LAST BLOG!

Well, I just got done with my last final. I'm not sure how I feel about it right now. I think it'll hit me sometime tonight or tomorrow that I won't be pulling all-nighters to read about the geography of Latin America EVER. AGAIN.

Bittersweet. I've loved Mizzou since I was a kid, loved it while I was here and I'll miss it when I move on.

I'd say our capstone presentation went well. We were really happy to see Chris, Rashad and Jacquie there. My review about the project and our team was pretty much my last blog post. Couldn't have asked for a better capstone semester. Big thanks to Chelsea and Mike.

My online portfolio is done and submitted.
http://larvf6.wordpress.com

Peace.

Week 14: Second to last post, ever.

I'm going to start off by saying, I hands down believe I got to work with the best team for my capstone. Chelsea and Michael both bring different strengths to the team. Chelsea is like our little secretary. She takes down every note/piece of information we would ever need and her flash drive holds pretty much everything we've worked on. Michael is very organized and makes sure everything is on schedule. Most of the time it'd annoy me to get texts reminding me about meetings, etc. but, I more than appreciated his dedication to our project. I'd say I work as a good editor. Chelsea, Michael and I all work well together because we trust in each others abilities and skills and can all take constructive criticism. I'm extremely thankful for both of them and the way our capstone turned out this semester. I wish every other capstone down the line the great experience I had.

I know this wasn't required, but as things are winding down I figured it'd be a moot point to elaborate on what "winding down" was, so I used this post to brag about my team :)

Tuesday night we practice for our presentation. I'm actually really looking forward to it. I hope it is as interesting and educational for the rest of them as it has been for us.

Week 13: Almost the End

This week I've been working on my online portfolio. I switched from weebly to wordpress. My photo files were too large and I used up all my free space- I realized this after I already switched but I like wordpress better anyway. Tomorrow we're meeting in Futures to work on tying up loose ends and getting our paper written and presentation put together. As Chelsea would say, "YAY SCHOOL."

Week 12: Finshing up

Well, the team isn't doing the European Decathlon because of financial reasons. This leaves the remaining bit for us to do pretty simple. We are meeting the next couple of weekends on Saturday to get everything put together and set up for the team next time around. We're finishing up blog content, the communications plan, bios of the students, our presentation, etc. I'm looking forward to presenting the things we've learned and were able to accomplish come May 12th.

Week 11: 2013

This week felt like it was 2 days long. We met to work on the brochure to finalize it for the team's Chicago trip. Communication has been "rough" seeing as though so many changes were asked to be made pretty last minute. We made it work, got them printed and even made business cards to hand out to give people a way to get back in contact with the team if need be. However, Thursday night, we found out that the team did not get a bid. Meaning, they weren't invited back to the competition for 2011. What this means for our capstone, I don't know. But, we've worked well with the team, done everything we could, and they remain optimistic for the next competition. Jacquie also mentioned to us that they are thinking about trying for the European Solar Decathlon competition.
My main disappointment was not that we worked all semester on something that didn't pull through in the end, but that we've seen just how hard their team has worked and how much energy and passion they've shown all to receive a "no thanks." This was interesting to us because they placed 11th out of 20 schools in 2009 and have only made significant improvements since then.
We'll see what happens.

Week 10: new logo

We got some images of the new logo that implemented the old idea/colors and a sketch from one of the students on the Solar Decathlon team. It looks cleaner, more applicable and able to be put on T-shirts, brochures, website, etc. cleanly. I'm still working on the tech piece... I'm just waiting to hear back from a couple people to get some more background information. I'll be in Chicago this weekend so we're meeting tomorrow to finalize brochure content to give to the ad team so they can come up with an official idea to put together and print. This week has gone by ridiculously fast... and so has this semester. We'll be wrapping things up pretty quickly.

Week 9: Brochure (cont) + logo

[I had this written beforehand and for some reason forgot to publish it on blogger]

This week we discussed more about the layout and content of the brochure. Even though our team isn't in charge of the layout/end result (besides content)... I'm pretty adamant about it not being a simple trifold on white printing paper. To be frank, I made those was when I was in elementary school. I think for as awesome as a team that Team Missouri is, they need to take something that really represents how hard they've worked... and a brochure talking about what they've been doing is the first step.
Chelsea, Michael and I met up and split up some things to work on during (haha) and when we get back from spring break. I'm working on a piece that talks about the special technology Team Missouri is lucky to use like the telepresence system and a machine that prints their graphs (we have 1 of the 6 in the country).
Looking forward to seeing the new logo implemented and coming back from break and finishing this up.

Week 8: Brochure and Logo

This past week was interesting and kept us busy as far as getting content ready. We brainstormed and finalized ideas on what should be put into the brochure for the team to take to Chicago for the Kitchen and Bath show. This was critical because they are looking for sponsors and sources to raise money and the brochure will be their way of getting the buzz out about Solar Decathlon and Team Missouri. I'm pretty excited that we've finally seen some ideas for the logo. Rocket Science came up with some great ideas and we narrowed it down according to what would look good on t-shirts, the website, etc. It was definitely a team project since you need several pairs of eyes to look at an idea and break it down into something concise and usable. So, things are well underway and I think our team has done a great job keeping up with deadlines and really contributing to the team and doing our part of the project.

Week 7: The Competitive Analysis

This week was pretty basic. The thing we're working on for this coming Sunday are our individual analysis of two other Solar Decathlon teams and their websites, etc. This will give up a better comprehensive idea of what the other teams did well on and could have done better with so we can improve things on our end and not make the same mistakes they did. I think this is an extremely critical part to our research because it's important to look at the competition to help evaluate what we need to be working on or fixing. This week has been really crazy for me personally so I'll be rushing to get things done this weekend even though I'll be out of town. So far, we're still invited to go to Chicago for the Kitchen and Bath event with the architecture students as long as they have the money (which they didn't seem too worried about). Either way, we've gathered good content so far and have been making deadlines.
Making good progress.

[LR]

Week 6: The 500-word narrative

This week we had our first aspect of the project due. We took all the information we had been gathering over the past few weeks and put together a 500-word narrative about the overall goals of the team's project. It was difficult in some parts because it's tricky to edit something you aren't quite sure what it's saying. The engineering terminology and other aspects of the narrative were a bit lost to us so cleaning up the wording and putting an appealing spin on it proved to be a challenge. We met the internal deadline and final revisions will be made and corrected by the time the official one rolls around. Overall, this week was pretty successful and productive.

Week 5: Collaboration

Things are looking good. We've been working closely with Rocket Science and managing who is doing what, when and how that way things are a bit more organized than last week. We met with Stephanie Padgett and she, of course, had a lot of good ideas and reiterated that we all needed to stay focused and help the team do the same. She made mentioned that we need to use our strengths as journalists to assist them with their "engineering/architecture" brains. It'll definitely be a huge group effort to get this project off the ground and in full swing. The 500-word narrative due date is coming up and we'll be working on that early next week. Otherwise, things are looking much more clear-cut and defined. Good news.

[LR]

Week 4: Sitting, Waiting...

I will be out of town for family reasons this weekend so I won't be able to go to the face to face meeting with Rolla on Saturday. However, I'll be in town Sunday night for the meeting with Rachel (Rocket Science) to talk about more specifics about logo options and brochures. This week we got the blog up and running and used photos from the telepresence meeting Chelsea and I went to. I think our presentation went well on Monday. I had several people tell me that our project sounds interesting (and it is) so let's hope we can convey that in the communications plan as well!
We have yet to get in touch with/set up a meeting with our 'go-to' person. There are some things we don't want to go ahead with yet until checking in with her.
So for now, we're sitting and waiting and doing as much as we can as far as content gathering. We're well on our way, I believe. We'll see what next week holds for us.

[LR]

Week 3: Gettin' There

This week has been productive.
Today we met with Rachel (head of Rocket Science) and found out that they do have two concepts for the new logo and just need to get the go ahead from Jackie.
Chelsea, Bittner and I are meeting Sunday to put together our presentation for Monday. Since our project isn't "numbers" based- our research aspect of this is pretty much catching up with the technology and lingo used in the engineering and architectural world to better our understanding which will in turn, assist us in providing accurate content for the site, brochure and 500 word narrative + communications plan.

We've also looked at a lot of the other school's websites and content to get a better idea of what we need to be doing to get our Missouri team up to speed.
While some things are still up in the air- all I know is that we're going to Chicago to document the Kitchen and Bath event (where the team grabbed their biggest sponser, Kholer) and I'm pretty pumped about it.

[LR]

Week 2: Clear as Mud

As things progress, we've discovered there are numerous people we need to talk to before we can really made headway on this project. We've got a pretty solid idea of what our team will be doing for this semester and even more ideas for the following CVG capstones. Currently, we are waiting to hear back from Rocket Science (an ad club) about the new logo for our Solar Decathlon team. We're all in agreement that before we can implement a blog and/or website design, a logo is critical because we would be creatively designing around it. We want the color scheme and general image to match with whatever else we decided to create here on out. Our main concern right now is perhaps talking with a tech person to get a website up and running. While we are confident in our content managerial skills, none of us has had any real experience with designing a professional-looking website and judging from what we've seen from the other schools, Mizzou could use an updated site with a few additional flairs.
On a personal note, I've been studying for the LSAT and working on law school applications this past week- but this morning was the day of my test so that's one huge obstacle out of my way. I'm happy to finally be able to redirect my energy elsewhere- mostly in the direction of this project.

[LR]

Week 1: So It Begins

The first day of capstone was exciting to say the least. I think we have a great group of aspiring journalists whose ideas and opinions are always top notch and on point. I'm also anxious to get started on our project. I couldn't have asked for a better group. I've worked with Michael Bittner and Chelsea Williams during our reporting semester and there's nothing more important than working with dependable people. It was pretty much unanimous when we chose to do the Solar Decathlon project. We have already spoken with Keith Politte who was full of great ideas and really helped get the gears in our heads a' turning. From what I can tell so far, we've decided to go with an educational angle since conserving energy and being energy efficient is such a hot topic lately. So far we've made good connections and I'm even working with my dad who is a physics and engineering teacher in Lee's Summit at the Summit Tech Academy. These kinds of projects are right up his alley. He also instructs aspiring science teachers at UMKC- which is a perfect outlet to get the Solar Decathlon buzz out. Basically, so far so good. Very excited to see where this ends up at the end of the semester. I have high hopes.