gautam-malhotra

[gautam-malhotra]

Team Collaboration - The Next Steps

A fourteen-week journey finally came to an end for our team, which we named ‘3 Amigos’. It was fun and a whole new learning experience working with my amigos. As we went through the first semester of the Interactive Media Management program we had an in depth learning of Project Management, Content Planning, Interactive Strategy, User Experience Design, Development tools, Graphic applications, Emerging Trends for Media and Video Production. Throughout these courses we got an opportunity to work in our team and learn how one can collaborate with the help of different applications or collaboration tools.

As a team, 3 Amigos used tools like Basecamp, Google Drive, Skype, Emails, Text messages and phone calls for collaboration. Apart from these we had face-to-face meetings scheduled throughout the semester. We used variety of tools and it was up to each member to choose their tool. For e.g. One team member preferred communicating through Basecamp while the other was comfortable communicating via emails. It was a matter of adapting to these tools and personal preferences. However, the team data and documents for each project were stored on the Google Drive accessible by each team member. These tools had their own advantages and disadvantages. When we posted team status updates on basecamp, sometimes we had to notify team members through text messages or phone calls to check the project group. This was because every member did not get notified always through his or her email via basecamp. Therefore, one of my suggestions would be using a tool that integrates chat with data storage, which would provide faster communication. Another option is to have the mobile application on each team member’s smartphone if using an application like Basecamp. This will provide instant notifications and hence solve the issue.

I also realized that a face-to-face meeting is the best way to collaborate and work in a group. I felt this because our Skype sessions were only useful to have a discussion about the elements of the assignment and distribute responsibilities. We couldn’t really complete projects over Skype meetings. The difference is that in a face-to-face meeting members are aware of each other’s body language and know exactly what everyone is feeling about the conversation. Moreover, even if work is distributed during a face-to-face meeting, members could work side by side and provide suggestions and recommendations to each other.

I learned the importance of meeting notes, which help in documenting the minutes of the meeting. Meeting notes give a clear picture of the main highlights of the meeting and also help in keeping a record of the responsibilities assigned to each team member and the due dates.

If we were to do work together again, I personally would recommend working side by side collaboratively. This will not only enhance the communication process but will also save a huge amount of time which is otherwise wasted in waiting for replies or feedback from other team members. Overall, through this semester our thoughts were aligned most of the times, but we had our occasional difference in opinion that we resolved by finalizing on common choices. 

We all have to work in teams in our respective careers and this was a useful lesson learnt about the obstacles that one can face in group projects.

[gautam-malhotra]

What's Your Twitter Strategy?

In today’s competitive world, every brand or business requires a significant social presence in order to climb up the ladder and be successful. President’s Choice has chosen Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube as their five social media platforms and our currently maintaining their social presence through these five mediums.

In order to provide recommendations and suggestions to improve the social standing of the President’s Choice brand, we researched about various competitors and their social strategy to improve and promote their brand. We also gathered a set of proven best practices for three social media platforms that could help a business to promote them, build their social presence and improve overall sales through these platforms. The three platforms that we chose were Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

The tagline for our recommended social media strategy is “Share, Love and Read. We have all that you need”. As a part of our social media strategy, we recommended that a schedule should be put together for posting on these three platforms. The schedule would control the frequency of posts that helps customers to track President’s Choice posts. We also suggested that recipes and product information should be posted on a daily basis with meal suggestions for each day, for e.g. Monday salads, Taco Tuesday etc.

President’s Choice is currently using Twitter, so we wanted to see whether they are utilizing it to the fullest or not. Thus, we compared their Twitter activity to a few similar businesses.

Some interesting Twitter success stories were of COBS Bread, a Canadian bakery chain, Pact Coffee, UK based coffee retailer and Naked Pizza which is a US based pizza chain. COBS Bread used Twitter for a campaign where they wanted to promote their new coupon offer. So they used Twitter to provide a link to their main site where people could download the coupon and redeem it in stores. Undertaking this promotion via Twitter helped them to increase their in-store coupon redemption by 22%. Pact Coffee undertook multiple campaigns via twitter by targeting different set of users with each campaign. They saw a significant increase in retweets during their campaign and peak engagement rates of 5%. Pact Coffee also increased their follower base by 50%. The keys to success for both these businesses were; knowing your audience, keeping it simple, frequent monitoring and involving the community. They targeted unique group of usernames and started following them. This allowed them to create customized content and more easily track which audiences were responding best to their offers. Tweets were kept simple and short, which conveyed the message easily. They provided instant feedback, replies and retweeted customer posts. The story of Naked Pizza starts from the setting up of a visible billboard alone its shop, where instead of putting their name; they put up Twitter’s Logo with their Twitter Id. This strategy worked perfectly because it made clear to the entire passing customer that Naked Pizza was in Twitter. Furthermore, they encouraged their every customer to create a twitter ID and follow Naked Pizza by creating a small booth where people can create their Twitter account. Both of these strategies worked hugely to increase its followers and awareness of its presence to all the local community. Therefore, learning from such examples and many more success stories it is proven that constant monitoring, targeting usernames, following customers back, retweeting and instantly replying to your followers can help in creating brand awareness and pull people to the stores. The one aspect where President’s Choice lacks on Twitter is the number of people that they are following, which is very less (153 users).

Twitter has its set of pros and cons. The pros for Twitter are the power of hashtags, username targeting which enables instant user engagement and the ability to share links, videos and pictures. On the other hand its cons would be the requirement of constant monitoring and the fact that tweets can easily get buried if we post too often.

We also recommended few best practices after researching different success stories and seeing what kind of practices do businesses generally follow.

Create tweets that resonate.

Make it real time.

Keep Tweets short and simple.

Simply @reply

Tweets should be such that audiences can relate to and would be willing to share. This can be done by targeting specific groups of users through posts. President’s Choice could capitalize on such a strategy as they already have sets of customers for their different sub-brands like PC Black Label collection, PC Blue Menu etc. Tweets should be kept real time as well as short and simple. Keeping it real time could be done by tweeting regularly by following a posting schedule and replying instantly to customers. Now-days users don’t want to read a lot of text in posts. Short and simple tweets with a recipe or product picture would be the ideal choice for President’s Choice. Following your followers back, replying to specific usernames and using the power of hashtags are also best practices to be considered.

  http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/04/01/how-to-build-a-winning-twitter-strategy-in-2014/

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/tag/twitter-strategy/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2013/08/30/31-twitter-tips-how-to-use-twitter-tools-and-twitter-best-practices-for-business/

https://business.twitter.com/success-stories/cobs-bread

https://business.twitter.com/success-stories/pact-coffee

https://business.twitter.com/basics/how-to-create-a-twitter-content-strategy

[gautam-malhotra]

The Power of Code

The first semester has been a learning curve where we started from the basics of HTML, styled pages with the help of CSS, created our very own webpages, learnt the importance of JavaScript and now we are at a stage where we are about to create a digital portfolio for ourselves.

 It was interesting how things unfolded as we went ahead with the course. Initially we were learning about document structures, tags, browsers, head elements and basic body and document semantics. We created three webpages, each displaying information about different superheroes, however the interesting part was that all three webpages could be styled using only one CSS style sheet. CSS style sheets can be used for controlling layout and typography, responsive and multi-device design, separating presentation from structure and behaviour, media queries and beyond.

 The future of CSS gives us much to be excited about: On the one hand, there’s a whole range of new methods that are going to revolutionize the way we lay out pages on the web; on the other, there’s a new set of graphical effects that will allow on-the-fly filters and shaders. Before CSS, nearly all of the presentational attributes of HTML documents were contained within the HTML markup; all font colors, background styles, element alignments, borders and sizes had to be explicitly described, often repeatedly, within the HTML. CSS allows authors to move much of that information to another file, the style sheet, resulting in considerably simpler HTML.

 It is interesting to learn that multiple media queries can be included in a single CSS style sheet and thus the webpage can be made responsive for different screen sizes like mobile, pc and tablet. Therefore there is no need to build and maintain multiple version of each page to cater to each screen.  Rather than looking at what device it is, we will look at what capabilities the device has. More specifically, we will look at the following:

Height and width of the device

Height and width of the browser

Screen resolution

Orientation of the device (for mobile phones and tablets; portrait or landscape).

Thus, the media queries are based on the above four aspects and we are good to go for different device screens.

JavaScript is another important find in the world of software that we have touched upon in the semester. JavaScript and CSS have similarities. JavaScript is a client-side code which is faster than server side code. With server-side code, the user must send a request to the server, then the server processes the data and a response is sent back to the user. Even with fast Internet connections, this process takes time. When the process just runs on the user’s computer, its fast and provides a quick response for the user. It is this speed that makes JavaScript ideal for web-based applications. JavaScript and CSS could be used hand-in-hand. Being able to offload some of the weight JavaScript carries onto CSS is a great benefit.

I am now looking forward to creating my first portfolio website with the help of all the knowledge gained through the development tools course and I am sure its going to be challenging but fun. 

[gautam-malhotra]

One Story, Multiple Platforms.

“We now live in a moment where every story, Image, brand and relationship plays itself out across the maximum number of media platforms, shaped down by decisions made in corporate boardrooms and bottom up by decisions made in teenagers’ bedrooms.” - Henry Jenkins, Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

The need of the hour is to advertise, market and build your brand, product or portfolio through multiple platforms. A transmedia story represents the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of media platforms. A story like Lost or Breaking Bad might spread from television into comics, the web, alternate reality or video games, toys and other commodities, etc. picking up audiences as it goes. Thus, a film is now advertised on multiple platforms. However, the concept of transmedia is not only limited to films and television.

We now come across a multi platform experience for applications, games, newspapers, news channels and even utilities like banking, booking concert/movie tickets, online shopping. For example, one can read a physical newspaper or read it on a mobile application, tablet application, pc website or even on a television. A game is nowadays released on multiple platforms, which again include gaming consoles, pc, tablets and phones. The transmedia trend has pushed the media industry to create content for multiple platforms. The emphasis is on enriching the content, not replicating it in each different medium, so that the centre of experience is the content rather than the format in which it is delivered.

Enriching the content for different platforms aims at providing better user experience i.e. enhanced capabilities, ease of use and ease of access. Content on a mobile application is often presented with a set of separate features. These separate sets of features build up to a fresh and different user experience. For instance, a weather application on a Smart TV has comparatively fewer features than the same weather application on a smartphone.

People have adapted to the transmedia trend and have started expecting the brand or product content to be available on every platform. An application like Netflix is available on every possible platform (mobile, pc, tablet, tv), which provides the user the option to view it on their desired platform. However, it is very important to keep the content consistent throughout every platform. Even if we take into consideration different kinds of media like hoardings, banners, brochures, newspaper and digital the content has to be consistent.

For example, a brochure consisting of guidelines to use a login feature of a website, should have the same content and should match the website click-by-click. Here consistency plays a key role, as the user could get frustrated easily.

Social media is also highly used as a part of a transmedia strategy. Social media platforms are considered to be major gateways for advertising and spreading brand awareness. Stories are being delivered to the users through Tumblr posts, Google+ forums, Instagram timelines, pinterest etc. Instagram is one of the brand favourites, as it is the go-to application for users to post pictures and explore pictures from around the world. It provides an opportunity for organizations to showcase their products creatively. Companies have to set up their transmedia strategies and large brands like Disney, Sony, Nickelodeon and Fox have succeeded in the same.  The company Televisa, has even created a separate Transmedia Division.

Thus, the concept of transmedia is an interactive trend, which has become a part of our daily lives. Transmedia extends to storytelling, advertising and applications. It should aim to provide consistent content with the best user experience. 

[gautam-malhotra]

Brand Building - Establish Your Identity

  Social Media Platforms ­were initially used for public profiles, sharing activities, backgrounds & common interests. Slowly these platforms evolved into the best sources for advertising brands and businesses. By 2011, Social media were accessible from virtually anywhere and had become an integral part of our daily lives with more than 550 million people on Facebook, 65 million tweets were sent through Twitter each day and 2 billion video views every day on YouTube. LinkedIn had 90 million professional users. Companies started building their brands through social media networks, by posting product pictures, constant tweeting, blogging and event promotions. Thus social media platforms are now a key source for brand building for small businesses as well as media professionals. An Interactive Media management professional could capitalize on the pros of platforms like LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, Quora and Instagram for their personal brand promotion. 

            In my opinion, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram would be three appropriate platforms to build a personal brand for an interactive media management professional. Each of these have their own set of advantages. If we take Google+ into consideration, it has several reasons to be considered as a brand-building platform. Having a page or profile on Google+ can increase your brand’s search engine ranking, helps to increase collaboration through videoconferencing and easy sharing of documents images etc. Google+ hangouts is also a handy collaboration feature that allows up to 10 people to video chat or ‘hangout’ together.

It is a source of free focus groups, as there are discussion circles pertaining to various topics covering many sectors. Moreover, users can share content in their own different circles. Circles can be created for different set of contacts like friends, family and professional circles, thus making it easy to share content amongst specific groups. Thus, for an interactive Media management professional it is a vast source for brand building as one can share information and promote their own brand by posting frequently, participating in industry related discussion circles and collaborating with clients through these circles.

LinkedIn is another powerful platform to boost one’s business or professional profile. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service. As of 2013, LinkedIn has more than 300 million members in over 200 countries and territories. It is significantly ahead of its competitors Viadeo (50 million) and XING (10 million). The membership grows by approximately two new members every second. LinkedIn is very useful to build one’s professional network as it enables an individual to connect with professionals in his/her sector. It helps to display a professional profile to a large number of potential employers and clients. Thus, LinkedIn can be used for various purposes like finding business partners, clients and service providers, recruitment, access expert advice, blog promotion tool, providing recommendations, enhance SEO, starting groups and advertising.

It is possible to tailor advertising by job title and function, industry and company size, seniority, age, gender or particular linked in groups.

Instagram for business is yet another potential platform that can promote and help build an interactive media professional’s brand. A professional can create a brand page and promote the brand by posting pictures from their personal portfolio or pictures from the workplace. It is also possible to post videos up to 15 seconds in length. With the use of relevant and popular hash tags brand promotion becomes easy. Instagram videos can also be embedded in personal blogs. Following people and clients back and posting with trending hash tags is another way of expanding one’s network and promoting the brand page.

It is possible to link and share content across platforms like Twitter and Facebook through Instagram, Google+ and LinkedIn. This makes it easy to promote all the brand pages and their activities by tweeting and sharing through Twitter and Facebook respectively. Hence, one can be posting news about their brand pages through their personal profiles and link the news to their pages created on Google+, Instagram and LinkedIn. Videos from Instagram can also be embedded in Twitter and Facebook feeds. 

The following links provide reasons for selecting Google+,Instagram and LinkedIn as most relevant for my personal brand as an Interactive Media Management Professional. The reason for choosing these platforms was mainly their brand building features, popularity and cross platform linking capabilities.

References

http://blog.indiesilver.com/2013/05/a-guide-to-launching-promotions-for.html

Google+

http://www.computerworlduk.com/how-to/it-business/3339417/9-ways-google-plus-can-help-your-business/

 http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2014/07/30/google-plus-pros-can-optimize-google-business-success/

 http://socialtimes.com/best-practices-using-g-business-infographic_b146435

 https://plus.google.com/+GoogleBusiness/posts

 Instagram

 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/instagram-for-business-tips/

 http://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-best-practices-brands/

 http://maximizesocialbusiness.com/instagram-best-practices-10548/

 Linkedin

 http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/improve-linkedin-profile/

 http://www.linkedstrategies.com/11-reasons-you-should-use-linkedin-for-your-busines/

 http://blog.linkedin.com/2010/04/12/linkedin-small-business-tips/

[gautam-malhotra]

My First time fishing....Lake Ontario... and look what happens next..

[gautam-malhotra]

Development Tools - A learning Curve

My interaction with the coding world began in my early engineering days in India, where I learned programming languages like C, C++ and JavaScript. Markup languages like HTML or XML are not considered as programming languages however programming languages sometimes share the same syntax with markup languages. Inspite of the similarities, learning HTML and CSS in the Development Tools course (IMMT 715) was challenging. Professor Andreas Ua’Siaghail began the course by providing basic knowledge of document structures, tags, browsers, head elements and basic body and document semantics.

 We created our very own webpages with the help of the step-by-step guidance through the basic body elements like headings, paragraphs, links, anchors and images. The webpage was based on our favourite superheroes.

(Image 1: My first webpage showing my favourite three superheroes)

 In this webpage, the navigation options were basically links that were embedded in by using the paragraph (<a>) element. Although we did not have a menu at this point but included an ordered (<ol>) as well as unordered list (<ul>).

Over the next few sessions we created three separate pages for each superhero and linked them to one another with the help of a simple list having links.

(Image 2: Individual superhero page linked to other superhero pages with the help of simple list with links)

In the above image, we can see the simple list on the top of the page that has links to navigate to the other individual superhero pages as well as the main superhero page. This was the point where I learned the importance of using the link and list attributes appropriately.

e.g. 

<ul>

<li><a href="Main Page.html">Main Page</a></li> <li><a href="Spiderman.html">Spiderman</a></li> <li><a href="Hulk.html">Hulk</a></li>

</ul>

While I was getting a hang of the basic attributes there were times when a single typo would change the appearance of the page. Thus, we learned that typos could be tough to notice in the end and would require going through the code several times. I also learned the importance of a logically arranged folder structure.

(Image 3: A logically arranged folder structure for the webpage files)

The image above shows an example of a folder structure which helps avoiding errors when linking images or html files while forming codes. If a background image is not placed in the correct folder and correct hierarchy then it leads to errors while linking the image because the proper path to the image cannot be detected.

We then moved deeper into developing the navigation menu for the webpage and learned to link html and css files.  

(Image 4: Html linked to the css stylesheet with the main batman image having defined dimensions)

(Image 6: The common css stylesheet for all the individual superhero pages defining dimensions for the body, headers and the navigation menus.)

The css stylesheet above defined the font type, font colour, background image and effects for the headers and determined the positioning of the navigation menu.

(Image 5: Html linked to the css stylesheet. An additional <div class = "column1"> element added, footer added and main batman image defined as full width hence taking the full width of the column)

(Image 6: This CSS stylesheet contained additional effects for the navigation menu lists one of which was the hover effect for the menu items)

In the above case I came across the fact that the hover effect should be effective for the entire list item tab and not only the text inside the tab. This factor comes into play when we consider the usability of the website. The inappropriate hover effect is shown in the image below:

(Image 7: Notice the Hulk tab which shows the hover effect with a simple box around the text. In this case, the hover effect is not seen until the user gets the cursor on the text itself)

The final webpage consisted of the navigation menu which had the hover effect on the entire tab and not only the text. The image of the final page is given below:

(Image 8: Final webpage consisting of navigation menu with hover effect and superhero icons)

The menu is one of the most important items on a website because it allows users to navigate from page to page. If the menu is disorganized or hard to find, users will get frustrated and leave.

I came across three types of basic navigation menus viz. Horizontal menus, Vertical menus and Dropdown menus (vertical and horizontal).                     Horizontal menus are very popular. A horizontal menu appears at the top of a web page and allows all the space beneath it to be reserved for the main content. Horizontal menus are good to use when there are few menu items that have to pan across the page.Vertical menus are either used alone, or in conjunction with horizontal menus. They are especially useful in cases where the menu is too long to fit horizontally across the page. If there are a large number of menu items, it's best to use a dropdown menu. This can be used with both horizontal and vertical menus, and simply separates main menu items (that are always visible) from sub menu items (visible only with when mouseover). 

I preferred creating a simple vertical menu. I started off by creating the basic HTML layout for the menu using the  <nav> element and an unordered list. To create a sub-menu, I added a nested unordered list inside of a list item.

<nav id ="main-nav">

         <ul id= "nav-primary">

                <li><a href="#">Menu 1</a>

                      <ul class="subnav">

                             <li><a href="#">Menu Item 1<a/></li>

                             <li><a href="#">Menu Item 2<a/></li>

                             <li><a href="#">Menu Item 3<a/></li>

                             </li>

                      </ul>

                </li>

         </ul>

</nav>

Applying the desired effects in a linked css file will then give the dropdown menu shown in the image above.

Thus it depends completely on the type of website, the layout and the number of menu items while selecting the type of menu for a website.The menus should not pan out covering a large area on the page which does not feel appropriate in most cases.

Below I have added a link to website showing 20 standout navigation menu designs.

http://www.sitepoint.com/20-standout-navigation-menu-designs/

It has been a fun learning curve so far. It would be interesting to learn more about these languages and try to experiment with different elements and a variety of css effects. 

[gautam-malhotra]

A Dream Team - Storm, Collaborate and Create.

An essential part of any organization is having high performance teams. The success of many organizations solely depends on the collaboration and synchronization of their staff. An individual can have useful skills and the will to perform, however these skills could be of no use if the person is not a good team player or for some reason cannot fit in and collaborate with a team. There can be different reasons for a team to underperform or struggle in meeting their deadlines. One of the reasons could be the use of inappropriate or ineffective collaboration tools. Sasha Boersma, Partner/Executive Producer at Sticky Brain Studios Inc. & Coordinator/Prof at IMM@Centennial, shared insights on some handy collaboration tools in her Project Management (IMMT713) sessions.

 During the IMMT713 sessions we came across two useful tools for team collaboration, which were Trello and Basecamp. Both these tools have handy features enabling smooth group discussion and document sharing amongst team members. Trello has useful features for team projects wherein one can create a number of lists on a project and each list can consist of tasks. Each team member has access to these lists and particular tasks can be assigned to team members. There are also features, which help to track progress on list items. Basecamp is also an effective collaboration tool that has options like creating multiple projects with file sharing and group discussions. Trello and basecamp both are available on mobile platforms that make it easy to upload files on the go.

 I also came across another useful tool named ‘Wrike’. Its best feature is the timeline mode combined with the Gantt. Apart from that it has the same file sharing abilities like its competitors. If a team has heavy file sharing requirements then there are also applications like Google drive, Microsoft drive and iCloud. Teams can setup folders and share large video files, pictures, documents etc. however these cloud services do not have communication abilities.

 Communication is an important factor for successful team collaboration. The best method to communicate is indeed a face-to-face meeting. In a face-to-face meeting, real reactions and expressions can be marked which cannot be known through e-mails or online discussions. Nowadays, while teams are sometimes setup with its members in different locations in the city, country or world, the need of the hour is online video conferencing solutions. One of the best tools in this area is Adobe Connect. Connect provides several interesting features like video conferencing, live chat and file sharing. The user interface is made of panels, which the user can rearrange. The panels include the video windows, live chat window, the attendee list and the discussion notes. Other alternatives to Adobe Connect are softwares like Citrix GoToMeeting, Cisco WebEx Meeting Center and Fuze Meeting Pro. Apart from these paid options there are the public favourite Microsoft Skype, Apple Facetime and Google Hangouts. These options are generally used for smaller teams or quick discussions, as they do not have other features apart from live text chat and video chat.

 Another important tool that can be used in the team collaboration process is remote control, wherein users can control other users’ computers remotely from their devices. Teamviewer is an application that provides the remote control feature along with features like online meeting and online presentations.

Overall, the use of collaboration tools can help teams to work efficiently and coordinate better. The best option would be to have a combination of a project management tool like Trello, Wrike or Basecamp along with an online file storage tool like Google Drive, Microsoft Drive and iCloud. Google drive has the advantage of having offline accessibility to the saved files. The selection of a video conferencing tool depends on the type of usage as smaller organizations or teams can use the unpaid options like Skype whereas teams always operating from separate locations can go for the paid options like Adobe Connect. A tool like Teamviewer comes handy when one wants to access a computer remotely from a separate location apart from using its online meeting and presentation features.

References:

Trello - https://trello.wistia.com/medias/bjdkp7kg7s

Basecamp - https://basecamp.com/

Wrike -  https://www.wrike.com/blog/category/new_features

Adobe Connect - http://www.computerworld.com/article/2493802/desktop-apps/7-low-cost-videoconferencing-services-which-is-best-for-your-meeting.html?page=2

Citrix GoToMeeting -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387935,00.asp

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center -http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387928,00.asp

Fuze Meeting Pro - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388117,00.asp

Teamviewer –  http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx

[gautam-malhotra]

Media Equal For All ?

In our everyday lives, we witness work roles and certain responsibilities, which are always performed by a particular gender. We have always seen certain roles and responsibilities being carried out by one particular gender either male or female. My opinion is that this situation has also arisen because of the cultural difference around the globe. For instance, In India it is very rare to see a woman operating a public transit vehicle. Seeing a woman driving a bus would be a shocking moment for the passengers and is a rare incident back home. However, In Canada, women have taken up several roles at workplaces and it is not shocking for people to see a woman undertaking male oriented job positions.

Today, women are taking up almost all roles at a workplace although there remain a few areas where only men are visualized appropriate for the job. The same goes for female dominated areas. During the IMMT718 session on equality in the workplace, we went through a few statistics, one of them revealed that a recent study identified that women represent only five percent of workers in programming roles and ten percent of workers in audio and design roles. Whereas, women represent 47% of workers in operations, IT and human resources occupations. I feel that this barrier has been created over the years and it is all about changing the mentality and the pattern that we are following. In the media sector, the ratio of male to female is getting balanced but at a very slow pace. When it comes to human resources and public relations, the amount of women in this area would be substantially higher but men have secured the high salary spots. In technical fields, men have a higher count than women and the ratio has been developed over the years as only men were visualized in technical roles. There are women who have set examples for others to climb up the ladder and secure male dominated positions. For example, Margaret Whitman, President, CEO, eBay and President, CEO, Hewlett-Packard. She has been the CEO of eBay for ten years and is the CEO of HP for over three years now.

Even when an individual is on a job search, there are instances where the job posting clearly states whether they want males or females for the position. This denies the opportunity to initiate change in the system. There is no equal opportunity to prove oneself at the job and demonstrate their skills.

Developing and creating media for a diverse audience can also be a challenging task. In the advertising world, in case of television commercials, products are advertised through males, females or people of particular ethnicity or culture. This is done to relate to specific audiences. This is the platform that is setting up the mentalities in people’s minds. Advertisers always portray things in such a way that relates to the audience. People fear change. Creating media content for a diverse audience in terms of religion can also be very challenging. An incident took place in India, where a renowned clothing brand advertised their new clothing line all over the country. Their banners, posters, television commercials all depicted a man having the upper body of a Hindu god who was wearing their new products. This way of displaying the products was ok to a few people but caused an outrage amongst the Hindu community, which led to protests and vandalism.

In my opinion, the process of hiring should be improved where in equal opportunities should be given to both men as well as women to display their skills and not just be chosen on the basis of gender in particular roles. Skill assessment tests are generally carried out for several positions. These tests should be key deciding factors instead of bringing in the gender criteria. Proving oneself through their work and setting up examples to change the mentality of others can be considered the best way to balance the ratio in terms of gender oriented job positions. Also trying to break the barriers stereotyping and negative attitudes can improve upon media creation for different diversities. Change is inevitable and has to be faced one day. However change should be initiated slowly and should not hurt sentiments or not target specific communities/genders/cultures/ religions in a bad way.

[gautam-malhotra]

Choose your path. Its a tough way ahead.

There are always two options when an individual steps into an industry. Either enters the industry by getting employed by an established firm or being a business owner/freelancer. At the second session of IMMT718, we explored these two options and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the same. The session also threw light on the difference of being a business owner or a freelancer.

There were various pros and cons in either path one chooses. This discussion provided an in depth idea of the different criteria one has to consider before looking forward to take their path.

Firstly, an employee is usually bound by a contract or has to follow the company rules adhering to content privacy. I learnt that many of the firms make employees sign NDA's to prevent them from talking about trade secrets. However in terms of coverage, the employees are covered under Employment Standards Act and federally under General Labour Code. These are definitely some factors to consider while choosing a career path. On the other hand, an employer has the burden of deducting taxes while paying the employees. An employer is responsible for deducting Canada pension plan contributions, EL premiums, income tax and other taxes. An employee is free from the overheads.

Another important highlight of the session was the difference between being a freelancer and a business owner. A number of insights were shared and the professor shared information with regards to the registration and taxes that each role has to deal with. A freelancer does not have to register the company as it is under his/her legal name whereas a business owner has to be registered with Service Ontario. A freelancer does not need to collect or pay HST if he/she makes less than 30,000 annually whereas a business owner should register for HST. 

We also learnt the different factors to consider while determining the employment status. There are instances when people are confused about what role they are playing towards and organization and also individually in their freelance work. People get overloaded with work or sometimes the employer is taking advantage by introducing more work at different stages of the project. Employment status is determined when we evaluate a few facts like level of control payer has over worker’s activities, whether worker provides the tools and equipment, whether worker can subcontract the work or hire assistants, degree of financial risk the worker takes, degree of responsibility for investment and management the worker holds and the worker’s opportunity for profit. It also highly depends on contracts because the employer can sometimes take advantage if they are not bound by the contract and visa-versa. It is always better to have clauses in a written format for referring to in case of confusions or controversies.

Overall, personally being a fresh entrant to the media world I would chose to be employed. Initially I could learn about the structure and working of a media firm and gain some useful insights about successfully running a media firm. Also I do not need to worry about the overheads and a vacation will be a real vacation for me unlike the business owners or freelancers who need to keep a track of what is going on with their projects.

Internships was another topic discussed and I feel its best way of gaining hands on experience in the industry but again one has to be aware about the intern rights and avoid being exploited at the workplace. We also discussed dressing styles for the interactive media industry. As Professor Sofia said that one cannot be dressed as if he/she works at a bank. We have to blend in the 'funk' factor with the professional look, being careful of not going overboard with the funky aspect.

Everyone has a choice to make regarding their path of work in the media world or other professions.The bottom-line is that no matter what path you choose, there is always going to be a tough way ahead. 

[gautam-malhotra]

Its all about knowing your end user.

Interactive Strategy (IMM714) and Content Planning (IMMT712) gave a kickstart to the Interactive Media Management program. The first session conducted by Professor Pamela Kostur provided a clear picture that a good customer experience is what organizations should prioritize when designing and developing the content for a website.

An organization can have customer centric content or organization centric content on its webpage. Customer centric content is one which understands its user and the various paths a user could take to navigate through the website. It also understands how its content is being used by the user and the possible difficulties a user could face while working through the site. On the other hand organization centric content does not strategize from the customer experience perspective. Such an organization webpage could have limited operations or could not provide ease of access to the user.

In my opinion, the example of a webpage containing customer centric content is Scotiabank. The experience of using the Scotiabank webpage as well as the application on a tablet or smartphone has been smooth and easy for me. The website provides ease of access to the user no matter on which platform is it being used. Scotiabank is also an example of a well-tested site. The homepage gives all the primary information of ones account. Every page of the website provides concise information to the user and navigation is also easy due to appropriately arranged tabs that provide several options. The webpage as well as the application on a smartphone or tablet have all the same functionalities and a very similar user interface. Take for instance the task of transferring funds between accounts. If I execute this task on a pc, which is through a webpage, still the transaction will immediately reflect if the account is accessed through a phone or tablet. Thus I feel that, scotiabanks webpages and applications consist of customer centric content due to the flexibility of options, the ease of access and also ease of overall use of the webpage.

An example of organization centric content found on the web that I take into consideration would be Fido. I consider fidos content to be organization centric because of the restricted options provided on the webpage. It is a perfect example of content that is based on the organizations perspective of use of the webpage. Navigation is not easy on this page which is a fact that I have come across on several occasions. As compared to Scotiabanks web content, Fidos web content is not flexible enough in terms of the options. For instance, on Scotiabanks webpage there would be different ways to navigate or perform a particular task whereas Fidos site would have only one method of performing a similar task. Even when I took into consideration the cross platform performance of Fido, it lacked in comparison to Scotiabank. The content on the Fido webpage simply does not translate when accessed through its smartphone application. In fact the application is limited to a few platforms and is not available on all mobile devices. It is simply not user friendly when one has to pay their bill using a desktop site on a mobile device.

If the content on Fidos website could be developed by keeping in mind the customers difficulties and paths of navigation then it could increase its usability factor.

On a whole, customer centric content is what the users are looking for and organizations must focus towards understanding and getting to know their users. 

In the end, its all about knowing your end user.

[gautam-malhotra]

Usability is the Key to success.

The first content planning (IMMT712) session was an in depth introduction to the concept of content and its role in the interactive media world. During this session we were asked what content meant to each of us. Each person in the room had a similar opinion towards the concept of content. We all felt that content is the basis for a good customer experience and at that moment a thought that came to my mind was, "Content is the soul of communication".

Content has different purposes to it. Content can describe concepts and ideas, can serve as reference material, can explain the step by step procedure to do something, persuade customers/users to do something, can compare different products. Content that has no purpose is considered useless. Another important factor in terms of content is the difference between its readability and its usability. Content could be perfectly readable but it should provide the user with desired results in their particular task which makes it usable.

Usable content is one which is relevant, clear, visually appealing, clear after one reading, concise, efficient, memorable, engaging, relevant, appropriate, enough, consistent, obvious, structured and organized. The customer or user experiences the best usability when the content guides the user smoothly through the website to successfully execute the task. For example, on an online shopping website a user is trying to buy a t-shirt. The content on the page that enables him to successfully buy the appropriate t-shirt in terms of size, colour, design and price is the content that fulfills all usability criteria. 

TTC's content describing the new streetcars is relevant, structured and organized. However the information could not be considered clear in a few areas. If we take for example the cash fares for the new streetcars. It is not clear whether there is any price change in the fares due to the new streetcars. There is all the information about passes and tokens but not any mention about fare rates. Another example could be regarding carrying cycles in the new streetcars. Information regarding how to enter with a cycle is provided but information about other options to carry the bike on the streetcar is not provided. Also if the user has any queries after reading the content provided to describe the new streetcars, there is only an option to communicate through email clear out matters. There is no FAQ page. Having an FAQ page can easily solve issues or queries that a user could have with the information.

Usability criteria for me is that the content should be visually appealing, should be easily accessible, should be relevant to my task and should provide all the information needed after one reading without having to refer to the content several times. In this case, TTC's content on the new streetcars is visually appealing and relevant. However the streetcar could have its own separate mini webpage with a gallery of pictures expressing its new design and features easily. Also it lacked explaining in detail about the rules related to the streetcars, the routes on which the new streetcar would be operating, whether the old streetcar would be discontinued and also information about release dates on various routes was not provided.

The content on the TTC website is useful but only to a certain point. I would like to state, "I am not content with the content on the TTC website".

[gautam-malhotra]

"The First Interaction - Me and Media"

My first interaction with the Interactive Media Industry was through an informative session by Professor Sofia Stefou, Web Strategist/Producer and Actor · Toronto, Ontario. Sofia, the instructor for IMMT718(Interactive Media Industry) provided us with useful insights, statistics and facts about the current media world.��

The session provided me with a set of important facts regarding the skills one requires to be involved in the core as well as in the supporting sectors of the media industry. As a student at a postgraduate program in Project Management, For the past 8 months I learnt closely how project management office and other management departments contribute to different type of industries. However this session gave me qualitative as well as quantitative comparisons of the technical skills, creative skills and the business/administrative skills required for this industry.

The overview of the media industry presented by the professor provided us with the list of business types that come under the media sector, the platforms these businesses use and also their target customers and several distribution channels used by them. This information is very useful when it comes to aspiring students wanting to enter the media sector and also for individuals who are looking to change or expand their work into other business types or platforms.

Some interesting statistics from the session were the comparison of different provinces in terms of their contribution towards the media industry, the ratio of foreign controlled to Canadian controlled media sector and the amount of market share of different platforms used. I also learnt about how the gross revenue of the media industry is majorly controlled by very large companies in-spite of the fact that they are least in number. There were also statistics based on ownership type i.e. private corporations, public corporations, private-partnership or private-sole proprietorship. The private corporations take away 65% of the total market share in the media world.

The reason for choosing Interactive media is the fact that this field has various dimensions to it and an individual could be playing multiple roles on an interactive project. At the end of the first week at the IMM program, I learnt the multiple roles an interactive media firm could be consisting. The industry is formed by roles like developers, designers, managers, content writers, video producers, editors, strategists and the list just goes on. There are so many ways in which one can contribute, its just a matter of applying the right set of skills at the right time.

I am keen on getting more insights on trans-media as that is creating the buzz currently. The art of storytelling or conveying messages through multiple platforms and devices is of interest to me.

Visual communication can make concepts very easy to understand for the user and when these messages are conveyed at the right time and through the right platforms, they lead to successful projects.

Its a new beginning as I blend my managerial skills with the tools and techniques of the media industry. I guess I have found my new love!!!!