Tuesday, 17 December 2013

EpicEgoEntertainment
Blog 1
This is a career blog, informing interested readers about what it is like working in the interactive media company EpicEgo Entertainment. We will tell you who does what job and how their job helps the company as well as what they do in their job, the structure of the organisations and the structure of other companies.

The structure of other media based companies is very advanced, because they have a large staff to work with. Since our company is much smaller we will not have a large organisational chart. Look at Facebook organisational chart and compare it to ours.

                                                  Board of directors
                                                        CEO_|
                      ______________________|____________________
                      |                           |                                       |                  |
                   Research &         Finance &                       Planning &     Sales &
                    development      Administration                    operation        Marketing
                                                                                          | K
                                                          ________________ _______________
                                                          |                               |                              |
                                                    Solar modules        Designs &                Solar farms
                                                       & Cells                  accessories               & systems
                                    __________ |__________________________
                                   |                                                                          |
                                Supervisor                                                       Supervisor
                                 (Modules)                                                        (Cells)
        _____________ |____________                             __________|_______________
       |                           |                         |                           |                                                  |
   1st line                 2nd line              3rd line                1st line                                        2nd line
6x gen worker     6x gen worker    6x gen worker     6x gen worker                             6x gen worker      

Finance & Administration: The job of someone who works in finanace and administration requires them to provide and maintain a budget for the company, acquiring money for the company as well as finding out how to do so, dealing with loans that need paying of, writing financial reports and writing financial reports. The requirments for this job are a basic understanding of the language required in this case english, reasonably good math skills, the ability to work smoothly with a tite schedule and the ability to manage their work. Aquiring a finance and administration worker will be neccessary for our work later when we actually have money coming into the company. Currently we do not have any funds coming into the company and we do not require any to start up meaning a financial adviser will have almost no purpose in our company, so we have not bothered to look for anyone so far, however when the company starts to make money we will consider our in take to decide how many members of finance we need.

Research & Development: The research and development department is responsible for coming up with new products and styles, so they make new products so that the company they are working at stay ahead of their competitors. They are also responsible for improving consumer product and finding ways to create the products. The requirments for this job is to have a creative mind and a understanding of particular designing software. The main concern for our research and developer is creating new material for our videos, music and games as well as finding out what trends are in and what trends are not. Having someone to work in research and development in our company is crucial at this stage and so we have already worker out who would manage this sector of the company until we can expand the number of researchers we have.

Sales and marketing: The idea for someone who works in sales and marketing is to make the product seem attractive to the audience. They need to make the price seem attractive in comparison to the worth of the product, they help the advertising team develope the advertisement for the product and sometimes helps in the evolution of the product. This requires the creative skills in business to develope different ways to sell the product, a charming personality to spread the word of the product by mouth and knowing where to sell the product. Our product is not sold, it is free entertainment and I highly doubt we will have any murchandise to sell until we have a large number of followers, after gaining popularity we will employe someone in sales and marketing to make and sell merchindise as well as getting us sponsors.

Planning and Operation: People who work in the planning and operation department are in charge of planning how the work gets done, so the flow of the work from the input to the end results, they are also in charge of what machine we use and what software. The requirements needed to do this job is good communication skills, knowledge of multiple sectors in a company and they also need to know about computer software and machinery, so for example if a piece of machinery breaks down then they need to know how or who to get to fix the machine. We already have a memeber of staff who works as the planning operator, we assume this is a neccessary step for all businesses to get set up.

Solar cells: This is an electrical device that converts the energy of light (solar radiation in electricity it all started in 1839 by a French physicist Antoine – Cesar Becquerel. Becquerel observed the photovoltaic effect while experimenting with some solid conductor, which is a electricity, enters or leaves an object, substance or region.


Solar cells really do help loads of electrical devices by not giving batteries or any sort of buttons to make the device work as long as there’s lights they seem to all ways work for example call boxes, emergency road signs, parking lots and calculators. People who work with solar cells are there to buy and repair the solar cells for the comapny as well as find a place to put them all. This is a very good way for companies such as facebook to power their HQ, without having to pay an electricity bill they save money on the over all cost. I doubt that we will have anyone work with solar cells or even have a solar cell devision to power our HQ. Unless our company remains limited then their is not a high chance of us buying solar cells and currently we do not plan on using these in our business.

Solar Farms: Are a large scale of an area which has large number or solar panels that sets up the generate electricitySolar farms go through a rigorous planning procedure to get approval. This takes into account the suitability of the site, any potential impact on the locality and relevant renewable energy targets. People who work on Solar farms maintain the condition of the solar cells and report any problems to members of the solar cell devision. They will maintain the regular system settings depending on the outside settings. Again we will not be needing this.

Accesories and design: Are people who research and predict what will be in style in upcoming seasons. They created sketches for their designs sometimes using computer aided design and sometimes with hand sketches. They usually need a batcholers degree in fashion and must understand fashion and the fashion industry as a whole. This is one of the most essential members of our group, this member of staff is crucial to keeping us up to date and can even give us script ideas for our music videos and videos.




And this is our organisational chart                                   
                                                              Project manager
                                                 ____________|_____________
                                                 |                                                  |
                                           Content strategist                         Usability
                                                 |____________ _____________|
                                                _____________|_____________
                                                |                                                   |
                                            Company brand designer           Web editor

There was a problem with both of the images so I made my own little chart. Sorry if the chart is not very clear.


As you can see our staff and work load is minuscule in comparison to the work staff of facebook. Of course over time our staff organisation chart will become more advanced as we take on more staff memebers which will lead to taking on more jobs which again will requrie more staff and so on and so forth. 

We shall name our memebers of staff, what job each member has and what they do in that job. E
 

Kyle Thomas/Project manager: He is in charge of the members of staff, he assigns them jobs/tasks depending on the skills that specific person has. He is also in charge of what task colleges have to do next and also im in charge of when the job has to be done to achieve the overall outcome. My job is different from the content strategist because my job is to set the deadline and what task have to be done where as the strategist's job is to check how well the job has been completed. The skills required to be a good manager are to have good communication skills, patients, a basic understanding of business and company structures and business skills.
Eid Almaliki/Content Strategist: He is in charge of organising the order in which particicular content is organised e.g. where particular links, videos, blogs etc go. He is also in charge of what goes into the videos, blogs etc and stating what can and cannot be used. He also limitises how much content can be used in videos and blogs. He is different from the Project manager, because he is not in charge of who is assigned to a task and unlike the manager he checks on how well the work is done and what goes in to the work being done. Requires a keen eye, patients, understanding of the english language, editing skills in both film and sound in order to fix mistakes and make improvements, basic understanding of web design again to fix mistakes.
Mike Sewagudde/Web editor:i have the basic skills of operating a media company, and my skills include web editing, video production, music production and filming. I will be editing and updating the company website on a daily basis and posting our site links on websites I think will benefit us.
Brittany Lema/Company brand and web designer: What i do is Design and make sure the website look Unique and make sure there in a right place i also help out with the manager Eid and Kyle with any Decisions and Ideas they make. What you need to do to be a web designer or an artist is a Grade in Art or Equipments to make sure you succed in your Role.
Alice and Zora/Usability specialist: currently away on important business and shall attend to their half of the blog upon return.



Individual in depth information

 
Project Manager
A project manager is a professional in project management. They are responsible planning, execution and closing of any project. There are different types of project managers, for example construction project manager what they have to do is set out schedules, makes sure that everyone one is doing what they are suppose to be doing, keeping an eye on finances, making sure that there are no safety hazards. They are hire to oversee building projects that range from school, shops, hospitals and houses. Architectural project manager are in charge of preparing the scale drawing of the structure, they have to collect information about the design so they have to know the structure specification, materials, colour, equipment, cost and the time period, they have to prepare contracts for the builders. Insurance claim managers often oversee and manage the restoration of a client’s home/office after a fire, flood. Covering the fields from electronics through to the demolition and constructions contractors. But my main project manger I’m focusing on today is a project manager in interactive media they are in charge of coordinating, the schedule and plan of the interactive project they make sure that everything is running smoothly and if the running on the right and are within the budget. They mostly focus on the machinery that is used when making the project rather than the creative side, and they most work closely with the producer and the account manager.

The requirements to be a project manager vary depending on what type of project manager you want to be, for example a construction project manager needs a degree in engineering, high-tech project manager need a degree in either electrical engineering or computer science for interactive media they need to at least have a bachelor degree usually in a management or business area. But to become any time of project manger you will need basic skills like leadership, communication, they need the ability to multitask, set out schedule and the will power to get things done. The key skills they are going to need are:
·      Good planning ability;
·      Good financial awareness, an ability to estimate accurately and manage budgets;
·      Good written, verbal and interpersonal communication;
·      Good presentation skills;
·      Good people and client management;
·      Attention to detail;
·      Ability to manage time, prioritise tasks and work under pressure;
·      Knowledge of the requirements of the relevant Health and Safety legislation and procedures.

There are a few steps you have to take in the career of a project manager before you become a full project manager. Most people are offered an assistant position on a project management team, they are normally responsible for one part/aspect of the project/work, once they gain enough experience they might be assigned to more task to manage until they are able manage other people to complete an entire project. If they are not given that process then they might assign upcoming project managers the technical jobs such as creating, tracking, and updating the schedule using a software program; reviewing documents, and writing reports. These are the job roles you will go through before you become a project manager:
Project coordinators – project coordinator is the entry level for the project manager role and they are responsible for the paper work, they create and distribute reports to keep everyone (management team, owners, company staff) informed about the project process. They also set up meetings and assist the management team in any way.
Project scheduler – project schedulers are used in larger projects, they are in charge of the software, they input and update files and information which is given to them from the management team. This role deals with a lot of computer work because this is a technical position but it does involve a bit of actual management.
Assistant project manager – assistant project managers don’t directly help the project managers they are set specific task to manage then they will have regular meetings with the project manger to exchange to the progress and problems within the project.
Those are the 3 roles you have to go through before you become a project manager but once you become a project manager you can become a senior project manager, what they do is supervises a company's various project managers, coordinating the allocation of company resources, approving costs, and deciding which projects should take priority.

For a Pixar production film a project manager is in charge of assigning particular people to particular groups. They must do regular check ups on how each sector is doing and can assign one content strategist to each group, his job is to inform the project manager about what is going on and if they are on track. The project manager must also cut loose ends if they decide it isn’t worth keeping a particular worker or group any more. If the project fails it is the project manager who take most of the responsibility.

In conclusion a project manager is an important job role because they are there to keep things in order, if they were no there then the project would not runs as smoothly because no one will be there to assign people to a particular job, no one to write reports on the progress about the project, no one to keep time and budget on the project, they’re won’t be a plan to show how the project will be run and how is it will be done. So without them the project will most probably because there is no order to the project.
Kyle


Content strategist.
What we do?
 The idea of having a content strategist is to check over and maintain the average or better quality work that has been handed in by all members of staff. They are also in charge of any corrections that need to be made or any changes that need to take place for whatever reason. The content strategist is also in charge of deciding what needs to be done first, last and along the way. They also decide what is relevant and irrelevant to the companies expansion and public exposure e.g. information that can (schedules, what we do, our reviews etc.) and cannot (financial state, workers home addresses, private files etc.) be given to the public and manages the way these are distributed.

How we do this?
There are different things a content strategist has to keep track of for example members of staff. Bellow I shall show a few of the different things a content strategist has to check on and how they do it.
·     How we maintain quality? – We do this by keeping track of the members of staff and the work they are supposed to be doing. We obtain this information by consulting who we are going to keep track of, with the big boss man, and she/he gives us the information, which we require. We also keep track of previous work that has been done by that particular staff member and make sure they maintain that average. Of course in a company we always try to increase our average quality so the content strategist has to consult the member of staff on any ideas they or the member of staff have on improving their work.
·     Deciding what comes first, last and along the way? – We do this by referring to our schedule, deadlines and what the member of staff is doing in order to decide what they need to work on in a particular order e.g. what needs to be done first, which tasks will take the longest, what has to be uploaded first etc. If the company is running behind schedule the content strategist needs to decide what needs to be held back or scheduled for another date. They must also consult that member of staff on the progress of their work e.g. Brittany do some work.
·     Deciding what is relevant and irrelevant- Before anything else, once finished, all content must be sent in to a content strategist to be checked to make sure everything that is used is relevant and fine to use. Any irrelevant information may be removed, under command of the content strategist, but only if necessary. The work is then sent back and checked again after tweaking, an example of this is irrelevant information on an advertisement.
·     Maintaining information – The content strategist will decide what information can and cannot be made public. To do so they have to run through all the information that is specified to their sector and creates separate files that specify whether or not this information can be used, is worth using and is currently valid. For example, they will decide what information can be used in a blog and what remains private unless necessary e.g. bank details.

Why have a content strategist?
A content strategist is necessary for both small and large companies. A content strategist takes work off of a sector and does it for that sector. For example instead of the sector having to figure out when they have to finish their work and keeping track of time all on their own they can just give the responsibility to the content strategist. Having the content strategist take the responsibility will also allow them to plan out a schedule that the sector would have to keep to, in order to improve on or maintain quality standards, in other words the content strategist will provide a method of keeping things more organised.
A content strategist goes over the work, provided by the sector, in order to prevent any mistakes being sent out without being corrected, because staff members may have spent a long time on a particular product they may not want to continue doing it and will just send it out whether it is ready or not while a content strategist takes the stress off of the workers hands and does it for her/him.
A content strategist has the potential to better organise schedules, maintain or improve on work quality, maintain and figure out the uses for important and relevant information as well as maintain the privacy of confidential information even among the work staff.

What you need to become a content strategist
Mental aspects
·      Patients – You must have the ability to wait for your tasks and not rush the tasks you have been assigned to even if you are of schedule.
·      Tolerance – You must be tolerant with the attitude of some and allow them to attend to their work the way they wish to. You cannot force your ideas onto other members of staff you can only suggest them.
·      Calm and collective – Must maintain a calm attitude under pressure e.g. when pressed for time. Must also come up with helpful suggestions to fix the problem even when under stress

Academic aspects
·      Language used – Must have a minimum IGCSE C grade in the language use e.g. a C in Italian if that is the language used.
·      Mathematics – Must be skilled with basic maths in order to create a schedule for a sector and calculate work hours per day.
·      Work experience – Must have experience with working under pressure as well as keeping to a schedule, being organised and being punctual. This would mean any form of work experience would work even working at KFC or McDonalds would be enough.
·      Business skills – Must have a variety of business skills e.g. ability to be a manager, maintain quality through different methods and manage salary.

Real life example
Say Disney has a new movie that is supposed to come out a content strategist would plan out the timing for the final out come of the movie. One content strategist would be assigned to a particular sector and would plan out the timing that each part of the project would have to begin. They would also check out each part and then the final outcome to make sure there is no problem with the over all film. They would come up with ways to inform the public about the upcoming movie to get as many people to come as possible.

Conclusion
I believe a content strategist is a valuable asset to any company and they can be very affective on the over all outcome of the quality of work, however they can be removed if the work staff does not find them useful, meaning a content strategist is not mandatory, but useful.
EID



Company Brand Designer and Web Designer

Company brand designer and web designer is a big 2D or 3D picture that represents a organizations or one person that wants to promote its business by having something big and bold to attract many audience to either buy there products or by getting customers to get interacted into the App or Online Website, Becoming a Brand Designer are one of the many key areas to making the company successful from drawing to adding colours to help create a mood within the logo and change people state of mind to how they think about the company for example Red could symbolize passion, Love, violent/yellow could symbolize joy, happiness and betrayal/Blue could symbolize calm, cold and peace.

What I do or shall I say my Job role in Epic Ego Entertainment is to create logos and design the websites make sure they look appropriate and suitable to what we are trying to establish, Right now our company is all about entertaining the viewers with various types from Music to Bad Acting and one idea I have in store is analysing videos or films that may of Have been seen on TV that we found Entertaining or mostly awkward although at same time we are promoting other Artist to become more recognizable by doing that we will have A App, YouTube Channel and websites trying to showcase the best Of Entertainment Not only that we are introducing our viewers and customers to New things we will also be having are own Exclusive T-Shirts for sell.

To be a successful brand designer you will need to show your originality, have a good vision by picturing the logo being in Various of places, any design has to say something about you individually or as a Company by easily having a strong promising Message like a Motto within seconds your customers will just know what your all about by just looking at your logo for example if you was working for a care home and you had to make a logo you should make sure the logo is not too crazy or too colourful and most importantly it has to have some sort of relation to what your business is about otherwise this could mean bad news to what your trying to achieve, manage the quality, consistency and enhance new ways of differentiation from your competitors. When you get closer in the industry and become a well known designer your logo starts going places to places you may even start travelling with the team also being recognized by different companies perhaps getting offered a new job also giving you the freedom to exploit yourself towards new projects maybe a boost of confidence to discovering a new sort of talent you would like to put to the test, Brand designs are a huge thing and important to our everyday lives in fact it’s all over the media, TV adverts and even near our doorsteps with popular brand designs like McDonalds, Greggs, Nike, Addis, Sainsbury, ASOS, Twitter and Many more, brand designs has effected the modern world we live in its showcased so many creation representing different buildings that they become unmissed every time we are either walking home or trying to get somewhere by Transport.

The qualification you need to reach my particular role well you wouldn’t really need too many you will have to be a good or a excellent artist to make logos or any specific artistic drawing to be able to be handed the jobs also make sure your art have that original look and for it to be rightfully yours, you may need A* to C grade in Art, DT Graphic or IT to be able to be easily be accepted to any Media Interactive course in college, But you pretty much need experience in 3D Or 2D Software’s like popular aspect like Photoshop, Final cut Pro, 3DS Max, Nividia and Maya.


 Typesetting                                                 Graphic Designer      Font End Developer
         



    Illustration                                                                Web
                              
 

Identity/ Branding                                                             Interactive Designer
                                                                  Multimedia




Brand designers are in good positions in the organisational structure and they are very important in the media itself because it’s a trademark so it helps identify the products, company and services all over the world then it ends up attracting and grabbing many customers Attention.
The progression of a web designer can lead to so many different Roles like:

-Logo design
-Business card design
-Letterhead design
-Packaging
-Copywriting
-Writing slogans
-Advertising design
-Typeface design
-Research
-Marketing


The main reason for me to wanting to become a brand designer is because I had this ambition and drive in Art, which developed in the process and which I ended up with A Grade which then got me thinking of wanted to do further with it in life I carried on with art in college I focused more on my detail, my communication in my ideas and whenever I saw something intriguing I put it down my phone or notebook so it could aid me with my future ideas.

Right now I have made the logo for our brand hoping does it well for epic ego entertainment with the 4 of us working alongside each other am sure the company will cope and reach greater heights by getting viewers and gaining popularity through social media.

Brittany Lema  


 
WEB DESIGNING

I was given the post of web designing because I have the basic skills of designing a website as well as running, maintaining and updating a site. Like any other web designer, I have to be able to work to tight deadlines, have creativity and imagination, be able to work on my own or in a team and be able to pick up new techniques for example change in software.

Web designing is the most important element in Epic Ego Entertainment because it’s the stage which presents all the produced media to the audience. The media has to be well presented and every thing has to be clear and easy to use by customers, as every thing posted have to be checked properly for example spellings of words, correct grammar and punctuation. As a web designer I have to consult all the clients in the company before I post any content on the website, and the final decision is made by the company manager.

I used a free site to come up with the company’s website (WIX.COM) as I don’t have all the skills to start building a website from scratch and I don’t have enough time to learn this at the moment. EEE website doesn’t have a domain name because the company has to pay between 70-100 pounds every year which is much money, but we are looking forward to getting one if the company starts getting profit. If you wanted to design your own website from scratch you would need to do the following:
·      Write the programming code, either from scratch or by adapting existing website software and graphic packages to meet the business requirements.
·      Test the website and identify any technical problems
·      Upload the site onto a server and register it with different search engines.

WEBSITE LAYOUT

A good website requires good organisation. I had to work what information was necessary to the users and I divided it into sections. The most important information on our website is the videos, music, blog and YouTube link.  The home page of the website will have the link bars, the company name and the logo on the top. The link bars will the videos, music, blog, YouTube and merchandise (products)

The roll of web designing is very demanding, I need many hours to be able to produce perfect work and keep updating the website on a daily basis. Website updating includes posting blogs, uploading new company videos to our YouTube Channel and putting all the links on the website and customizing the web page. The Logo designer designed many logo to put on the site and all the company members had to choose which one to use, the first logo we chose was put on the site and posters were put out in order to advertise our company. The feedback we got about the logo from our customers and competitors was not positive and therefore we had to come up with a new one which is on the updated website. This is the reason why web designing is one of the most important roles in a company because all the media Epic Ego Entertainment is going to be producing will be online, there fore this is the final stage of presenting to the audience.

I made sure I put links of the company’s social networks on the website because communicating to our customers is very important, The social networks include Facebook, twitter and Instagram. The company gets most of its feed back from the customers on these social networks which helps it improve its services.

EEE MOBILE APP

As a web designer I had a role of creating a mobile app for the company and I used Reverb nation software to build this app. Epic Ego Entertainment app is now live and available on the android free of charge and it will only be available on the apple market if the company pays 299.95 dollars every year. I put this issue forward to the company manager because in order to get the app available to apple customer but unfortunately the company doesn’t have enough funds at the moment. The process of building the app took me a couple of day because I had to sign up to Reverb nation website and after making the app, I had to wait for 24 hours in order to make the app live on the android market.

The app has to be updated on a daily basis so that our audience gets the latest information on all the categories we specialize in. Some features on the app update automatically if the company’s website has been updated.
Features updated include
·      Reviews of TV shows
·      Game reviews
·      Original music from the company’s artists
·      Prices of company’s merchandise for example mugs, t-shirts and caps
·      Company’s original videos.
·      Description: DATA:Users:1314038:Desktop:Screen Shot 2014-02-07 at 11.10.14.png
Description: DATA:Users:1314038:Desktop:Screen Shot 2014-02-07 at 11.08.37.pngDescription: DATA:Users:1314038:Desktop:Screen Shot 2014-02-07 at 11.09.15.png


YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Epic Ego is an entertainment channel there fore it will be categorized in entertainment on YouTube. As a web designer I had to create a YouTube channel where all videos of the company will be uploaded and given entertaining tittles, which will attract our target audience. I had to create a Google account for the company, which I used to sign up for the YouTube channel.

We are looking at YouTube as one of the main source of income for the company, as the manager is going to apply for funding  and all our merchandise will be advertised on here. There is very many competitors on YouTube for example Epic five TV and Vines Channel, therefore I have to work in hand with the company logo and graphics designer to create attractive media and also have a unique selling point for all our media products.
Mike