It’s hard to believe this is the final blog. The time went by so fast, feeling slightly longer than the carousel ride, haha. Everything is coming together, and I am grateful for my team; whether we meet or not, we stay communicated. 

I have already created highlights for all 5 boroughs on Instagram. Now I need to finish adding all the carousels to the appropriate highlight.  Unfortunately, we discovered a typo in one of my posts. It has been up for a week; therefore, I think I will make a story with the edited version and then repost it at a later date. I missed one post based on my tracker, however, that was more of a bonus post, so I was able to easily get back on track. 

I’m looking forward to the showcase, showing off the final product, and hopefully also getting more traction on social media. My last goal is to attend the last carousel, so we legitimately mean we visited all 14 carousels. 

It’s hard to believe that we soft launch tomorrow to both the class and WBENA. This project and Lini, Tasha, and Alex have been such a large part of my life these last three months and as we close in on the launch it also means our time working together is coming to an end. I have learned so much about teamwork and what it takes to build something. At the beginning of this project I couldn’t have imagined what it would take to pull this off. I’m so proud of the work we have done together and I can’t wait to see where Tasha takes it next.  This pride and excitement is slightly tempered by my sadness that I won’t get to work with my team anymore. This semester I have admired Tasha’s leadership, Lini’s steadiness and determination, and Alex’s calm methodical thoughtfulness. I’ve become quite used to their presence in my life and it will take some time to get used to the change. I’m so grateful to have gotten this opportunity to learn and grow with my team and my peers.

Things are quickly wrapping up with the sites impending launch and hopefully minimal edits before the showcase. Later this week I will reach out to Nadia, Dr. Ostashewski, and Dr. Sonevetsky and update our social media sites. Lini, Tasha, and Alex are working so hard to get this project over the finish line and I’m excited to see what people will think of what we built.

Looking forward, I’m finally feeling up to revisiting my own project proposal from last semester with the skills I have learned from this class and through this project. Now that I have a slightly better grasp on what it takes to build a project I’m excited to see what I can accomplish.

I dedicate the final blog to my wonderful team. It has been a privilege to be part of this team and experience the generosity of my knowledgeable teammates. We worked so well as a team and managed to build a project without the degree of stress normally associated with such ventures. The credit goes entirely to the incredibly supportive environment both within the team and the classroom. The support could not have been more timely given the incredibly stressful time we are living in. The experience has been generative and constructive both technically and personally. 

Everything came together quickly this past week running up to the project dress rehearsal as pieces fall into place and the project site emerges from the foundational blocks set up over the semester. Pull requests for all the pages are gradually being merged into the main branch and we are working towards getting the site ready both for the dress rehearsal and the WBENA review tomorrow. I added an automatic carousel to the home page with call to action buttons linking to the history StoryMap, programs and song page, added a dropdown to the about tab with pages for the history, team, bibliography content and contact page. Looking forward to seeing the outcome with the rest of the pages being added and fine tuned by Alex and Tasha. Tasha and I printed and hand cut the brochures which in its tiny imperfections showcase the team’s labor, creativity and the quality of being human. As soon as the site is up, we can begin putting up the brochures around CUNY.

With the final weeks approaching, there is joy and satisfaction in what we have accomplished, the way we have had each other’s back through the process, how much we have learned from each other, and there is also an immense sense of loss and sadness. I will miss the camaraderie, the creative banter, the adorable cats walking across Tasha, Melissa, Alex’s screens demanding attention and everything about my amazing team. I would like to stay hopeful about the outside world by believing that my team and our classroom represents the future. I don’t have words that can adequately express my gratitude for being part of this wonderful journey, so I will just say a simple heartfelt thank you to my team, to my classmates and to our Professor. Thank you!

Last week was productive and fun. We are getting lots of traction on our Instagram page, specifically due to the Meet the Team Post! We received 716 views and 19 likes. I did fall slightly behind schedule with my weekend post; however, I am now back on track and feel confident about maintaining my schedule. 

I do, however, need to buckle down on my blogs. I hope to finish one today and begin working on the other one, too! 

Alright, finish line’s in sight.Let’s go.

The dummy site is live – I tried to include everything that we’ll use in the actual site, including PDF’s and recordings so there would be as few surprises as possible when we deploy the real thing. It took a few common sense tweaks here and there, but the sample site is currently live and stable. This means that we were also able to put the finishing touch (the QR code) on the brochure. After stumbling in awe through the second floor of Staples, I have acquired proper heavy, glossy brochure paper. Unfortunately, my efforts to print using said beautiful glossy paper were in vain this evening as I could not figure out how to switch the GC printer to the proper tray. Lini and I are going to try tomorrow before class, and between the two of us I’m sure they will be brought into the world in proper tribute to Melissa and Lini’s designs. I look forward to pinning them across the GC and the city at large.

For the next few days, it’ll be pulling together, finishing up the Story Map, making content edits, and finishing the front-end so we can give WBENA the first look (and first crack at critique / suggesting improvements!) for the website. The first deadline is on the horizon. Once we make that, it’s the three R’s – refinements, rehearsals, and write-ups.

TL;DR: I am Bad™️. Things are Bad™️. I’m making my blog post public because I’m tired of being Bad™️ in a bubble. Let’s be Bad™️ together!

Every time I feel like I catch up to the work in class, something in my life outside of class decides to clamp down on me. Right now it’s work, where there’s a compounding of fabricated deadlines and senses of urgency, and some tension with (and, in my humble opinion, a non-zero amount of mismanagement by) my boss.

That said, a thing I did this week that I am proud of: when I was on a plane and the wifi I had been banking on was not working, I decided to move methodically through trying to figure out some of the Wax templating on my own without very reference resources. I screen recorded myself talking through the problem in digestible 10-15 min increments and uploaded the videos to a team folder for others to review when they wanted to understand more about the problem. I think they’ve been educational for others so far, and the construct was certainly a helpful device for me to break down the problem space for myself. I felt like I unlocked a little cheat code for ways of working through overwhelm.

An aside: Relatedly, this idea of writing about “slow development” (as a twin to “slow archives” for us digital humanists) keeps knocking at my mind, and I think my experiences at work and school this semester feel like lessons pointing me towards work on it. Who knows when that might happen or how relevant it will be once I work on it!

My goal last week was to get an MVP version of the program page layout and song page layout looking as close to the wireframes as possible by class tomorrow. Right now, I think I will be lucky to get the program page done by that deadline.

I think my revised goals are:

• program page PR up by class tomorrow (and maybe merged by end of class?)
• defined ticket for another team member to pick up about home page layout / adding a carousel to homepage by EOD (midnight) tomorrow
• song page PR merged by our group meeting Thursday <– this one feels tough, but we will discuss as a team!

In awe of my teammates and all of us doing the most and doing our best as the world is truly reorienting itself.

It feels like literal crunch time!!! But not for this class for some odd reason.

I worked on the map tweaking little things and my two blog posts for our site, I can now say I am a Queens carousel expert! I think the anxiety for my assignments in my other class has me thinking all about the carousels, maybe as a way to avoid the very long research paper I have to write for my other class.

But I have to say, carousels of NYC has really been a positive outlet for me. I am still deciding if I have the courage to present our groups amazing work, and with each passing day I am leaning towards yes. It’s been fun working with my group and being a part of a creative process, and I think the last thing I can really get out of this class is working on my presenting skills.

Last week, I went to visit the Queen’s carousels, and I spoke to the workers at Forest Park, I shared what the project was and told them I’ll be back to give out our super cute bookmarks (shoutout to Julissa)! Even though I have a zillion things to do for my other class, I find myself wanting to go back to my carousel sites, take more pictures and videos, and talk to more workers and people visiting. It motivated me to get my work done for my second class these past few days, and now I can go back this week and share bookmarks, nudge people to follow our socials, and just take a pause and admire the pretty carousels.

At work today I noticed an upcoming deadline and it dawned on me that May is basically here… which means we are rapidly approaching the projects launch. Logically I understand this (and am aware of the deadlines of this class) and tomorrow we’re finalizing the website and practicing the launch before we show WBENA. It’s all coming together and it feels kind of unbelievable. Lini suggested a story map for our history section. It’s user friendly and I think gives the section a sort of material experience with some images and using the map to bring us from Ukraine to North America. We were going to work on our sections asynchronously, but we realized this may cause some issues with saving the map so we’re going to finalize it tomorrow together.

I’m excited to see the project tomorrow! I feel a little disconnected, by choice, from the technical side of the site. I’ve been overwhelmed with the state of the world and life and just haven’t had the bandwidth to do anything that I wasn’t required of me. I vaguely know what’s going on because of the group chat and group meetings. Alex created all of these really great training materials that I hope to look at when things slow down a little.

I continue to chug along on social media content. Once the website is ready it will be time to get back in touch with Dr. Sonevetsky, Dr. Ostashewski, and Nadia to share the final result with them!