This Sunday Blog is About Developing a Team…

Related to my Full Sail class Executive Team Management.



Legal Note: The class is using Gary R Heerkens’ book Project Management Copyright 2010 McGra-Hill. The following notes and charts fall under Fair-Use for educational reasons and no direct profits were from material discussed. There is Added comment Comments from Zon Petilla. Most material was “paraphrased” by Zon Petilla.


Chapter 2 Highlights_

Relates to defining a need, a solution, a plan, and a budget for a project plan. Analyzing how successful the plan was after the project (p.28).

Chapter 3 Highlights_

Responsibilities to your Role_ (p31)
• The Project
• The Organization
• The Team
• The Project Manager

Have realistic targets (p33)
• Refer to Chapter 8

Perpetual Emphasis on Function (p34)
• People often over focus on their function rather then the project.
• The focus on their function may hinder a new project.
• People may band to a work group rather then the real needs of the client
• Function may affect decision process when between the project and departments (p36).
• Function conflicts between new project and other departments in larger organizations.
Skill Requirements of the Project Manager (p36)
1. Project management process skills
2. Interpersonal and Behavioral Skills: Communication, Counseling, and team member development skills.
3. Technology Management Skills
Also relates to Required Legal Knowledge
4. Desired Personal Traits
Cognitive and Psychological Habits needed to be successful.
Misc Skill Sets
Social Network Leverages (p44)
Benefits to Soft Side Approaches (i.e. Friendliness as Professionalism to All) (p46)

Chapter 5 Highlights_
Define the Project and the roles, but allow for flexibility (p79)

Consider expenses of involvement Vs. anticipated contribution (p79) Meaning, “Work for free” Vs. work for a “direct wage”. Often members in beginning projects may have to work for free or contribute skills off hours to develop a new project before getting a paid job or role.

Develop a list of things needed from each team member before you start the screening process (p82)


Develop a clear map of the decision hierarchy to help the decision process (p83)
• Relates to the small and larger group infrastructure

Develop the answers to predicted common questions team members may have (p84)
• “What’s in it for me” Questions
• Psychological Questions
• Performance Questions
• Communication Questions
• Team description questions



Understand how to council are reinforce a positive and clear team member psychology (p85)
• Review proposal project objectives
• Create Friendly Leadership environment
• Define Behavioral Norms for Communication, Change, and Completion
• Project Logistics
• Give Praise and Remind them why they are on the team
• Give constructive function feedback

Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing (p86)
• Note: Fifth stage: “Mourning”. After the project is done project leadership roles and goals have to change.
Encourage Team Meetings (P 91)
Reward the Team as a whole (p 92)
Establish Mutual Expectations (P 93)
Not all team mate are created equal (P 95)
• Be prepared to treat others by different factors
• Be prepared to explain to others why different people are being treated defiantly.
• Be prepared to explain to an individual why they are being treated differently.

My Coverage of APE 2010

APE 2010, the first convention I did, I learned was more about selling prints, tee shirts, buttons, etc, and less about selling a small independent comic. If you had posters, people were more likely interested. However, even a pretty poster with eye-catching colors didn’t mean sales. A fabulous award-winning artist had a hard time making the final sale even though many onlookers came to visit the artist who had frequented the convention many times the past three years. From my observation and conversations, by Sunday, many in state creators did make profit, but a lot of out of state creators were lucky to break even.

A big reason to do APE is to join the point system for the other conferences of Comi-Con International. The point system leads to better positioning and a chance to get in the over pact San Diego comic-con. In California, San Diego Comi-con remians the best conference to sell original work after accounting for the massive markups and costs during the convention. Wonder-con also in San Francisco is also part of Comic-Con International.

None the less, APE 2010 according to many professional posts on Webcomics.com’s “Convention Dish” has been a more shirking market for comics in general. My onsite observations also had a startling revelation this Saturday, where were all the kids or teens? The demographic for APE did not lead itself to many different types of age groups.

On aside note, although inexpensive alternatives such as Comic Xpress are good for many creators, often creators will choose to print in places like china to lower their overhead and maximize their sales. Nonetheless, This sill means spending a lot money with little guarantee of sales in a year. Often creators have to sit on product for years until they sell out.

Other conventions to consider, Emerald City in Seattle Washington and STAPLE in Austin Texas, which seems to becoming another Emerald City Con, have more attendees hungry for product. Emerald City as a convention is a perfect example of a small comic convention that slowly grows over time because there is enough of a market for comic-books in that town.

In state, there are other conventions such Long Beach Con. In the Bay Area Zine Fest seems to be a great spot to sell alternative comics, but once an event develops a good name for itself, it becomes harder to get in if there are sales to be made. Thus APE, in relationship to Wonder-Con and San Diego Comi-Con, is a good conference to start to get into the swing of things, because it is a convention it gets you in larger convention. However, the lack luster sales for many artists who flew in to do APE often give these creators negative sales and negative attitudes about the show.


Unfortunately, aside from networking and meeting many wonderful artists, I did not sell many of my and my writer’s books. In this sense, if we had more eye catching swag, we could have sold more products; however, we wanted to focus on creating and telling a good story. In this sense, before we even consider to start-making t-shirts, we have to stick to the core product that is the pre-teen to adult graphic novel we intended to create. Still, I’m going to work on my ability to create high contrasting eye catching prints for other events where our project may be more appreciated such as Zine Fest or other local events.

Nemu~Nemu Proposal

"Nemu~Nemu" can potentially reach a larger mainstream market. The creators of Kimono Kisty Studio are at interesting growth potential.

For assignment, I study their website and business model comparing it with experts Robert Khoo and Scott Kurtz's ideas from web-comics. com. While proposing a new venture for the studio similar to Peter Reynold's content driven company Fable Vision.

(http://www.nemu-nemu.com/ )

I’ll be meeting the creators of Namu Namu this year at APE 2010 in San Francisco while showing my pre-teen to adult comic with my partner Ambur Lowenthal.


References:
Khoo., R. (2010, Jan 14) Robert Khoo: Webcomics, the Model
Retrieved From http://www.webcomics.com/home/2010/1/14/robert-khoo-webcomics-the-model.html

Moon, B. (2010 Spet 13) Moon, B. Disney World As Edutainment Retrieved from More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/09/disney-world-as-edutainment/#ixzz120P5Afno

Reynolds P.H., (2010, May 2 ) NETA 2010 Stories That Matter, Stories That Move-Reynolds Podcast retrieved from http://www.netasite.org/
Images From
http://www.nemu-nemu.com
http://www.fablevisionstudios.com/
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/09/disney-world-as-edutainment/
http://zons-education-edutainment.blogspot.com/
http://www.parentsconnect.com/home/index.jhtml
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

RE: Obama's Albuquerque discussion Part 2

HINES: I have to disagree with you about "Waiting For Superman." I don't think that's the message of the movie, is not to attack the teachers, I think it's really shining a spotlight on how we're failing our kids and how we as adults are failing – From Larry King Live Sept 29th 2010




Are we “Going Green”?
President Obama recently addressed the education needs of the US (KRQE). These needs and issues are explored in a documentary “Waiting for Super Man” (2010). The simply break down of the problem is that the public school system is literally failing the public. The mass of the adolescent population is not being educated for various reasons such as nutrition, students tracking, the recession, etc.

Moreover, the place of the US average child in math and science is lower than that of competing countries. This means that we may not have a population ready to take the “green jobs”, because they will need to be taught the related basic English, Math, and Science needed to produce and maintain new technologies.

Countries such as Japan have been on board with green tech for more than ten years. Japan unlike the US was fully on board with “Green” and did not have many competing oil companies preventing their green industry development as the US had (Deeter and Paine, 2006).

Moreover, Japan also places higher in math and science, so even though they have been in a recession longer then the US, they are a prime example of what we want, a country that has the technology and the work population ready to go Green out of a rescission.

The education challenges we face now as a country are huge, and the bet or debt we invest with deficit spending on education for most, contains the hope that US will be okay in the years to come in the Green movement (KRQE).

References
KRQE (2010)Obama's Albuquerque discussion Part 2, Retrieved from YouTube.com http://www.youtube.com/user/KRQE#p/search/8/efoVeH0GG2w on 10/03/2010

(2010, September 29th) “Fixing America's Public Schools”.
Waters, H. (Producer), Larry King Live. CNN. Transripts retived from
http://www.cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1009/28/lkl.01.html at 10/03/2010


Chilcott, L. (Producer) and Guggenheom D. (Director) (2010) “Waiting for Superman” Retrieved from http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/?gclid=CMjn3-fvtqQCFSFbiAodW2jB0g on 10/03/2010

About Me

In academic and occupational work geared to English instruction, my resume exemplifies my love of working with students and outlines nine years of experiences at various institutions such as Fresno City College, California State University (CSU) of Fresno, Contra Costa College, and San Francisco State University (SFSU) as well as private ESL schools such as the Computer Programming Learning Center (CPLC) San Francisco. I became a CCC instructor because of my coursework in the SFSU IRW Certificate program. To my surprise, I received an “exemplary” standing in my first teacher evaluation of 2008.

As far as Art, I'm interested in becoming a successful creator of graphic novels and web-comics. Hopefully, I can help people with their goals and dreams as they can help me.

Specialties

Teaching, Plot Development, Narrative Project Development, and 2D Character Design, and Drawing