Timelines for work orders
We serve the entire Southwestern community; its departments, offices and members. With that in mind, we have specific timelines that a standard web or multimedia project should follow. Respecting these timelines will make it easier for us to accomodate your project and to ensure that you walk away with the best quality product. Please, plan well in advance if you need to request a project from us.
Creating new websites: Allow 6-8 weeks
Websites are an excellent way to share information about your department or office and can be easily maintained with our content management system, LiveWhale. John is the Master Web Creator and handles most of the website requests we get. Here's an overview of how long website creation takes:
- Week 1--Initial Consultation: Meet with John to discuss website needs, how many pages and desired deadlines for the projects
- Week 2--Content Gathering: This week will be about gathering content necessary to your website. This may include photographs for galleries, copy or multimedia elements. Most likely you will be responsible for providing these elements. If you'd like us to produce the content for you, it will add more time to the project.
- Week 3-4--Design: This is done internally. The pages will be constructed and elements added.
- Week 5-6--Approvals: The drafts will be sent for approvals and changes will be made during this time.
- Week 7-8--QA and Deployment: QA is the act of testing the website to make sure links are good and content is correct. LiveWhale Training may also be scheduled during this time.
Edits to existing websites: Allow 2-4 weeks
Though existing websites are not as difficult or time consuming as creating a website from scratch, the volume of requests our department gets prevents us from making edits immediately. Please, allow 2-4 weeks for us to implement those changes
Video packages: Allow 2-3 months for completion
Meredith is trained in audio production, photography, multimedia journalism and also acts as a one-woman camera crew, conducting interviews and putting together video packages. Gathering content for a multimedia package is only 20 percent of any given project. It takes a considerable amount of time to schedule interviews and gather compelling visual media, like additional video clips and photos. The real work begins in post-production, after the content is gathered. The following is a rough timeline of a multimedia project:
- Week 1--Initial Consultation: You will meet with Meredith to discuss vision for video, interviews necessary, B-roll necessary, deadlines and who will be the point of contact and approver for the project
- Week 2-3--Content Gathering: Meredith will conduct interview and collect B-roll
- Week 4--Begin Post-Production: Meredith will work on initial drafts and edits, progress report, tweaks and suggestions are welcome in these stages. There will be a lot of back-and-forth with the point-person.
- Week 5-6--Feature Creep: Last minute interviews, content gathering. "Feature Creep" is a term used to describe add-ons and bright ideas that come up after the fact. Suggestions are still welcome and will be considered based on deadline/vision/message/goals/etc.
- Week 7-8--Lockdown: NO MORE FEATURE CREEP. There comes a point in time where ideas are awesome, but we simply don't have the time or resources to implement them. Please write them down so we can explore them on a future video project, but they won't be implemented on the current one.
- Week 9-10--Reviews and Approvals: Despite being a "living document" and hopefully reviewed throughout this process, the final review process will begin here. Send the video to the proper channels. SMall tweaks can be made like changing words in titles or adding a text card, but no more new content can be added.
- Week 11-12--Project Finalized and Deployed: We'll upload the video to YouTube, Vimeo or any other hosting site and advise on promoting it to your audience.
Other Multimedia projects - time varies
The Web Office can also produce photos, audio podcasts and a host of other multimedia projects. These will vary in time and length so consultation on individual projects is of utmost importance. Contact us as soon as possible to determine what the scope of work will be as well as realistic timelines.
Social Media implementation - times varies
It's extremely easy to go create a social media profile somewhere, but it takes time and attention to maintain a good social media presence. Because social media is a constantly changing environment, it's important to first determine your audience and your message. This will help decide which social media outlet will be best for your needs. Contact us before creating a social media profile so we ca come up with a strategy that will work best with your time and resources.
