IDR bootcamp

Project management

Tips and tricks for new grantees

 Amsterdam, NL, 11 December 2016

Jacopo Ottaviani – @JacopoOttaviani

Quick résumé

  • Data journalism for 5 years

    • ​Mostly in Europe and Africa
  • I coordinated 3 projects with Journalism Grants

    • Land grabbing (very first round!)
    • E-waste Republic: http://aljazeera.net/ewasterepublic
    • Lungs of the earth:  http://bit.ly/lungs-earth
  • Contributed in few other IDR projects (e.g. Dark Side of the Italian Tomato)
  • Co-authored cross-borders data projects such as #MigrantsFiles and #GenerationE
  • Now ICFJ Knight fellow, data editor @ Code4Africa

How to manage your project

  • Team
  • Tasks
  • Time
  • Budget
  • Content & format
  • Publication strategy
  • Tools

Manage your team

Appoint a project manager or coordinator (you?), in order to:

  • Define roles of all participants (a.k.a. areas of responsibility)
  • Minimise complexity (BTW, agile teams work better)
  • Dictate the pace and keep an eye on the project as a whole
  • Take complex decisions and negotiate with partners

Manage your team, 2

  • Typical roles in these kind of projects
    1. Journalist
    2. Film-maker / photographer
    3. Data expert / researcher
    4. Designer / Illustrator
    5. Video editor
    6. Developer
    7. Translator
    8. Project manager
    9. Media diplomat

Manage your team, 3

  • Usually some members cover more than one role
    1. Journalist
    2. Film-maker / photographer
    3. Data wrangler
    4. Researcher
    5. Designer / Illustrator
    6. Video editor
    7. Developer
    8. Translator
    9. Project manager
    10. Media diplomat

JACOPO

ISACCO

EXTERNAL

Manage your tasks

  • Some tasks can be ran on parallel
  • Every task should have:
    • task  deadline
    • task  person in charge
    • task budget line
  • The coordinator should constantly keep a bird's eye view on the project 

Manage your time

  • You all have a deadline. Set more!
  • Share a calendar within your team
  • Set flexible time-slots (try not to have tight timetables)
  • Count always at least 2 or 3 weeks of «buffer zone» from "zip delivered to the media" to "publication up and running" 

Co-publication strategy

  • Four options:
    1. One-off simultaneous publication
    2. Different stories published on different days
    3. Hybrid approach (e.g., simultaneous online + radio on a different day)
    4. Modular media campaign (long and complex, but more impactful)

PROs

  • Maximise impact on social networks & presence on search engines
  • Possibility to run it on a special day (e.g. "World Health Day")
  • Wider resonance
  • Summed prestige

CONs

  • Complex coordination of media partners
  • High pressure right before the co-publication day
  • Fixed format for all publications (requires: design compatibility)

One off co-publication

PROs

  • Easier coordination and time management
  • Design-independent
  • Keep the project in the hype for longer (however within different audiences)

CONs

  • Less impact on social networks
  • More complex to leverage on the media coalition
  • Watch out for audiences overlaps

 

Publication on different days

PROs

  • Relax rigidity of previous approaches
  • Re-ignite the attention around core
  • You can publish more than once in the same country (different content!)

CONs

  • Complex project management
  • Different outputs for different media in multiple languages
  • May lead to disperse your energy

Hybrid: core co-publication + satellite publications

PROs

  • Mosaic-like storytelling project (e.g. series of story + final publication with all stories)
  • Tension around the core topic within the same audiences for longer periods
  • Optimised use of content

CONs

  • Needs to be well planned beforehand
  • Time-consuming
  • Budget-consuming
  • Requires strong trust between media outlet(s) and collaborator(s)

Modular publications

Lungs of the earth

  • 4 short stories (text + videos)
  • Long form project (4 videos above + extra content and dataviz)
  • Some satellite-publications (a photo story)
  • One brand #LungsOfTheEarth (to expand the project in the future, publish extra content...)
  • All content distributed on multiple media in different languages

Explore it: http://bit.ly/lungs-earth

http://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/shorts/india-menstruation-man/

Media diplomacy

  • Involve staff and make them feel part of the project / coalition
  • Tell media partners from the beginning about your coalition
  • Make their life easy (give them a zip-file, vectorial files, subtitles transcriptions, etc.)
  • Do not give your stories away (collect multiple fees)
  • Build a network of partners (e.g. for European partners talk to EJC, for African partners talk to Code4Africa, for Indian/Pakistani and Latin-american partners > ICFJ fellows)

Going cross-platform

  • Map the audiences you want to target
  • Your content can be repackaged, recycled, translated and adapted to your audiences
  • Different audiences use different platforms (e.g., radio is still fundamental in some areas in Africa)
  • Videos can be re-used to some degree online & on TV
  • Audio can be extracted from videos and re-used for radios or podcasts

Go mobile.

Useful tools

  • Use Google Drive for co-editing and file sharing
  • WeTransfer to transfer heavy files
  • Trello or Slack for project management (especially when you have big teams)
  • Invision to share and comment design previews (especially when you work with a designer)

Trello.com

Slack.com

Final tips

  • Use a hashtag to identify your project (ask media outlets to tweet using that hashtag)
  • Negotiate with media outlets a number of tweets/shares (not just one)
  • Remember to monitor the stats of your project (put an Analytics code or make sure they monitor stats)
  • These projects take long: do not forget that things could change very quickly (keep asking your sources about updates before publication)

LIVE THE POETRY

Thanks. 

Questions?

 

 

@JacopoOttaviani

Brainstorm!

5 minutes to list all useful tools to manage:

  •  your team
  •  your data
  •  your files, videos, cuts, translations
  •  your budget

Project management, tips and tricks for new grantees

By jottaviani

Project management, tips and tricks for new grantees

  • 1,162