Production: File Organization

 In this blogpost, I (Rachelle) will discuss how me and my team organize our files

During the start of the project, I (Rachelle) had suggested making a shared Google Document where we put all our work in order to keep things organized as well as make it easier to look and transfer each other's works onto our blogs. Furthermore, the shared document allows us to make changes without having to necessarily notify the others all the time as that change is done in one document, therefore team mates don't have to go back and forth changing things up on their blogpost just because we made some changes. 

Advantages:

• Transparency

• Using a shared document allows us to monitor our progress and work flow. This allows us to identify weak points and flaws in our work, where we can give each other feedback.

• Saves time

• We don’t have to constantly share multiple links or documents to each other, which may take some time to organize and look for. With a shared document, we’re able to work on different parts of the project without having to put in the extra effort and time of copying and pasting the link every time and scrolling in the Whatsapp group just to find multiple links for the project. Moreover, we also decided to organize each work into separate tabs to save time from scrolling through the document to find each work.

• Cost efficient

• Google document is free, allowing us to create and edit documents online as well as share it with others, without having to pay for anything, therefore saving us costs.

Disadvantages:

• Dependence on internet

• In order to work in the shared document, we have to be online, so if there are internet issues and such, we aren’t able to edit our work.

• Confusion

• If multiple people edit a work at the same time without proper communication, the changes made can overwrite each other and cause confusion as well as conflicts between teammates.

• Editing mistakes

• Mistakes happen, so there may be accidental deletions of work or unwanted changes by other teammates, which can disrupt the project. 

We also made a group chat on Whatsapp to allow for easier and more efficient communication.

Advantages:

• Saves time

• A group chat allows for quick and efficient communication where everyone gets the same information at the same time, without the need of long meetings. Moreover, it’s easier to communicate through a group chat as we don’t need to individually text each other, or arrange meetings just to talk, which could take a lot of time and can even cause miscommunication.

• Encourages collaboration

• A group chat also allows us to share our ideas as well as resources and discussions in one place. This encourages team members to engage with each other, giving feedback and suggestions, therefore improving the overall quality of the project. 

• Keeps record

• The Whatsapp group also keeps record of discussions, plans, as well as resources, making it easy to refer back to it. This prevents data from being loss or forgotten.

Disadvantages:

• Miscommunications

• In text, we can’t see the other person’s body language, expressions, and tone, which could very easily be misinterpreted therefore leading to confusion and even conflict between team members.

• Dependance on internet

• In order to send and receive texts, a stable internet connection is needed. So, if a team member has connection issues, they may not be able to participate in discussions and might also miss out on important plans and discussions. 

• Overwhelming

• The chat can become too cluttered especially if off-topic conversations occur, which makes it difficult to find specific datas as we would have to scroll really far and not know where the data is, therefore causing us to possibly become overwhelmed.

Reflection:

The shared document and whatsapp group was very effective as it really helped us to organize as well as keep our conversations relating to media studies efficient. Planning and sharing ideas in the group chat became regular. During times where some team members were absent, or during holidays, the group chat was very useful. It allowed us to continuously communicate our ideas even if we don't meet face-to-face, saving so much time. Moreover, although not all blogposts were placed in the shared document, some were still there. I found that this really saved me the time and effort of going back and forth through the group chat, and copy pasting onto the blog. A problem I encountered was when working on the digipak on the blog post, I forgot to save the work, which lead to the things I've written on the blog to disappear completely. However, since I've already backed the work up on the shared document, I was able to retrieve it by simply copy and pasting from the google document onto the blog post, this further proves how useful the shared document is. Next time, I do think that we should put all of our work onto the shared document in order to further organize things.