Day 3: We Will Break Bread Together.

When the going gets tough, buy snacks. Lots of snacks. Snacks that range from really unhealthy to out-of-control, clog my arteries unhealthy. When they start to run low- buy pizza. Lots of pizza. Make sure that the butter garlic sauce is included and if you find a way to deep-fry it, bonus points. Finally, if you still need more, get the intern (Scott Ackerman- Technologist at CP&B) to go get you a “suicide” Slurpee from 7-11. It’ll give him a nice break from making copies.

I forgot to report yesterday that members of the data team went rogue on our little party. Heather “I wear Calvin” Klein, Claiborne “these boots are made for walkin’” Buckingham, and Bryan “Harley4Lyfe” Callison decided to bail on their data entry counterparts and start their own “branding” team. I’ve already realized some bad blood between these guys and the social media team (yours truly and Sybil “says” Mulokwa). No one really knows what this “branding” unit is doing. Going off and meeting with clients? Planning events at the VMFA? Writing adjectives and drawing lines on an oversized piece of paper and then hanging it on our wall reserved for important things? I don’t trust them.

Regardless, I was impressed by Klein. She ate no less than eight of the twelve donuts that we had at the start of the day. While this stat is unconfirmed, I will take it to the grave. Also of note, Schuyler “The Circumstance?” Hunt drank more AMP energy drinks in one day than any human should drink over the course of an entire lifetime. His heart could have very well exploded by the time that this post goes up.

“El Jefe” Campabadal also managed to link Panelizr’s frontend interface to a backend database, all while surfing in Virginia Beach. Some people will do anything for their green card.

Things are starting to look better for Panelizr as the data entry team gets closer to their goal of entering infinity data. Once the “branding” team takes down their oversized piece of paper, we will be another step closer.

Seacrest out.

Day 2: Here we go.

Yesterday we were all on the same team. Today is a new day.

I wandered into Starbuck’s at about noon to find the development ”team” eating lunch/talking in 0s and 1s. We didn’t have our first meeting of the day until 1:30 so I knew something was up. No one likes overachievers. I decided to watch from afar to make sure that no bystanders would accidentally associate me with them. Everything was going to plan until Jake “son of a” Mitchell spotted me and pointed me out to the group. Busted, I had to go make my presence known.

What ensued was something straight out of middle school. As soon as I got to the table, the entire group stood up and left. This common trick is done to make the coolest kid in school (aka me) look like an idiot. Let it be known, the social media team doesn’t forget about things like this. 

The rest of the day went according to plan. Ernesto “el Jefe” Campabadal and Greg “gory”  Elwood had two of the day’s biggest accomplishments. “El Jefe” discovered that the mysterious smell that had been bothering him for hours was actually just “Gory’s” sandwich. And for “Gory,” well he finished said sandwich, the size of which could have probably fed a small country. They also both had smaller accomplishments in the front end coding for Panelizr and in the creation the backend database. But again, I want to reiterate just how big this sandwich was. Not large size. Battleship size.   

Special shout out goes to Jeff Vitkun, a first year copywriter who decided to sit in on our class- which wasn’t so much of a class as it was a geeked out love fest. I imagine it was like visiting a foreign country for the first time. You may have no idea what is going on while you are there, but afterwards, you feel just a little bit more cultured. Or not. 

Today, some questions were answered, some new ones came up, but one things for sure, we are one day closer to when Panelizr has to be finished. 

Seacrest out.

Day 1: In the beginning…

There is a rumor out there that the Creative Technologists at VCU Brandcenter are actually robots. I’ve argued this with countless people, showing them my very human characteristics, but I always end up losing when I have to go and charge my battery.

Two weeks ago the humans from Fahrenheit Technology, Tumblr, and the VCU Brandcenter came to us and asked us to come up with something for South by South West. This, in a nutshell, is what has happened:

• We were given an open-ended brief
• In five teams of three, we work for two weeks on an idea for SXSW
• Last Thursday, each team pitched their idea to our clients
• The judges picked Jeff “Apple Store” MacDonald’s, Matthew “1st Year Creative Technologist” Runde’s, and Rachel “Hermione” Mercer’s idea: Panelizr
• Jeff, Rachel, and Matthew spent the weekend getting their idea fleshed out before presenting their game plan for execution to the class on Monday

The Idea: Provide the best way of sorting through all the panels at South by South West for people- whether they’re there or not.

So here we are, 10 days till the festival, an entire application to build, test, and promote, and 15 people/robots trying to work together Crazy? Probably. But the good thing about our kind is that we don’t have common sense.

This is the story of Panelizer.