Mahara

Mahara is a blogging platform that the college has already got installed and set up. The Mahara engine is already in place and there is function ability already in place. All that is needed is for portfolios to be uploaded and run it on the platform. Seen as it’s already there, it would cost less money to set up this function within the college.

Mahara is provided freely as Open Source software

In brief, open source means that you are allowed to copy, use and modify Mahara

provided you agree to:

1. Include the source code when distributing Mahara to others;

2. Not modify or remove the original license and copyrights

3. Apply this same license to any derivative work.

an ePortfolio has a much broader scope as an online collection of reflections and digital Artefacts (such as documents, images, blogs, resumés, multimedia, hyperlinks and contact information). Learners and staff can use an ePortfolio to demonstrate their learning, skills and development and record their achievements over time to a selected audience.

5 MB of disk space

Blogs


A comprehensive blogging tool is provided in Mahara, where blogs and blog postings are considered Artefacts and may be added to a View. 
 
The blogging tool allows users to: 


4. Create blog posts using a WYSIWYG editor

5. Attach files to posts

6. Embed images into postings

7. Configure whether or not Comments may be received on their blog

Create draft postings for later publishing

Social Networking


Mahara provides a social networking facility where users can create and maintain a list of Friends within the system. ePortfolio owners choose whether other users can add them to their Friends list automatically or by request and approval. 
An ePortfolio owner's Friends lists shows those Views to which they have been assigned access.

At present a social networking idea is in the pipeline being tested already.

Mahara shows Internal portfolios within the college but not outside the college.

Meeting With Lizzie Jackson

I arranged a meeting with Lizzie Jackson today to talk about what the college had to offer. Keith came along with me.

Lizzie said that they already have open source software called Mahara which we can use as a platform for a social networking website. Its not in current use yet so we could use it to create our idea, and it could be a way of cutting down the cost for running the website.

She also said that the idea for a social networking and portfolio website is something management are interested in and is something they are trying to set up already. A group of people called "the student web services" are planning on pitching there idea on Monday of next week and although they are setting it up, they want to get others involved and on board to carry it on, as like us they do not want to do it all themselves.

Mahara is being tested for its uses. We could also begin tests to see if our website and portfolio webiste would work on the platform or not, and if not then try to adapt our work to fit it. Lizzie has said that the main person to talk to about this would be John White, and she will give us his contact details via Email....
The problem with Mahara to us is that only students within the college would be able to view the work, we ideally wanted to get those from industry to also see what us as students were doing. it could however work for the part of collaborating within the college, i.e matching a sound designer with someone from post production.
To link in the industry the portfolios cannot be made to be public, we would only be able to link with them through other portfolio websites which defeats the object of what we are trying to do.

A last thing to note is that for prospective students who are wanting to come to the college, soon they will submit thier work for thier interview first and it will all be online. This is on an outside network which will allow outsiders to gain access to the college without the use for passwords and user names at such an early stage.

Communication

Its been quite difficult to communicate well within the group due to there being quite a few of us. Although we have tried meeting up in college, not everyone at the same time can always make it. We have a face book group which seems to work well, everyone knows what everyone else is mean to be doing, but a lot of information goes up thier and it can get quite confusing at times. New ideas, questions and progress has been updated daily.

I feel that if there were less of us, things may have got done quicker as everyone would know what has been done and what needed doing. It also hasnt help this unit being in the final term when everyone is trying thier best to get projects finished.

Meeting With Jill Hogan

A meeting has been set up with Jill Hogan who is in charge of branding for Ravensbourne college. We basically wanted to ask what we could and could not do with the Ravensbourne logo and what we should and should not be doing with it.

The main things to take from what she said was:

Incorperate the Ravensbourne logo but we are not to change it in any way

The logo can be made into black and white, but must keep the colours if we were to make the t shirt or design in different colours. we can use black on white or white on black...

We could use the chevron design and shapes to come up with an idea, and we would need to keep the Font for the logo the same, as with any writing that goes on the t-shirt.

She will need to check any designs before we get them printed and sold.

She said that there is a possibility for the college to buy the design or t-shirts for there up coming or big events they may put on in the near future, so it could be a good way to make money in the long run.
That or we could get commisioned to try and create more t-shirt designs for the different events....

Merchandising

I think we have now decided to only do merchandising for the company and the college as a way of getting money and promoting the service. I dont think we will now be doing models and selling merchandising for our films as this will over complicate the site and the films will change every year.

Merchandising_Online

Looking into Merchandising and how much its going for online.

These impressive figurines can go for anything up to $200.00 or more. A bit more than we would obviously make with our less than well known animated films we a re going to make.

The Opposition

Carlos gave me the job of Looking to find out our opposition to which who are also trying to start up a very similar business....

Below is what they intend to do....

The are called:

The Student Web Services.....

People involved:

Craig Gardner
David Christmas
George Alton

Summary of there enterprise:
The business is to be based around providing online services to students. The prime focus would be those who need temporary hosting and design services during their time at University/College. This could be for a range of things from actual term-time projects (something like Rave Live) through to online portfolio hosting.

The primary focus at the beginning is students who need temporary online services at some point. To that end our major USP would be that we would not attempt to lock the customer down into lengthy contracts but simply provide the service on a month by month basis.

To supplement this we would look firstly into providing basic template solutions that require the minimal amount of effort from the client in order for them to have a functional website, this would mostly be used for basic portfolio presentation during the job application process. Taking this further we could offer more complex and involved hosting/design/technical support services to student start-ups and larger projects.

• Would develop an “after University” support section for graduated students who wish to keep their services. This would be a major development once the original start-up was functioning and profitable.

• Mission statement: “we see ourselves providing personal, affordable and no ties web services to the student community. These can be tailored as little or as much as the clients require to help them achieve the best in their endeavours”

Measurable aim(s) of there enterprise

Highly attractive and affordable the natural flow of the student communications channels should do a lot for our promotion.

Promote e and e projects on the webiste

Aiming for 2 – 5 paying customers by the end of the project, spread over various services and at different levels of involvement (short term customers vs long term customers etc)

A starting point would be a website, moving through small-scale social media promotions (a Facebook group etc). The major driving force would be contacting people and making use of already established contacts to bring business and inherrently spread the word through their day-to-day conversations

Action Plan
Weeks 1&2 – Market research, infrastructure research
Weeks 3&4 – Set up own website and hosting, (obtaining/investing in static IP etc) begin to refine portfolio design templates
Weeks 3 – 6 – Promote via word of mouth/online presence and begin arranging client meetings and working to provide the first stages of solutions
Weeks 6+ – Continue with progress, re-asses and re-evaluate enterprise direction and adjust project goals/progress plans accordingly

Budget
havent worked out thier budget yet.

Exit Strategy/ Risk management
Two weeks of market research and technical research will give us a better idea of what we would stand to lose. However as is usually the case with Web infrastructure, the entire thing can be built on older systems and then migrated over to newer systems once investment and uptake have reached appropriate levels. This should minimize the lost investment if the project were to fail during the first 6 weeks.

After this point, the focus should be on continuing student uptake (helped by the fact that every year there are more students entering education) and retaining graduates (this part of the enterprise can be worked on at around a 6month point of the first year, once the original project is seen to be effective).