Smaug_the_Mighty
Member
Thanks for your patience folks! I have been doing lots of thinking and planning behind the scenes to get my head around this project, how to get it running again, and how to keep it going through 2023 and beyond.
My main thought is to bring some more structure to the team of volunteers. My initial approach of “just jump onto whatever task sounds good to you” didn’t end up with many takers, so this time I will create a list of teams and ask each of you to join one. Each team can then work together to set goals for what we want to accomplish, and get to work.
I want to stress that I’m not asking anyone to do more than they are able or willing to do, with any of these roles. Being a member of any of these teams will involve only as much time and effort as you want to contribute. If at any point you want to change teams, or be on more than one, or stop working on the project for a while, that is completely ok!
Here is my list of teams. If you want to add a team, volunteer to be part of a team, or have any other questions, please let me know in this thread or by a direct message.
1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM
I have found that this project is just too complicated and unwieldy for one person to manage, so I will need one or two more people to help me lead the project. It would be extremely helpful for one or both of you to have plenty of tech knowledge about the wiki implementation side of the project, as that is where I have fallen flat. (I’d love to learn more about this aspect so I can contribute, but it’s just not possible at the moment for me to study in-depth). We will be collaborating on planning and problem solving for the overall purposes and structure of the project, building and maintaining momentum on the project so it continues moving over time, and keeping up communication between the whole team, including Corey, other Signum and Mythgard folks, and all of our project volunteers.
2. WIKI TEAM
We will need a team of people who can make the wiki happen. This will involve developing the wiki, planning for and executing the launch and maintenance, and keeping in touch with Signum about any technical questions. We can also create smaller teams within this larger team as required.
3. TRANSCRIPT TEAM
Several of our lovely volunteers have already been experimenting in creating transcripts. We should keep this going, and set some goals to work through the backlog of episodes in a methodical way.
4. SUMMARY TEAM
One main goal for this website is to reduce the barrier to entry, particularly once we are several more years into the project and there are thousands of hours of content to “catch up” on. Something I’d like to do to achieve this is a summary page for each chapter, outlining the most prevalent themes and documenting the most interesting discoveries. We’ll need a team to go back over the episodes for each chapter (whether by listening or by using Tony’s summaries), collect the discussion points that stick out as particularly important, and then write all of those into a wiki entry.
5. THEME TEAM
We need a team who can develop the theme structure we will use in the wiki, with categories and sub-categories to keep them organised. This team will also write up a short intro for the wiki page of each category, sub-category, and theme. These intros will then be expanded upon by adding notes from each episode which features that theme, and any forum posts which comment on the theme. The process of linking episodes to themes might be easier once the wiki is actually live and the pages can be linked together, but our theme team can start some prep work similar to Jonah’s excellent work on the moral and spiritual themes (see his thread in the Content sub-forum).
6. EDITORIAL TEAM
Several volunteers have expressed interest in editing the work of others, and of developing a style guide for the wiki. This team can proofread and edit the work of the other content teams (transcripts, summaries, and themes), and maintain consistency across the content we are creating for the website.
My main thought is to bring some more structure to the team of volunteers. My initial approach of “just jump onto whatever task sounds good to you” didn’t end up with many takers, so this time I will create a list of teams and ask each of you to join one. Each team can then work together to set goals for what we want to accomplish, and get to work.
I want to stress that I’m not asking anyone to do more than they are able or willing to do, with any of these roles. Being a member of any of these teams will involve only as much time and effort as you want to contribute. If at any point you want to change teams, or be on more than one, or stop working on the project for a while, that is completely ok!
Here is my list of teams. If you want to add a team, volunteer to be part of a team, or have any other questions, please let me know in this thread or by a direct message.
1. PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM
I have found that this project is just too complicated and unwieldy for one person to manage, so I will need one or two more people to help me lead the project. It would be extremely helpful for one or both of you to have plenty of tech knowledge about the wiki implementation side of the project, as that is where I have fallen flat. (I’d love to learn more about this aspect so I can contribute, but it’s just not possible at the moment for me to study in-depth). We will be collaborating on planning and problem solving for the overall purposes and structure of the project, building and maintaining momentum on the project so it continues moving over time, and keeping up communication between the whole team, including Corey, other Signum and Mythgard folks, and all of our project volunteers.
2. WIKI TEAM
We will need a team of people who can make the wiki happen. This will involve developing the wiki, planning for and executing the launch and maintenance, and keeping in touch with Signum about any technical questions. We can also create smaller teams within this larger team as required.
3. TRANSCRIPT TEAM
Several of our lovely volunteers have already been experimenting in creating transcripts. We should keep this going, and set some goals to work through the backlog of episodes in a methodical way.
4. SUMMARY TEAM
One main goal for this website is to reduce the barrier to entry, particularly once we are several more years into the project and there are thousands of hours of content to “catch up” on. Something I’d like to do to achieve this is a summary page for each chapter, outlining the most prevalent themes and documenting the most interesting discoveries. We’ll need a team to go back over the episodes for each chapter (whether by listening or by using Tony’s summaries), collect the discussion points that stick out as particularly important, and then write all of those into a wiki entry.
5. THEME TEAM
We need a team who can develop the theme structure we will use in the wiki, with categories and sub-categories to keep them organised. This team will also write up a short intro for the wiki page of each category, sub-category, and theme. These intros will then be expanded upon by adding notes from each episode which features that theme, and any forum posts which comment on the theme. The process of linking episodes to themes might be easier once the wiki is actually live and the pages can be linked together, but our theme team can start some prep work similar to Jonah’s excellent work on the moral and spiritual themes (see his thread in the Content sub-forum).
6. EDITORIAL TEAM
Several volunteers have expressed interest in editing the work of others, and of developing a style guide for the wiki. This team can proofread and edit the work of the other content teams (transcripts, summaries, and themes), and maintain consistency across the content we are creating for the website.