after few days, I started to change my mind. Now I became really interested in knowing the opinions of other people and let them know what I think. All I can say now is that I want to reach the goal of our project, I really believe in the skills of my team mates and I want them to feel enthusiastic about our challange.

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Week number 4! ;-) Getting great!

We are at the fourth week now and all I can say it's just 'Wow', time has passed so quickly! I know it's too early but want to say that by now I learned a lot of things especially about the team work activity. This week was mainly based about discussing and finding some crowd sourcing sites for the Gogorobì Foundation. It was nice and even interesting since I discovered a lot of new sites which everybody could use to get stronger in the business activities. What I didn't appreciate about this week was the organization again. It took us a lot to get on the google hangout with the two members of NGO and when we did it, it was difficult to talk with them since the sound quality was terrible. All the time we lost to do this, brought us to end the lesson late which I don't find really fair.

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I strongly believe in the Social Networks. They helped me a lot in my life, not only to get in touch with my friends from many parts of the world but also to discover some new places by going to the events or ceremonies always organized by the people I know. This is meant especially for Facebook which I consider a really powerful tool for finding relationships between people but also a good way for the crowd sourcing. Yeah, I commonly use also the online spaces to find and harvest information but I consider myself more as an individual that uses this spaces to interact with other individuals.

Another Week! :-) (Digital identity and technological knowledge)

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OK!.....The second week of Project Community was quite confusing and unorganized. We had a meeting again with the two members of NGO but it took us a lot of time before really starting a real 'conversation'. What I found really hilarious was that yesterday we were ask to think and work about our digital identity and technological knowledge but we didn't know how to have a hang out on Google +. :-P

This week was basically based on making an evaluation about the Gogorobì Foundation by using a spider diagram and to come up with some questions to ask to the members. Yeah, the questions were good and interesting but making the spider diagram was quite difficult for me as I, and probably also my team, didn't know quite a lot about the Foundation. We had to judge it on some values we didn't really understand. The questions we made arrived to us in few seconds but meanwhile we already have published the diagram on the website.

Talking about my tools and skills, I don't really consider myself a genius in this area despite I already have some nice experiences with technology. I even studied some computer programming such as HTML, CSS or PHP but just as a passion. Then, what else?...... I really enjoy using photoshop and discovering some nice techniques to modify the images and I practiced a bit on CAD and just had some fun on Google SketchUP.  I like creating the presentations, draw and using social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Both of them but especially Facebook is a way to keep in contact with some of my friends that are from many parts of the world. Who knows?....maybe one day I will need to go in a country where I got a friend and this would facilitate a lot my staying and my life. But Facebook cannot substitute the real life! I believe that on the Social networks an individual can be and present himself as he or she likes, with many personalities but in real life, with real people it's different, it is not possible to do it anymore. So basically I think social networks have some negative aspects but they do also have some positive ones as I mentioned before.

Spider diagram of the Gogorobì Foundation