VS2008. Ahh what a project! Truth is – no changes, still developing. Good ‘ol animations and demonstration in production. There are tonnes to do (more than 100 between the team!).

But yeah, during this project I’ve also had the chance to experience weekly meetings and conference calls with everyone who was on the project in the UK and the US. Being in charge of the courses meant I had to feedback each week-by-week basis, reporting on the progress of each module and how everyone had been developing the course.

There is a steep learning curve throughout the first module of the course, as every process on the schedule was a new experience which at times required assistance and advice from fellow experienced members of the team.

In order to hit the deadlines, of which some were “set-in-stone”, it was necessary to keep everyone updated with the progress of the course and directly contact associates to ensure the work would be done overnight, if they were members of the US team or during that day for members of the UK team.

However VS2008 is the only project on going. I’ve already spoken about what’s involved in MSL work – so pretty much the same thing happens apart from the different topics!

For once, I don’t have much to say in this entry other than VS2008 is going pretty smoothly. The Excel document works like a dream and I’ve got into the routine for managing courses now.

There have been a few new procedures I’ve learnt.

One of them includes building courses in LCDS. Although this software has been used for several years, it’s still a really buggy tool and I’ve constantly been told by other members of the Media team that they always encounter problems with it crashing.

I’ve yet to witness any crashing on my machine (and hopefully it won’t happen). When LCDS crashes, it apparently has the tendency to corrupt the course(s) that may already be loaded into it. Therefore, it’s going to be quite unfortunate if that does happen (as well as frustrating!).

LCDS has a bunch of features that allow you to edit certain fields to describe a particular element of the course. There are graphic fields, text fields and attachment fields. These fields are all applied in different page layout templates. So depending on how much content there is, you could have content that lists simply as tables, or a text and graphic page, or as a media page. There are also added features into LCDS in the form of interactive games, where the user has to fill in questions and answer boxes in LCDS, which in turn is dynamically grabbed by a Flash game object that binds the game and text together.

There are two types of games – the tile game (where you have to choose the right order in which a process occurs) and then there’s the box game (where you have to select the correct answer and place into the categorical box). They are quite simple games, yet very effective learning tools when published.

So pretty much this week, I’ve been learning about how to put a course together for handoff – to be checked and finalised for release. Though this sounds like a very simple procedure, the process in which the content is passed from person to person is lengthy!

Overall, the only project running at the moment is VS2008, and it does keep me busy on a daily basis… for now!

Not long left before I finish here at Content Master (I don’t know whether to be happy or sad!). Nevertheless, there were still projects on the go! We have had times of quietness and times of complete mayhem.

However, most of the projects were now complete.

Even though VS2008 had started a while ago, I haven’t really documented on it much. So I thought I’d put a write about what is involved in this entry.

Thos was to be the biggest project of the year and started whilst I was still working on Microsoft Expression Web. Visual Studio 2008 training courses was another MSL course – make that a HUGE course.

This consisted of a large collection of 25 courses, which were spread across three subject titles. We were each given 5-6 courses to manage on top producing the media and eLearning material for each course. We also had to oversee the running of these courses from initial design through to hand-off to the client.

Essentially we had now taken on the role of a project manager, leading courses we had been provided, which at the time was a daunting prospect for everyone on the team. The Microsoft Project 2007 training course was to prepare us for designing the schedule, predicted to run over a period of originally 2 months. This wasn’t looking very promising however, as again, with any project (and in particular mine) – there were course which were not even developed yet!

For the design and production of the courses, our Project 2007 schedule designs were too complex for the team and we had to establish a quicker and more effective way of overseeing the daily tasks of each course.

So it was decided by our team (note: not the project manager who advised us to use Microsoft Project 2007) instead, that each of us create an Excel version of a day-to-day schedule that we would use to update daily task completion, contact members of the team who were due to be completing tasks that day or to prepare other members of the team for the expected workload.

Each collection had its own designated team of Technical developers, Instructional Designers (IDs), a Copy Editor and now the newly named – Media Producers. Each of these personnel also reported to a senior member of staff and to the Test team, who worked across all of the courses throughout development.

My initial job as project manager of course 6460ae Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF (courses 6649 – 6654 inclusive)) was to oversee the initial stages of the design and authoring of the content for these courses. From what I’ve gathered s far, my responsibilities included contacting the relevant members of the team as and when content was created so it could be tested, checked and updated if necessary.

This project was the real test for which correct email form and knowledge of where the course had progressed to was paramount. There was also a lot of communication with members of the US team, in particular the ID team who were stationed in the US. The first month of this project was a big learning curve in taking charge of the situation and staying up to date with the progress of the course depending on what other members of the team had completed.

The project became more challenging when courses started to overlap or slip and there were numerous schedule conflicts which had to be dealt with especially when new courses and projects started coming in! Using the day-to-day schedule sheet that we had produced for our own courses in Microsoft Excel, became essential as there were numerous tasks from each course at different stages to take charge of every day.

This week it was even apparent that the busiest times were spent with two or three hours at the start of each day reading through emails from the previous nights work in the US and letting other members of the team know where the course content was up to and at what stage their input may be required.

One or two hours were also required in the evening, preparing for the evenings work in the US. This project management was on top of the media that had to be created for all of these courses, which included numerous animations and demonstrations (thankfully no simulations!).

These had their own set of rules and development time as well as schedules and spreadsheets for completion, which required updating as and when the content was created.

So yeah, just a quick lowdown on what this project entails!

This week I was involved in a completely new genre of tasks. I felt like this was a really good learning curve and as a result, documented as necessary for future reference. The task was recording Alex Mackman Technical Interview – The Video Production Procedure. It was the first time that I had experience in videoing an official and professional interview.

There were various factors to take into consideration when filming. This included using a media suite for such video interviews.  As this was an internal project, the only place available was the training room. The only downside to this area was the echoing and post production it was very difficult to fix the rebounding voices, even when using software.

Over several days of the interview process, I learnt several tips when shooting. I’ve categorised below some short notes.

Audio:

I used booth microphone as well as the camera microphone (as backup). For the individual asking the questions, we simply used a voiceover rather than the visual them self. We only filmed the individual answering the questions. We used a female to record the questions in the sound booth which provided a far better sound quality.

Note: It could be possible to re-record all voice audio in the sound booth and dub over the original. However, this was not necessary in this case, yet would be very effective if recording outdoors and over a distance for example.

Lighting:

Get as much natural light as possible, by opening all windows and even use white boards to bounce light back around the room. Even using umbrella lights to illuminate the blue screen and any dark areas on the subject helped.

Composition:

Set the camera up on the tripod! Very important to maintain a still camera. For technical videos such as this, it is important for the camera to be level with the subject’s eyes. Or for a more personal presentation talking directly at the camera would be advised as well as speaking directly with the interviewer.

Capture:

We used Adobe Premiere CS3 capture the camera feed using a fire wire link. This is advantageous because we can then preview the capture quality on screen in real-time and there is no need to capture from the DV tape later on which can be time consuming.

Note: Every time the camera is stopped for whatever reason, remember to name your video capture to correspond with the audio capture. It’s also important to begin the capture on Premiere CS3 first and then recording audio with Sony Soundforge.

Ensure the video camera is set to manual focus. With auto focus enabled it’s not uncommon to see the camera struggling to focus from time to time, which can cause the shot to look terrible and unprofessional.

Note: Some cameras have a button on the side of the camera next to the manual switch that will focus when pressed. We pressed this button, once we were ready to begin recording to obtain a near-perfect focus.

We ensured that the camera was set to manual white-balance also. We experienced problems when the individual being recorded was lifting his hands – the camera than attempted to readjust the white-balance and this caused a shaded flicker between each shot. A good tip is to use a sheet of white A4 paper to set the white balance levels before you begin recording.

To capture the audio we used Sony Soundforge 8. We experimented to find the microphone capture was coming though the soundcard, where which we could also adjust and use the computer settings to boost the sound levels when required. This was required since the microphone is normally used to capture at quieter levels inside a recording booth.

Editing:

We use Premiere CS3 to edit our video capture. Since we captured with Premiere CS3 the video will already be prepared for placing into the timeline. Tweaking of the video was required by adding and changing brightness, contrast and saturation levels.

For audio it was important to normalise post production, before it’s importing into Premiere CS3. This means we had control of the audio’s level which could be changed depending on whether it needed to be louder or quieter at certain moments. This not only sounds better but keeps the sound level consistent between clips. Synchronising the microphone (Soundforge audio) can be tricky, so zooming into the timeline using the work area bar and adjustment of the play-head was required to snap the audio clip in the timeline.

This took some fiddling but was very important to get dead on.

It’s been sometime since I last updated, however M1705 Expression Silverlight Marketing was coming to an end. I had been very very busy trying to develop the content that constantly kept coming back and forth.

There were numerous occasions where the product itself turned out not to be feature complete! In other words we kept receiving new versions of Expression Web 2.0 (must have counted at least 5 different versions!) to work from again as new features were being developed all the time.

Each new version had a different layout from time to time. However, I worked very hard in trying to produce a quality piece of work for the client. As the client was constantly coming back to ask about how it was going, they also noticed how it has been quite difficult for not just me, but the team as a whole to work on each product individually.

Nevertheless, I kind of cornered myself and worked vigorously at producing a quality dynamic Web Design, both based on ASP.NET and PHP, while integrating a CSS layout and dynamic field entries. The outcome was phenomenal. From my point of view I learnt a lot about the layout of Web sites. This was a huge learning curve for me these last few months – attempting to get to grips with a product that was not even ready to release to the public yet!

I clearly demonstrated all the features required in Expression Web 2.0, and documented them in a clear and concise manner – again – something I’d not done before but I felt it was an achievement. It has been a tough ride this course – definitely! The annoying parts were when changes were always being made during production and the client was expecting us to take it on board, while developing what they previously told the team to do.

I had finally produced an asset selection of five different Web sites, some of them previous designs I had done as I felt they could still be used even if they were inappropriate for now. The main design however was a complete success and the client was happy with the design.

There was a very strict deadline in completing this tutorial. And on top of that, we had to then take the main tutorial outlining every feature of Expression Web (or whatever product we were demonstrating) – and also create snippets/nuggets for them. Four nuggets to be precise, which basically involved going into even more depth about what was so special about the specific feature chosen.

The final outcome for this project included:

Microsoft Expression Web 2 – One Hour Demo – Step-list
Web 2 – Nugget 1 Standards-based web sites – Step-list
Web 2 – Nugget 2 CSS  Based Layout – Step-list
Web 2 – Nugget 3 Rich Data Presentation – Step-list
Web 2 – Nugget 4 Powerful Server Technology – Step-list

It was a tiring project and on top of that, I even had to work several weekends. But from what I was told, it was a successful one (in the end!). I felt proud that I had been one of the first in the world to use the product, before releasing to the public.

The showdown for this project was definitely the ASP.NET Web site I constructed. I was very pleased with the outcome and as a result, I have developed my Web site programming skills.

In reality however, this was a challenging project, as the client was in the US and the communication was difficult at times. I also found a lack of clear cut guidelines from the client, which meant at times there was wasted man power, which obviously meant more cost implications for Content Master.

This week has been extremely busy. I have obtained feedback from the designs of the previous two Web sites I handed off and although they are demonstrating the features well, the client (who apparently is a design orientated expert… Hmm…) said he’s looking for some more vibrant/jazzy designs.

So I continued to work and rework M1705 Expression Web tutorial/demos. I began to outline plenty of features that Expression Web could demonstrate. Just to clarify, these tutorials are step-lists in which I outline every click/mouse movement, what button to press, menu items and what to type where, all within a document – which is then passed onto another external client which does the video recording of these steps professionally.

I didn’t understand why we, at Content Master couldn’t do the recording ourselves. I would have preferred that! But either way, what I had was plenty too. We were provided with documents to help outline some of the new features. There were particular pillars and bucket lists that outlined information about the product, giving an introduction about Web 2.0 and a comparative features list. Would you believe it though, it’s only now in the project that we receive it. Having spent about a month already, trying to figure things out what the client wants, it is only now they send us what they want to be shown (or at least, some sort of list!). This didn’t just apply to xWeb, but all the other Expression products my colleagues were working on. The team felt quite frustrated as it felt like we had wasted a month of resources on this project.

There are some basic features that they just wanted demonstrated briefly – however they looked for a logical storyline that builds up a Web site from start to finish. Some examples of features included the PSD import, dynamic page layouts (using ASP.NET master pages), importing Silverlight content and built in PHP server. The software also provided workflow capabilities, i.e. to demonstrate how Expression Blend 2 content can be imported directly into xWeb2.

The latest versions of Expression Suite were due to come out in early 2008.

The tools were split up between four of us in the team. The suite included Microsoft Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Web and Expression Encoder.

I was allocated Expression Web due to my Web site background experience and which was also a similar design tool to Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. However xWeb2, had the added ability to work closely with Expression Blend and Design and with XAML coding structure – all of which provide Silverlight compatibility.
Generally the graphical user interface Microsoft implemented was a key user friendly feature, which gave the product a lot more object oriented control.

Anyway, by the end of this week, I was quite familiar with what they wanted.

Finally for this week, by the end of this week, we had started the new major project for which we had to apply our project management skills.

This year, the first amendment made to the eLearning team, was that we were no longer known as an eLearning Developer, but instead given a new job title as an eLearning Media Producers.

This was a result of project managing one of the three collections of 6460ae, 6461ae and 6462ae – Visual Studio 2008 for which each contained 10 courses. Out of those 10 courses I was assigned five, however I was also looked upon the team to take on any other courses that required assistance if colleagues were busy producing other media.

This was only an introduction as to what was going to happen in these courses. Not much time was spent looking into this for now, as Expression was priority. Only about two hours per day were spent looking into VS2008. More details on this project later on

Well after a long break (off for being ill too – booo!), it took a bit of time to get back into the routine of work.

Nevertheless, things really picked up at the start of the year – and not being there at the beginning of week one in January didn’t help at all. I was simply chucked in the deep end, and it was not a pretty sight!
I was being asked to develop several Expression Web, Web sites, ready to be shown to the client by the end of this week. For the content and my experience in the software (only having about a week to get the hang of it), I felt this was slightly unfair! Yet apparently, this was part of the job.

I was given a slight head-start as one of my colleagues had already started on some designs for me at last week. I was grateful that I had something to look at! It gave me an indication for what the client was looking for, yet I also needed to develop a whole bunch of temporary functional Web sites, while demonstrating the features of Expression Web.

I found it challenging and quite demoralising at first as I still didn’t know where to start. I managed to pick up from where I last left off, on the previous design I did before Christmas. This helped to contribute to two designs. These were at least ready to show the client.

I had to demonstrate a “pretty” static Web site, a dynamic Web site allowing the user to interact with particular entry fields. A PHP Web site and an ASP.NET Web site…

So… I was thinking…

“Yeah right! In a week!?”

This was a one-man job too! I managed to hand off two of the Web sites, and gave preliminary mock up designs for the further two.

It was all good in the end and I still had time ahead of me to work on the next steps to this project!

Well after last week’s course, everyone felt it was time to relax. Expression was the only project on for the team. I’ve forgotten to mention that the team has been reduced by a few people, given that they have been offered new job roles at different companies.

Head counting – there are now nine of us. This happened some way back in October/November. But it goes without mentioning that the less of us there were, the more pressure there was to complete work! And there were quite some hard times managing work as a result of this, especially within the MSL domain.

I managed to get through quite a few features of xWeb, listing down about what they do and mentally recording in my mind about how to perform them. However, I also thought it would be necessary to get hands on with the product, so commenced work on a potential Web site, which may help to demonstrate the CSS features of this software.

Work was slow, but getting there. It was approaching the end of another year.

But with xWeb, there is one feature that I wanted to mention just so I always come back to reading this and think “Yeah, what was the point of that?” It was the PSD import option.

Apparently and in performing the relevant actions, it was possible to import a Photoshop PSD and then select the layers you wanted to be visible on that particular PSD design, click import and the image will sit on the screen in design view. Yes it’s a nice feature, as you get to look at the content of a PSD and choose the layers before importing to the stage.

But I did pose question to myself:

So, what’s stopping me editing in Photoshop, where I have more control over the image, and then Save As a PNG or JPEG file?

Basically what I was trying to figure out was the difference between using Photoshop and Expression Web. I suppose if the user didn’t have Photoshop, then it would be useful. But I’d have thought a sophisticated team like Microsoft may allow for those particular layers you select in xWeb, to become, say, DIV tags or similar. This would give far more control over a web site!

Oh well, maybe they’ll add changes later.

Next week is Christmas holidays. Though I don’t celebrate Chrismas – I celebrate the holidays! Woohoo!

Only one project running this week and for the rest of this year – Expression.

We were finally briefed about the requirements for this project.

It’s going to be a long ride I think!

The details supplied to us about this project were to create tutorial step-lists that show off a range of new features included with the new version of Microsoft Expression Suite. In this case I was following the Expression Web (xWeb) product.

This was an opportunity for me to learn a whole new software product. I was excited, yet to some extent, unknown as to what to expect, as generally, when someone picks up a new project or a software tool – there are always first impressions. My first impression was that xWeb was not bad but could be better. I still preferred my own ways of Web site development. However a complete suite of software with functions that are recognised within all the software packages is always a bonus!

This week, I also received my first official training course. This was in preparation for a course to be launched later in January (a massive one apparently!). The training course was about “How to Create Project” in Microsoft Project 2007. This course was more associated with Project Managers. However, this was a new role to be taken on board for the eLearning team, in the new year. A new solution was raised by Content Master to developing courses. It didn’t just rely on the Project Manager who is assigned that course – but more in particular to the eLearning individual (including me!)

So we had to learn the course in order to understand the workflow and how a course is resourced and put together over time, meeting what are called Milestones. We looked at how to use particular shortcuts, creating timeslots and managing who will be associated with what task. There were links numbers from each task too, so that when one task was complete, the next link would be active and ready to complete.

This also showed the number of days an individual was expected to complete that particular task. We also looked at the different levels of a task and how we can present the project as different views, e.g. Gant chart. We also learnt how to apply constraints to a project, but when necessary over-allocate time. At the end of this course we received a certificate detailing that I had successfully completed this course.

By the beginning of December, work at Content Master was becoming really quiet. However, we did have a new project rolling in – namely Microsoft Expression 2.0 Silverlight Marketing.

This project was to be an exciting one. We were targeting a whole suite of new software, where the earlier version has already been released, however the latest version was yet to be released near the beginning of the new year (around February time).

Either way, this week was a farewell to the project Longhorn. It is sometimes such a relief to be getting rid of work, as you know you’ve been spending so much time on the same content that it does get quite monotonous. However, there were some final synchronisations of animations to do. A couple of QA checks were required alongside a Melba.

A Melba was a quick new process to me, simply to check that the course content matches the requirements for a course release. It does a quick check at the file structure in which the course is built when importing/developing the course in LCDS. It then spits out a report that is accompanied with the course to outline if anything else missing is required.

Otherwise, next week, there was only one project running and we simply had to prepare for it.

So not much happened this week. A commencement on personal development ready to take on board Expression was required, as this was a completely non-MSL project – though obviously still Microsoft related.

I had already been told I was dedicated the Microsoft Expression Web 1.0 and when released, the v2.0.