Minutes of the meeting Sunday Feburary 4, 2007

Agendas that were discussed in the Sunday meeting have been elaborated below...if anyone wants to have a look again or refresh something they are still confused about...
1) Name of the website: after much fret and fumes we finally have agreed upon Syndic News/News Syndic. Tabby and David to pitch in.
2) Six buttons on the navigation bar that read in bold below and what kind of content they might contain...

• News: the seven top stories which are making rounds in the media industry, picked up from various news websites. These will be written in a way that even the person who hasn't read the newspapers through the week can make out what news did the person miss...from our website. These will be handled by the sub-editors for the first week(shashank, Priyancka Sathe and Tan will decide amongst themselves, if all three want to do it or only two will... My suggestion is only two should so the third can pitch in something else for either smorgasbord or maybe smthng else as well)
• Beyond the News: This will contain an analysis on some or all of the top stories that have been reported through the week. It will be decided on Monday mornings (ususally) who will be doing these analytical short pieces.
• Features: This will contain stories dealing with subjects like travel, entertainment, food etc. basically anything that is to do with soft subjects (hopefully, as i understand it). I might give a travel piece, Max had an idea to write about some technological bit (don't exactly rem but remember it ws a good one),Sameera also had a pitch in and Susha had the piece about F1 racing in Bahrain.
• Smorgasbord: This will contain stories from one's country that do not have anything to do with news that is being delivered else where...it will have d cutting edge angle to it that only your piece has....A social commentary that could deal with two aspects (a) it could be a current affairs piece where a happening you know might be occuring now or might be expected to occur in the near future- something you might know about and therefore you can report it on the website. (b) it is to do only with where the person belongs to...so the piece can have depth in it because no one else except you will know of it! Viviana will write about a new religion that has sort of become a craze in Brazil, Flora and Ariel will come up with something from China and hopefully there'd be an interesting piece from either India or Vietnam if Tan, Shashank and Priyancka decide who is it that can leave the editing bit for now and concentrate on sub-editing and that news round-up that they have to come up with!!!
• Podcasts: These will be assigned and selected by Susha and Viviana every Monday when the people from Broadcast team and others who have something particularly interesting for podcasting come up with ideas. For the first week if it gets too hectic we might consider ideas like reading out the news that we have on our website and giving a summary of all we have on our website, audio-video piece on one of the features that is going in a particular section could also be a good idea. Vox-pops about a certain piece that has aroused much controversy or stir amongst the readers could be considered for later times.
• About us: This will have a link to the entire team's webpages and a point about whether the template pattern should remain the same or not has to reach a conclusion with David's suggestions.

3) The soft launch date has been fixed as Feburary 13th. So that gives us exactly 9 days and 8 nights to come up with whatever we have thought of...

4) The ROTA system will apply which means that everyone will work as per rotation; like if a person is giving a feature one week then the next week that person will hand in a story for Smorgasbord or would fill in the news for the week column.

5) We will have to come up with a formal idea on what we intend to write backing it up with research on either ...Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning so that everyone puts in effort for their bit/piece throught the week till sunday when tagged stories are handed over and a final look at it is taken on monday so soft launch can haapen on 13th (you see why i was getting so hyped up about the meetings and what needs to be discussed in each meeting).

6) The designers have started to work on the template hopefully they will come up with something that is worth David's notice (and help is sought on the difficult bit) on Tuesday, Feburary 6th. I don't want you guys to work overnite and come up with something final in such short time but lets hope to see something beyond the paper...perhaps on the computer screen...I'm willing to work my brains out on Dreamweaver on Monday if you need any help or are short of manpower....We already know how to make tables and key in text etc....so see if it's possible to work out smthng with these tables....Is it...i'm confused...enlighten please...

7) All will work thier a*& off to make the website rock...no matter how hot it might get during the meetings...

Cheers :)

Comments sought...n remember I'm just a phone call, e-mail or blog entry away...