Week 5 Reflection and Improvement Article

Now that I have a better handle on my department, thing have definitely improved. However, that does not mean that I am not struggling. In being Art Director, I am tasked with organizing and utilizing my team efficiently so that the festival can be promoted and artistically sound. This week in particular taught me how interconnected all of the teams are. Kevin, Zoë, Adrienne, Shannon and there teams need me to function timely so that they can complete their assignments and jobs timely too. Communication is key in this and I have definitely checked up on my team more after noticing this important detail. I'm still trying to figure out the balance between dividing the responsibilities and following up on them, but it is a learning process and only time and dedication will make me better.

As far as my team, after Friday's meeting I immediately divided Devin an Tyler up so that they could accomplish more work before Tuesday's class. Tyler handled the logo while Devin created the CFE poster designs. Both of my team members performed excellently, delivering above and beyond my expectations. Tyler designed several CFE posters on top of making several solid logos. The work that Devin turned in was very high quality and even included dates/information showing how she intercommunicated between teams (with Kevin and Zoë) to accomplish her task. Overall, my team is really doing well.

For this weeks reading, we were asked to read Top 10 Tips for Successful Event Management. The article presented ten tips, two of which stood out to me. Assign Responsibilities and Remain Flexible both called me out and made me continue to consider how I can improve in these areas. Change is inevitable and I cannot let it keep freaking me out. I stress a lot and if I accepted that somethings are out of my control I could calm down and probably handle the new issue better. This past weekend, I threw a lot of stuff at my team and they showed me that they can handle it. I have to keep relying on them so that I don't become overwhelmed myself and so that the work gets accomplished quicker. The other reading about Budgeting was also extremely helpful. A lot goes into budgeting and it's not really an area I am familiar with. The main thing I got from it was that you need to do ample research so that you can predict spending better. There are a lot of things to account for and if you don't take them into consideration, your whole budget its inaccurate and therefore meaningless. 

My current task ahead is designing the website. In order to make an effective and professional site, it is important that I research what goes into accomplishing that. The following article:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/
gave me a lot of insight into this. For one thing, the article goes into considering how web users think. With our core audience being 18-25 year old filmmakers, it is important that we consider how

they will interpret information presented on a website. A block-wall of text would not be received as well as it would if it were broken up into sections alongside a picture. We do not want our site to bore our audience; we want it to draw them in so that they become apart of V6. This idea tied in well with the following principle, "Don't make your users think." The interface of a website should work for the user, feeling navigable and user-friendly. I specifically remember hating how I could not navigate MSPIFF's festival page during the research period. I wanted to find out simple information that should have been in their "About." However I had to look on their parent site to the festival site to find out anything about the festival. Logically, you would assume that the festival about would be on the festival's personal site. While I am making the website, I want to specifically make sure that the site itself makes sense and does not require users to search high and low to find basic information.