Giving Shape To The Content

I've gathered a great deal of material for the Seeger Project, but now that content has to be given a form. What's important and what isn't in telling Pete's story? How can I make this telling of his life story different from that found in other websites and books? This will require plenty of thought. As it turns out, one of our classes was very helpful in shaping the answer.

Amy Miranda's class in Non-Linear Narrative (IDM 421) is, like several of our other classes, co-ordinating its requirements and assignments with the completion of our overall Project 2, aka, my Seeger Project. Two classes ago we had an assignment in which we presented Amy and our fellow students with a mind map of our project. A Q & A would follow each presentation, and the class was free to comment each mind map, even offer suggestions as to how they'd like to see it come together. That made sense, because they would be saying what they'd like to see to make the project (in my case a website with a serious topic) more interesting to them.

Well the IDM class really came through for me, even though they had very little knowledge of who Pete Seeger is or was. They knew his songs, but didn't know he wrote them. They liked those songs and understood each one had - and continues to have - social relevance. So someone suggested I focus on a few of his best known songs and feature them, adding material to support the context of each of those songs. Brilliant!

I knew I wanted to single out some songs, but I hadn't quite formulated how, or to what degree, I would do it. The class's enthusiasm for the key songs I mentioned was very encouraging and is helping me to understand what would be meaningful to them.

Polling my potential audience is a key step in the development process and Amy's class assignment was an early start in that direction. Another step in learning about audience interest will be taken tomorrow, when I send out my iterative survey to some of my classmates, via a Google-created questionnaire. It's a list of about 20 questions about my Seeger site's content, functionality and user tasks. I think I know what the answers should be, but I could certainly be surprised again, as I was by the comments made in Amy's class.

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As should be clear by now, my project will be a website. I don't consider myself an expert in building a website, even though we learned the basics of website construction during the Fall Semester. In order to meet this project's deadline, I will be making my website with the help of a school-supplied tutor, a fellow named Chris who's in his final year in Centennial's Graphic Design Program. We met today to discuss working together. I briefed him on the my project requirements and my folk signing subject, talked a little about my goals and the kind of content I wanted to put on the site. He will be my technical advisor as I go about making the site. It will be my site design, my content, my hands on the mouse and keyboard, my everything - except we'll be saving a considerable amount of time because he'll be there to show me how to get from "A" to "B" quickly, without undue fumbling.

I'll begin working with him in earnest in one or two weeks, once my wireframe and card sorts are further developed.

The Development Process Begins

Once I'd decided on my project topic, I started thinking about its design and content - a daunting task. Fortunately there was a process to follow that was designed to help logically plan and implement the whole thing.

We began in class with a spreadsheet on which we outlined the tasks and timeline for the Pre-development process. Pre-development begins with Requirements Gathering, which includes Content Requirements and Functional Requirements. It continued with the development of an Iterative Survey which will be sent out to my fellow classmates to gather their thoughts on my site's content and functions. I've now written up at least twenty questions for this survey, with more to come. I'll send it out to my classmates next week to get their input and indeed, gauge their interest in my project's topic.

The next step in Pre-development was to Determine Target Markets. Who would visit my Seeger website? I had a pretty good idea of who that would be, but nevertheless felt it would be worthwhile to look for similar folk music websites, if any, then research folk music sites in general. I knew the causes Pete sang and talked about, so I researched those areas. These included environmental causes, humanitarian causes and more.

My next task was Content Gathering. Googling "Pete Seeger" was a very good place to start. I also pulled a recently updated biography of Seeger off my bookshelf. It is an excellent source of detail and serves as a place to fact check some of the anecdotal information found on the internet. I did a lot of Youtube research as well and,through the Download Helper software on my Firefox browser, was able to capture a large number of videos of Pete and his contemporaries singing the folk songs he either wrote or made famous. These videos will form an important part of my website.

Welcome To My Project

The Seeger Project is my main classroom project for the Winter Semester of the Interactive Digital Media Program I'm enrolled in at Centennial College in Toronto. It's purpose is to reflect and showcase much of what I'm learning about interactive media in this one-year post-graduate course at Centennial.

I'm passionate about folk music and a great admirer of Pete Seeger, so this topic is a natural one. I've followed his career for decades, own many of his albums, and have seen him perform many times, most recently last November in a church in New York City, on the occasion of a memorial celebration of the life of another great folk singer, someone whom Pete influenced greatly - Mary Travers, of the popular group, Peter, Paul and Mary.

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Pete would probably not want a web page devoted to himself. He has no use for celebrity. It's almost ironic that he's in "show business" at all, since the very notion runs contrary to everything he stands for.

To respect Pete's unspoken wishes, this site will not be a normal "fan" site. Yes, it will celebrate Pete, his history and his accomplishments. But it will also have other components: it will reflect the history of Pete's time - the late 30's to present day in the United States; it will serve to promote the causes and concerns Pete has worked and sung for; and it will serve to showcase "The Power of One", the idea that one person can be a significant force for change in the world.

One last thing about my subject before I go on to outline the website development process: Pete is a singer, but he does not acknowledge having a singing career, an entertainment concept he abhors. He considers songs to be tools - tools in service of social change, a way to bring people together in common cause, and in the process, enhance the dignity of everyday women, children and men.