Internet Studio was a great course. At first, it didn’t seem to be the course that I was expecting. I didn’t know anything about the WordPress world. I think that this course has changed the way I look at the internet by helping me to focus my tasks on the things that I know how to do well: web coordination and web content management.

I used to feel guilty about not being a programmer or having my design skills up to par with similar web gurus, but now I am more confident about what I can and do bring to the table. I truly enjoy reading Boagworld and will go back to it often. Also, learned to love Twitter because a lot of magazines and people in the web industry reveal their products there – the Twitter community gets them first hand. Also, I learned about SitePoint and Sam Barnes’ web project management page. I learned that a lot of these web knowledge guys seem to be in England. Ain’t that funny?

But also, I’m happy to find new avenues in which to stay on top of the web industry. It’s good to see that even other web professionals feel like they are always trying to stay on top of the latest trends.

For myself, I feel that as long as I have a basic knowledge of HTML, web design and usability, I can keep myself viable. I am happy about my final project. I like that I created a new alias for myself to carry through my grad school career. I am having second thoughts about having my own website. While I have plenty to say about media and communications at large, I don’t have a lot of drive to continue to develop content. I’m busy enough creating content for my regular job. However, I also realize that this is something that I can refer back to an industry person or to a potential future employer, so I can say that: “Yes, I do keep up with the industry and here’s my website to prove it.”

I think that WordPress has been the bane of my existence for the last two-three months. This is my first venture into content management systems and I find them overall pretty useless. (I know Randy Hoyt is curious as to why I find them useless.) I oversee 26 websites at work and we do not use a CMS. Harsh, I know.

However, I do know that one of the challenges for companies is to keep their websites fresh and relevant and to have content updated in a timely fashion. And I read somewhere this semester (in one of the many articles and blogs that I’ve come across) that the more people assigned to be web content editors, the less the job is done correctly. So here I am with no CMS and doing my job just fine.

For me, I’d rather dig around in Dreamweaver because that’s what I’m used to. I still don’t understand PHP files and if I could figure that out I would be OK. So I’ll continue to research that, if only to make my website better. But it’s summertime, and I also might lay out in the sun instead – so we’ll see what happens.

Yes, hamster-wheel is exactly what taking this class felt like. But it was a lot of information to cover and I was very glad to do it. I know that a lot of college kids tend to be unorganized and I kind of felt sorry for the kids who wouldn’t be able to keep up with the workload. Unfortunately, I let my assignments get ahead of me and I became one of those kids! Arrrggghhh!

My final assessment: great class and would take a part II with Randy Hoyt if it were offered.

Ken Landefeld

I love Ken’s cartoon guy and I’ve told him so in person. The image of the cartoon Ken wearing the Target uniform and not wanting to be associated with it – genius!

So it should come as no surprise that one of my favorite presentations belonged to Ken/ny/eth at www.kenlandefeld.com. Great job! One of the more interesting things about this class is that the quiet kids in the class seem to have much more to say – and I wish they would have piped up more through the semester! The fact that Ken was able to dismantle pretty much all of his theme and create something completely different was so impressive. I really like the final product and I even think that it looks fine on a Mac desktop.

Ken’s “finger quotes” about social media: it’s true that a lot of people associate and characterize artists in the comic book vein as someone who lives in their parents’ basement and never enjoys the sunlight. It’s great that he recognizes this potential stumbling block in how others perceive you and how he wants others to “get” that he understands more about social media than the average guy out there.

This was an outstanding presentation and one that I did look forward to seeing – congrats on your website and will look forward to seeing more of your projects as they evolve.

Eric Finger

Eric Finger presented for his website, www.thefingerprint.net. I was curious about Eric’s site probably from the simple fact that I hadn’t heard a lot from him during the semester. I enjoyed hearing the story about his grandfather and his ventures into creating artwork. I also enjoyed seeing the ‘phases’ of the final artwork product. Any artist knows that there are usually several stages for a piece of work; it’s great that he thought about bringing that aspect to the website.

Hey, loved that Eric references Randy’s website on his links section. Way to kiss up to the instructor, Eric! But I’m only bitter because I didn’t think of it, too….*frown* Eric was definitely passionate about his subject and I was glad to see his artwork as well.

Joe Posada

Joe has been fascinating from Day One because he just sits there and types html code like it’s no big deal. He’s great. So I’m really excited to see his DFWGamers site really come together. I agree with Dean Terry that Joe should consider picking up that domain name. It’s very original and he already seems to have quite a community following going already.

I know that Joe originally had an idea of advertising for the local Mexican community businesses that he said were around the area where he lives. I’m glad that he has incorporated that same idea into DFW Gamers, supporting the local community.

Good job, Joe. Good presentation. You presented yourself well in front of the class and you have great confidence as well. Congrats!

My last task had changed because it referenced back to an old theme that I was working with…

So, I was very inspired by the Casual Gent’s plug-ins during his and began to incorporate many into my website. I’ve begun with the following:

• Google Analytics
• Smart YouTube
• WordPress Hit Counter
• Sociable

The Sociable plug-in I have added so that it only appears on the second page of the main story post.

I have a list of subjects for the articles that I need to write: some upcoming subjects include boys and their gadget toys, on being a generalist and some insights into being a web coordinator.

I added a couple of plug-ins that I ended up having to remove later because they didn’t work or didn’t quite do what I wanted for one reason or another. Again, I”m not feeling quite qualified in writing a plug-in. I can follow the code and see what it is doing (this explains my double-Twitter post — I wanted to see how the php code worked) — but I’m still having a difficult time just changing the php code to my existing site, so creating my own code does not seem to be in the cards as of right now.

Paul Boag says that community is about people and relationships, not technology. An RSS feed is a broadcast tool and a forum is a community tool. Ta-da!

I am particularly interested in corporate blogging because I work for a large corporation. We do not see a blog by our CEO as a possibility for a very long time. Let’s put it this way – a big regime change would have to be in order! I think that a good corporate blog can begin a dedicated community, but you have to have a charismatic leader who responds accordingly. Other than that, it’s just a broadcast tool that people won’t pay attention to, so it would be a big waste of time.

I am not set up to receive broadcasts (like RSS feeds) from other companies, entities, etc. Try to keep the list of information that I receive very low. I prefer to go out and look for it – otherwise, I feel like I’m under a mountain of multimedia! That’s why I call my website the ‘Home of Media Multitasking Overload.”

I began a madmacgirl account on Twitter. I previously had a Twitter account, but did not put it to much use. I was using it to post announcements about new content on my other blog, but once the content wasn’t arriving in a timely fashion, the followers started to go away! My website and my Twitter account will be a tag team. My Facebook is personal. It’s not for industry use at all and I certainly don’t have people from work as my contacts. I would not consider creating a FB page for madmacgirl.com. It’s not necessary. I wrote an article on the new website about a friend’s experience with Facebook.

It goes back to my thinking of trying to understand why people put EVERYTHING about themselves online. As I tweeted yesterday, has no one learned anything about the cautionary tale provided by the Terminator movies, both 1 and 2? *Sigh.*

My site objectives were to create a website where I could discuss technology within the media and communications realm. I did not deter too far from what I wanted this site to be. The hardest thing for me will be the content. There will be hits and misses until I am comfortable with what I want this site to be, but I’m on the right track.

I took a lot away from this course and I’d love to take a “next-step” version of this course if one were offered. But instead, I’ll try to start attending those WordPress meet-ups that received rave reviews from the students who attended. I’ve gained a greater understanding for the web project management process.

My experience with WordPress was exciting and new. Kind of like The Love Boat. And love. Whatever.

In a way, I don’t like the lack of control that I have with WordPress, and in another way, it was fun to figure out the code on the back-end. I knew nothing about php before this class, and I hope to never see it again. Nah, just kidding. What I don’t think is fun is the idea of creating a plug-in for WordPress. Talk about a subject that I am NOT interested in right now. But I could be persuaded to re-visit this topic as I get more experience using madmacgirl.com. P.S. I had three theme changes for this site!

In theory, I wouldn’t mind being a professional web developer, but the idea of sitting at a desk and writing code, instead of writing and creating content for a website (or other media) does not really interest me. I’m a firm believer that the two types of minds who can do either of these jobs cannot do at least one of them well. If you give me an example of someone who does both really well, I will:
1. show you what part they are not doing very well; or
2. if both parts look great, they’re lying and not fessing up that they do what they do with lots of help.

I’ll discuss my madmac domain story in class. Challenges, I had a few.

Oh, I’ve got some plans for this little website. Boy, do I have plans! This site I will use to discuss work projects that I’m trying to either solve a problem or work through a particular issue – y’know, to see if others have had the same experience. The other use will be to chronicle my journey through the EMAC program and see if I’m headed in the right direction. Who knows! No plans to build any new websites, but I do plan to continue to develop my writing style. I think that talking like an industry insider, one must also be able to write about it.

I could get lazy like Paul Boag and start podcasting – but I’m good!