http://panelizr.tumblr.com/

Day 10: That's All She Wrote.

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:59:00 -0400

That last day feeling. Everyone knows it. The last day of Mardi Gras. The last day in Cabo. The last day of Spring Break. Day 10 is that day. You heard it here first, if you mix Mardi Gras, Cabo, and any other incredible spring break vacation together, you get the 10-Day Panlizr Experience (as long as you add not sleeping, junk food, HTML, a smelly room, and a really awesome blogger).

But that last day feeling, it’s both good and bad. On the one hand, you get to go back to your normal life. You can sleep. Eat healthy. Sit and wait while everyone tells you how great the thing you just made is. On the other hand, it sucks. It sucks because it also marks the end of an adventure. The long nights, the fights, the doubts, and frustrations inevitably made the 15 of us closer than anything else could have.

We have now sent Panelizr out into the world- just like the parents driving home after move-in day at college. We know we will still get nagged for money and be the first one called if there is ever any trouble, but for the first time, things are in large part out of our control. It is now up to the outside people following SXSW to make the most of Panelizr. The rest of us can just sit back and relax- and by relax I mean constantly tweet about our site as we pray that it won’t go down.

It won’t be until after SXSW is over that we’ll know for sure the impact of our creation. More than likely, we will all be hired by Google, Apple and Facebook to huge salaries with big signing bonuses. We will each have our our own, individual panels at next year’s SXSW that can only be sorted through by using the official panel organizer of the event, Panelizr. My blogging career will really take off while Ernesto debuts on the surfing world tour and Heather opens up her own bakery. Mike Rozycki will be playing a video game about his own life while Jake and Bryan ride on roller coasters that they themselves designed. Sybil will host her own radio show as Claiborne’s art exhibit gets ready to go on display at the Smithsonian. Raj and Greg will star in the number one music video on the charts (mixing dope Northeastern beats with sweet Indian flare) while Yvonne finally gets declared the overall winner of Farmville. Jeff, Rachel, and Runde will each play themselves in the box office hit Panelizr: The Movie, directed by our own Schuyler Hunt after he didn’t get cast for the role of himself (given to Zach Braff).

However, in the unlikely event that none of these things end up happening, the bottom line will remain the same. After 10 days, a lot of soda, and many, many hours spent in the same room with the same people, the first year Creative Technologists at the Brandcenter made something awesome, from scratch, for SXSW (and are much better friends because of it).

This was the story of Panelizr.

Seacrest Out.

A Poem.

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:02:00 -0500

A Poem.

Day 9: Intergalactic Planetary, Planetary Intergalactic

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:18:00 -0500

At approximately 7:23 Tuesday night, the US Space Station, the Space Shuttle Discovery, and the interweb sensation Panelizr were all visible in space. This once in a lifetime phenomenon lasted only three minutes before the entire world was once again deprived of this miracle. Fortunately, this blogger not only captured a photo (below), but also caught some video footage (to follow) of the Panelizr crew seeing this phenomenon.

The rest of Tuesday was typical. Some freak outs. Some break downs. But ultimately, most of the crew got an early night’s sleep. Big day Wednesday (Day 10)- last day before launch and last night before the big after party. The party will provide the much needed opportunity for certain members of the Developement team to make their “move” on certain members of the Branding team. Panlizr makes magic happen.

I got 99 problems but a glitch ain’t one.

Seacrest Out.

7:23 PM EST. 3.9.2011

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:08:41 -0500

7:23 PM EST. 3.9.2011

Day 8: When a Boy Becomes a Man.

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:20:00 -0500

Having a child can’t be easy. I wouldn’t know but I’m sure that if it were to compare to anything in this world, it would be making a Panelizr.

A little over three weeks ago, the idea of Panelizr came up. You always talk about making a Panelizr. It’s something you want- but something you put off until you’re at a point in your life when you’re ready to buckle down. Free time will become a luxury of the past and the next time you have your life to yourself again is when Panelizr moves out.

Still, Matthew Runde, Rachel Mercer, and Jeff MacDonald gave birth to a Panelizr. They went through the intense two week pregnancy process while the rest of us worked on our own things. But after a difficult labor process, we all joined the family to help in the 10 day maturation process. At day 1, we had a technical demo- an infant that didn’t know much of anything other than it needed isotope to work and that it was very colorful. Now, at the end of day eight, our little baby has almost become a man.

The Development team made sure that he not only knew how to function properly in society, but that he knew how to excel. Greg Elwood taught him how to dance, even if you only have time for a 5 minute dance party. Jake Mitchell taught him how to have a cool “West Coast” vibe in an “East Coast” city. Schuyler taught him how to play ping pong when he should be working. As for Ernesto and Raj, they made sure he was trilingual.

The Data Entry team made sure he knew everything he needed to know about South by South West. Not stopping there, Yvonne Allen also taught him how to master iTunes while Mike Rozycki taught him how to at least sound well informed about everything.

Bryan Callison, Heather Klein, and Claiborne Buckingham made our Panelizr sexy. They were the kids in high school who took our little boy and converted his wardrobe from cargo shorts and oversized T-Shirts, to skinny jeans and slim fit button downs. One day he was just a big P with a purple background and the next he was the hot new sexy thing on the internet (that had a logo that in no way resembled Blackberry).

Finally, the social media team taught our Panelizr how to have attitude. This not only meant how to use Twitter and facebook, but how to complain about things on tumblr. Sybil taught him how to always be in a good mood, and this blogger taught him how to love.

Wednesday Evening, we send Panelizr out into the world. Fingeres crossed, he has learned enough.

Seacrest Out.

Day 7: May the Force be with You.

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:52:00 -0500

As I was leaving school on Saturday, you can imagine how excited I was to see “soft lunch” on the Panelizr schedule for Sunday. What exactly is a “soft lunch?” Maybe soft tacos? Soft shell crabs? Picnic lunch where we all sit on pillows? My mind wandered all Saturday night and well into Sunday morning.

However, come Sunday’s meeting time at 3pm, a harsh reality set in: Soft Launch does not equal Soft Lunch. Everyone was disappointed. Like clockwork, mother nature chimed in with a huge thunderstorm and the war room once again became dark and dreary. Food was running low and the smell in the room continued to get worse. While it was hard for us to notice the aroma while we were working, the sweet smell of sweat, nerd, and Chipotle was very obvious to any visitors who stopped in.

Lucky for us, none of our followers on the interweb know what the war room smells like (until they read this blog post). They only see the sexy, new and improved Panlizr branding that took over the web on Sunday. The new sleek look came courtesy of the hard work done by Bryan “Harley4Lyfe” Callison, Heather “I Wear Calvin” Klein, and Claiborne “These Boots are Made for Walkin” Buckingham. At least now, one thing is guaranteed: Panelizr will look fresh.

The soft launch scheduled for later that night was the next big step in bringing what was once jut an idea, to life. Early in the afternoon, while the database was connected, we would have had to shut down the rest of the internet to load all 1,600 SXSW panels. As the development team chugged away, Jeff “Apple Store” MacDonald (appropriately dressed in his Apple Store apparel) had a brilliant idea of how to get CTs working at maximum potential: play Star Wars. As you would expect, live quoting was continuous and the eternal debate lived on… would you rather have a stormtrooper suit or a Han Solo Carbonite coffee table?

While that debate will never end, we did learn something very awesome by the end of the night. Panelizr works. Not perfectly. Not always smoothly. But after a long day of work by the dev team, an alpha version of our site is up and running.

And it’s awesome.

Seacrest Out.

The Panelizr Crew

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:25:00 -0500

The Panelizr Crew

Day 5 and 6: Everybody's Working for the Weekend.

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:35:00 -0500

It would be nice if Panelizr was the only thing in our lives. However, this is not the case. Sleeping was the first thing to go. Then eating. And finally, any semblance of a social life. Realizing this, the project managers took the shackles off our ankles and let us out into the real world for the weekend. No scheduled meetings. No periodic beatings. No more AMPs for Schuyler “The Circumstance?” Hunt. Rachel “Hermione” Mercer even traded in her steel-tipped whip for a beer, and the de-stressing began.

Some, like “el Jefe” Campabadal and “these boots are made for walkin” Buckingham, aimed to get as far away from Panelizr as possible- not ony getting out of the war room, but getting out of Richmond and out of VIrginia all together. Scents of Panelizr have been traced as far away as Northern Virginia.

Klein relaxed over a box of Krispy Kremes and Rozycki took the opportunity to do as many voiceovers as possible. Raj “The Prince” Kuppuswamy danced to Michael Jackson and Matthew “First Year Creative Technologist” Runde danced to nothing at all. Greg “Gory” Elwood ran as fast as he could out of the war room and started coding again in the Brandcenter basement. Robot freedom. Many others joined Mercer in her libations. Some over one beer. Others over ten. This blogger sat by the fire and read poetry.

While I may make it seem like Friday marked the start of a Double Rainbow, it didn’t. There is still a ton of work to be done and deadlines to meet. Over e-mails, beers, or HTML, meetings were still going on. If fact, not that much changed at all. Just locations. But come Sunday at 3pm, everyone is to report to the war room once again. Shackles back on.

Seacrest Out.

Panelizr Social Network parody. Starring: Jeff MacDonaldSchuyler...

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:34:02 -0500

Panelizr Social Network parody.

Starring:

Jeff MacDonald
Schuyler Hunt
Paul Davis
Andrew Quay
Jake Mitchell
Gautam Ramdurai
Rachel Mercer
Matthew Runde

Day 4: This Town Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:17:41 -0500

Jake “son of a” Mitchell is a dead man.

There’s a good reason why towns only have one sheriff. Same reasoning that countries only have one dictator and why the Panlizr team only has one videographer. You know the old phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well that’s the diet version of “if you have a super awesome video guy with a sweet iPhone capturing incredible footage for your blog, don’t bring your stupid flip cam and try to start a rival blog.” No ill feelings towards flip cam or the blogosphere, just Jake Mitchell.

Now that I got that off my chest, some big things happened Thursday. Namely, CTs finally conquered infinity. An unlimited pile of data was slowly chipped away at by Mike “voiceover” Rozycki, Matthewe “First Year Creative Technologist” Runde, Rachel “Hermione” Mercer, and Yvonne “not Tim” Allen. After four days of no sunlight, fresh air, and human interaction, we finally let them leave the war room.

You have to be careful in the war room because if you stay there for too long, you’ll turn into a piece of javascript. I especially like to take breaks and see what the rest of the school thinks about Panelizr. Some things I heard (not direct quotes):

“Panelizr is better than Google and Facebook combined!”

“I’m more excited for this than Christmas”

“The Panelizr tumblr blog is the golden gem of the internet.”

“Who is the secret blogger Seacrest? I love him/her.”

You can’t make that stuff up. The people have spoken.

Seacrest Out.

DAY 4

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:23:11 -0500

DAY 4

A new demo video that explains some of the benefits of our site.

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:18:46 -0500

A new demo video that explains some of the benefits of our site.

DAY 3

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:28:32 -0500

DAY 3

Day 3: We Will Break Bread Together.

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:22:00 -0500

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

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:10:00 -0500

DAY 2

Day 2: Here we go.

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 04:05:00 -0500

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.

Video

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:47:03 -0500

Day 1: In the beginning...

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:34:00 -0500

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.