OMG so hard and challenging but i guess that's the point!!

This assignment has been very challenging and took alot of sleepless nights and so many hours its so hard to count even if i had to give someone a number to get paid for it!
But i guess that was the point of the assignment, to teach ourselves and go through that pain with a team of committed people... i guess thats the only way to Really learn...
The problems we had was the importing from revit to 3dsmax because the normals were all muddled up and margaret and i definitely know alot about normals now! and fixing up shapes in editable mesh in 3dsmax...
There were some difficulties between group members but eventually we all understood that silly disagreements wouldn't be worth getting in the way of completing our task...
I think that we did eventually work well together, wanting to teach each other what we've learnt and helping each other as much as we could...
This course did achieve the objectives it promised, working collaboratively to achieve a major task, just like we would in the real world...

Lists we made (not in order)

Put lamps inside building
Outside lamps
Learn fog and do
Line collision for static meshes
Change colour of lights- too bright
Lily pads
Fix pots outside
24 starting points
Make plaque with everyones names
Redo lighting because file was not backed up in time before the computer crashed
Clean up the grass patches
Add paintings and sculpures prepared by Margaret
Add Introduction recording and trigger
Create Silkeborg Museum hedge in garden
Flip normals of all faces of stairs
Patch up wholes in walls
Flip normals for ramps
Add light bulbs and lamps
Add background music
Mapping for everything, especially the art
Add mapping to furniture created earlier and place them in the building
Lower the height of the stairs because player can't fit underneath it
Add the platform between stairs and floor
Add spotlight triggers to sculptures in caves
Make sound stop looping
Convert mp3 and amr to wav-Sounds must be wav files, 16 bit and 22khz

A very busy week!!

On Wednesday and today (Thursday), me and margaret have been in the labs all day, from 8.30 til at least 6-7pm working on the model. Alot of things needed to be altered and fixed, and we had to keep importing the 3dsmax model into ut3 continuously, making sure it accepts everything. The materials and the tiling, the normals (ohhhh the bloody normals), and the fact that the model is one element is what we were dealing with. Being able to see each face, which there is probably 60 on each surface or solid!, is extra difficult because it's not possible to hide some of the elements to be able to see behind it. You could imagine...

But finally, by 7.15 2day, we figured out how to save the ut3 file without it losing the package, we have a model pretty much completed (another early morning for us to finish it off by midday 2morrow hopefully), materials of the furniture are completed, lighting is being tackled by priscilla, terrain by danielle, which is progressing really well, and sounds just about given to us by susanne before she leaves for paris.

Things are going ok, but... we only have 4 more full days! We will be alright i guess :)
Just a few days of sleepless nights and a litre of coffee will do it! Its all about discipline! and team work, especially now!

We will have friday, saturday, monday and tuesday to complete it! A very busy week indeed!

CONFLICT

Team decision-making integrates more information and resources; there are advantages of multiple input. However, decision making in teams is not always pleasant. Team decision-making causes conflict. But surprisingly it may have a negative or a positive outcomes. The conflict can influence a great solution and decision, or it can cause failure for the team. ‘Thus conflict is a pivotal variable in team decision-making process’ (Lang, 2008)
Conflict is common, natural, and inevitable. People have different opinions, different interests especially on the one idea, and different understandings and knowledge. Management of negative conflict issues should be already organised before a conflict can arise in a workplace. Knowing the methods of solving a problem is a great way of being prepared to work out the best outcomes for both parties.
In our group, there is much conflict, we do not always decide on the same thing. This can always be a problem because working as a team; the people need to be aiming for a common goal with the same steps in mind. Therefore when conflict arises there needs to be compromise, and the interests of the task need to be the priority…always.
Conflict in terms of employee and employer disagreements is an important factor as we enter into the workplace. Decisions and conflicting ideas on wages, certain tasks to be completed, the success of these tasks and job satisfaction are a major impact on our employments. Dealing with conflict should be done maturely and in a procedural manner.
In business, there are certain factors involved in employment relations. Making sure that the human resource cycle is flowing properly, Acquisition, Development, Maintenance and Separation are done properly.
Acquisition involves recruitment and selection; making sure the employee is being trained and acquiring skill and knowledge is Development; monetary and non-monetary rewards and performance appraisal is Maintenance and redundancy, retrenchment and dismissal are forms of separation. All these aspects have a potential for conflict, such as an employee not being satisfied with a job, or the wages he has been receiving, or the treatment he has been having at work, or the dismissal was unfair or the redundancy or retrenchment packages are not met or satisfactory. These matters are serious and needing to be consulted.
There are rights and responsibilities clearly stated in contracts and legislation. Contracts are important for mutual decision-making before anything legal occurs; there are employee and employer rights and responsibilities known in the business world, and legislation such as the Workplace Relations Act, Equal employment opportunity and anti-discrimination laws and occupational health and safety laws to help when conflict arises.

From
D. Sykes, V. Hansen and E. Codsi, Business Studies Preliminary, Melbourne: Addison Wesley Longman Pty Ltd, 2000


LANG Chungang, XI Youmin, GUO Shiyi, Impact of team conflict on team decision quality
and satisfaction: An empirical research in China, Front. Bus. Res. China 2008, 2(1):1–14
DOI 10.1007/s11782-008-0001-z


Ka Wai Chan & Xu Huang & Peng Man Ng, Managers’ conflict management styles and employee attitudinal outcomes: The mediating role of trust, Asia Pacific J Manage (2008) 25:277–295 DOI 10.1007/s10490-007-9037-4

Notes from Lecture on Planning

Planning

There is the client, the cost planner, all of the engineers, these ones are measurable, but architecture is subjective->design

The project has a life cycle
Concept, design, tendering, pre-construction, commissioning, asset management

Hierarchy of planning- depending on the person, the task they need to complete and the time needed

The best thing about planning is solving the problems before construction

Tools to allow for planning
-Multiple Acttivity Chart (MAC)- timetables(for repetitive activities)
-GANTT chart- bar chart, one activity to the next (aligned with time)

Network Diagram
-shows the workflow (without dates) and constraints

Schedule
-shows workflow (with time, dates and resources)

Float is the time to procrastinate (float activity)

Critical path- the longest sequence o connected activities with NO float

There are so many factors that can influence the workflow (like time, weather, environment)

Contingency is stuffup time so ‘plan’ for that

You should always have a plan B
After the plan is made, use it!
You use it also to find the status of where you are and where you need to be
Look forward and look backwards

If there are problems, which there always will be, reschedule the plan to allow other activities to happen and get back to status quo
There is acceleration
-Overlapping activites
-Additional resources

CONTEXT

Historic, Cultural and Geographic Context

In the computing world, ‘New opportunities have engendered considerable interest in context-aware computing —computational systems that can sense and respond to aspects of the settings in which they are used.’ (1) This is an introduction to interactive technologies that adjust to certain settings and contexts.

Here we can see that context is a consideration used to adapt and respond to create something, giving reason to the decisions made in any field, not just computing.

The historic, cultural and geographic aspects affect any field, in literature, law and legislation, social sciences, architecture and this list can go on. In architecture it is definitely an important consideration when thinking about the surroundings of a building, physical and theoretical. These context considerations are used when creating something new or to analyse something old.

The historical context will affect its ‘heritage’ characteristics and explain the society at the time and their influences; the cultural aspects of the now and the present and how the building ‘fits in’ to the society and its values; and the physical surroundings and where it is situated in relation to other buildings and the environment.

As Crisman explains in his article about Architectural Styles from The Whole Building Design Guide website, she speaks of how to decide on a style for a new building and the how it relates to other aspects.
"Relating to the context" means fully understanding this existing context [“which Architectural ‘context’ refers to the immediate physical, cultural, and even economic surroundings of a building”] and developing a clear strategy for how a new building will relate to these conditions. A difficult aspect of context is that it is always changing, unless a project is situated within a protected historic district where few physical changes are permitted.(2)

Then she speaks of how the geographic context influences the building design. Every building has a geographical ‘Place’ and “must be understood at a range of scales—national, regional, local, neighborhood, block, and immediate adjacencies.” (2)

The geographical understanding of the unbuilt Silkeborg Museum; The existing Silkeborg Museum, which our part of the museum (the unbuilt one) would have been adjacent to, is situated in the town of Silkeborg, Denmark, 45 km from the city of Århus. The town of Silkeborg has many forests and gardens and the existing Museum is apparently the oldest building in town. Jorn Utzon designed the building with simple materials to not over exaggerate above the textures of the historic existing museum but used the form and shape to make his building significant and stand out.

There should be reasons for all the decisions made in creating a building or analyzing an existing one and these reasons should, within any time frame, consider the historic, cultural and geographic contexts.

(1) Paul Dourish, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Context’, School of Information and Computer Science, http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/2004/PUC2004-context.pdf

(2) Phoebe Crisman, ‘Style’, The Whole Building Design Guide, http://www.wbdg.org/resources/style.php, last updated 05-23-2008

PLANNING

While searching the word ‘plan’ in Google, like every body does first off, I came across an internet page about ground plans for architects. In the essay appearing on this page, it stated that “A genuine footprint of a building on its site, the ground plan contains many of the key aspects of a project, at once a means of representation, an architect’s design tool, and a layout and instruction pattern for the builder. Though the ground plan is invisible to the inhabitant, it determines with precision the quality of the spaces we inhabit.”

This definition of a ground plan in architecture can be used to define the general idea of a plan for any project or goal, not just in our field->
Plans should ‘contain many of the key aspects of the project’; they are a ‘means of representation’ of the tasks needed to finish the project; they are a ‘design tool’ for a project, outlining its steps towards achievement; they are ‘a layout and instruction’ manual for the project at hand; and even though the plan is ‘invisible’ it still should ‘determine with precision the quality’ of the tasks and the results they may form.

In this essay it also speaks of the statement made by Le Corbusier that the plan is the generator. The author takes from this statement the idea that a plan is an abstraction that generates. ‘If understood as a generator of the architectural idea… the plan is more closely approximates its biological definition as expressed in the Spanish term for it: planta, which also translates the English word “plant”, an entity with the ability to grow.’
Therefore a plan has an ability to create something. This is a fundamental idea about planning-it forms and creates the goal required.

In our group environment, we tried as much as we could to create plans, forecasting the weekly schedules we had and assigning days and hours to finish off a certain tasks. When these tasks were not accomplished at the planned time, just like our guest lecturer stated, 'If there are problems, which there always will be, reschedule the plan to allow other activities to happen and get back to status quo'. This was our strategy most of the time.
She also spoke of Contingency which is 'stuff up' time and so she sarcastically said to 'plan' for it.
Float is time allowed for procrastinating, which we kept in mind also.
She also introduced the idea of Acceleration and how to do so:
-by Overlapping activites
-and using Additional resources

Planning Cycle and Objectives
In all sorts of businesses, there are set stages of the Planning Cycle: Situation Anaylsis, Strategic Audit, Objectives, Strategies, Implementation, Monitoring and Evaluation. There are multiple variations of this but they usually include the same ideas, such as the image shown below:

There are strategic, tactical and operational Objectives (a Hierarchy of Objectives)
-Strategic Objectives- goals as a whole and supports the mission statement
-Tactical- Goals for each of the functional areas and supports the strategic objectives
-Operational- Goals for people working within each functional area and supports tactical goals

Tools
There are multiple tools to use in designing the plans and its layout.

General tools used to plan include Forecasting, Break-even Analysis, Decision Trees, and Budgets.

There are also software design tools to aid in the planning process. Here are some examples of software tools:
Plan Bee Pro with the use of the popular Gantt Chart

Rational Plan software tool with options including creating WBS and Gantt Charts, assigning resources to certain tasks, naming and listing tasks and also assigning the required duration of that task and many more

Here are some links to multiple listings of other planning software

http://www.filebuzz.com/files/project_planning_software/1.html

http://www.dotnetthis.com/corporate/projectmanagement/

References
Fernando Pérez Oyarzun, Four observations on ground plans, ARQ, n. 58 En planta / Plan view, Santiago, December, 2004, p. 24. (http://www.scielo.cl/fbpe/html/arq/n58/body-i/art04-i.htm)

Images
Image 1
http://www.projectmanagerkit.com/images/project-lifecycle-complete.jpg

Image 2
http://www.filedudes.com/PlanBee_project_management_planning_tool-screenshot-26367.html

Image 3
http://www.filebuzz.com/software_screenshot/full/19786-RationalPlan_Project_Management_Software.jpg

HIERARCHY

Hierarchy is difficult to discuss especially because me and my team decided not to have a leader, therefore the typical hierarchy wasn't much of a concept for us.

But as the guest lecturer had introduced, there is a type of hierarchy that is not so pyramidical as people would straight away imagine when speaking of hierarchy. This one is of an intergrated approach.

It's called the behavioural/ human approach to management. There is a supportive leadership where there is wide span of control and a flat organisational structure. This consists of a hierarchy of interlocking groups or people.

I believe that's what we are. We have a wide span of control for the task we tackle and there is a flat hierarchy where there are no clear distinctions between leader and other team players. Therefore this is called a decentralised approach. We all have certain responsibilty and this also shifts which creates a dynamic environment for the work we undertake.

A great report on the the knowledge and incentives created from groups or as they call them "horizontal communities" can be viewed from http://www.dime-eu.org/files/active/0/Lazaric%20Raybaut%20Knowledge%20and%20trust%20Febrruary%20200611.pdf

"Groups, teams or “communities of practice” play an important part in the creation of knowledge and could be an appropriate organizational design for implementing specific incentives (rewards, bonus ...). If knowledge creation by such ‘horizontal communities’ may be difficult in the absence of appropriate intervention regulating their creativity; the hierarchy should not be envisaged as pure gendarme or instrument of obedience. According to us, the “organisational loyalty” or the “human docility” should not be considered ex ante as in the Simonian framework , nor should individual opportunism be envisaged as the starting point."

To summarise, Lazaric and Raybaut believe that groups that work together are important for creating knowledge; their creativity should be regulated but too much by hierarchical obedience but not too free that individuals take advantage.

A different view is on the idea that hierarchy is a crucial concept for employees' perception and attitude of leadership roles, is investigated in this article. Here is the abstract:

"This article investigates whether authority hierarchy still serves as an important factor influencing employee perceptions toward organizational roles and expected behavior. Results of a study in a federal agency suggest that hierarchy does serve as a significant force influencing employee attitudes toward leadership roles, contrary to the notion that hierarchy will diminish in importance over time. Hierarchy remains a crucial structural force in public organizations
and is unlikely to wither away."

Gerald T. Gabris, Douglas M. Ihrke (March 2007). "No End to Hierarchy: Does Rank Make a Difference in Perceptions of Leadership Credibility?". Administration & Society, 39 (1), p107-123 Retrieved June, 2008 from http://online.sagepub.com/

As seen in these articles and in sooo many others, there is a clear debate on whether the flat organisational or the pyramid structure is appropriate in business. But i would say that it really depends on the type of business and field the people are in. As seen in the article 'No End to Hierarchy' the federal agency need structure and hierarchy because in this type of environment there are levels of significance and more responsiblities.

In business sense, the flat structure is becoming more adapting to the social environment of businesses as making teams, especially highly qualified and professional teams can be very advantageous to owners which can carry the business to new heights.

REMUNERATION

Remuneration is usually associated with pay, wages, salary, etc. Automatically people would assume that money is the primary motivator for employees. While it's true that we all value money, employees will intuitively offset this benefit with the perceived costs to themselves.[1] This is where the non-monetary rewards make the distinction. They may be direct or indirect but nonetheless should be received during any task.

As students and in reference to our project, I believe the non-monetary rewards are/should be- Task Complexity, Variability of Work, Acquiring New Skill and Education, Recognition and Professional Development.
These should be the basic incentives for attempting or completing a task, not just in the education system.

Teaching people new skills is an important non-monetary remuneration because being knowledgeable in multiple disciplines is always an advantage, for the employee and for the employer.

Being involved in variety of tasks and different disciplines, especially in team work, helps to gain the maximum amount of experience and should keep the person’s skills ‘sharpened’ and up-to-date.

Having knowledge is to understand something, but wisdom is putting that knowledge into practice. Task should vary in their difficulty and the challenge of a complex task helps keep this distinction.

Making sure that a person’s contribution and efforts are recognized is essentially for keeping them content with their job and motivated for the next jobs at hand. Recognition is also useful for a person’s career development when the public has the knowledge of their efforts.

Especially in contemporary society, pursuing a job for life is not the career objective. People take jobs for the experience and the advantages it may bring to their skill set. Acquiring new skill, handling complex tasks, and being involved in a variety of tasks all lead to a better career path. The professional development of an employee and a student is always dependent on the development of their knowledge and wisdom.

Other non-monetary remunerations include top-of-the-line tools (best of the best technology), work/life balance, security and safety, social relationship, a combination of autonomous and team work, job rotation and responsibility.
A term worth mentioning is Job Satisfaction. ‘Theorists such as Turner and Lawrence (1965), Hackman and Oldham (1975,1980), Szilogyi and Keller (1976), among others have proposed that intrinsically, satisfying jobs are those where there is Variety, where workers have Autonomy in choosing procedures, where Feedback is received concerning the effectiveness and work impact, where the work has some social Significance or makes an important contribution to a product or services.’[2]

‘The link between job satisfaction and performance is thought to be a spurious relationship’.[3]


Fig. 1-Job Characteristics that help Job Satisfaction [4]



Others that would usually be associated with employment would be in the form of fringe benefits. These are such things as health insurance, retirement benefits, daycare, sick leave, vacation, social security, funding of education, flexible working hours etc.

Fig 2 Examples of Physical Non-Monetary Remuneration [5]
Common perks (benefits of a more discretionary nature) are company cars, hotel stays, free refreshments, leisure activities on work time (golf, etc.), stationery, allowances for lunch.

[1] Giles, 2004
[2] Anonymous
[3] Wikipedia, 2008

[4] Cummings and Worley, 2004 p 333

[5] Indirect Compensation, 2007

Bibliography

Giles, Tanya (Oct 2004). Non-Monetary Rewards As part of the remuneration equation.
New Zealand Management; 51(9), 46-47. Retrieved May 15, 2008 from EBSCO Host (Accession No. 14775001)

Job satisfaction. (May 2, 2008). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Job_satisfaction&oldid=209789000

Park, Hee Sun; Baker, Colin; and Lee, Dong Wook (2008). Need for Cognition, Task Complexity, and Job Satisfaction. Journal of management in engineering; 24(2), 111-117. Retrieved 15 May, 2008 from ASCE Research Library (DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0742-597X(2008)24:2(111))

Schnake, Mel E; Bushardt, Stephen C; and Spottswood, Curran. (1984). Internal Work Motivation and Intrinsic Job Satisfaction: The Effects of Goal Clarity, Goal Difficulty, Participation in Goal Setting, and Task Complexity. Group & Organization Studies (pre-1986), 9(2), 201. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 656386091).

Cummings, Thomas G. and Worley, Christopher G.(2004). Organization Development and Change. Thomson South-Western.

James, Justin, (March, 2008). 10 non-monetary benefits to attract and retain top developers, 10 things, TechRepublic. Retrieved May 15, 2008 from http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=328

Anonymous, Job Satisfaction. Retrieved May 15, 2008 from All Free Essays.Com http://www.allfreeessays.net/student/JobSatisfaction.html%20/

Employee benefit. (May, 2008). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Employee_benefit&oldid=213022052

Indirect Compensation (2007). In Compensation, Payroll.Naukrihub.com. Retrieved May 15, 2008 from http://payroll.naukrihub.com/compensation/indirect-compensation.html

location, location, location!!!

amazingly when we reset the location of the static mesh to 0,0,0 using the advice in http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=165993

[right click on the static mesh, select StaticMeshActorProperties from the dropdown, under the Movement header, select and change the locations of the object to 0,0,0]

,the mesh/model blew up to the accurate size (as it was like a small dot when we imported it :P) and then the view was not locked anymore, odd...

generic browser problem

if any one has a problem with trying to close the generic browser, just press the generic browser icon button in the toolbar and then try closing it :)

good importing tutorial

This link is great for importing

http://fordy.planetunreal.gamespy.com/gradientssmeshtutorials/contents.html

this pretty much summarises what russell was saying yesterday...i think :)

me and margaret are trying it out now, we made uv mapping and it importing it and everything, but the only thing is that it imported very small and the view is stuck on a camera view but when we exported from 3dsmax we specified no cameras so i dono...

any suggestions guys...

INTENT

Intent and Communication

In the realm of art, which incorporates architecture, technological creations, paintings, sculptures and the like, there is an urge for the “artist” to produce “art” and that process is connected to a ‘biological, spiritual and/or intellectual need to communicate.’ (Aesthetic Intention, Technology And The Art Praxis, p.509)

Whether the art was created to communicate a certain idea, follow in line with or against a procession of ideas or techniques, it all defiantly good word holds multiple variations of purpose and intent. Livingston, the writer of Art and Intention, defined an author of any form of art as “an agent who intentionally makes an utterance . . . an intended function of which is expression or communication” (p. 69) (Paisley Livingston, Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study, p.300)

How we interpret the art with our different cultural understandings can be very different to the original aesthetic intention of the creation of the art. Nonetheless, if the art work evokes feeling, understanding, and/or intrigue or is reacted to in the most simplest form then the art, the artist has communicated to an audience.

“[A]rt does not end with the production of the object alone but continues to be completed by the viewer. This is an inherent attribute in the activity of art making that links the maker to the receiver through the object. Undoubtedly, art then becomes a phenomenological human activity both in the reading and the making.” (Aesthetic Intention, Technology And The Art Praxis, p.509)

Some, like W.K. Wimsatt & Monroe Beardsley, Kevin Wilson, and George Dickie, believe that intention of the artist isn’t relevant to the interpretation of the art. But in the light of communication, communication is two-way and therefore in the eyes of these thinkers art is not communication between artists and audience but is only an interpretation of the art alone. They explain that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of art." (Wikipedia, Intentional Fallacy)

References

Jerrold Levinson (2007). Artful Intentions: Paisley Livingston, Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 65(3), 299 -305. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from Blackwell Synergy.

Maureen Nappi (1995). Aesthetic Intention, Technology And The Art Praxis. Computers & Graphics, 19(4), 509 -512. Retrieved April 23, 2008 from Science Direct (Doi: 10.1016/0097-8493(95)00028-B)

Wikipedia Contributors (2008, January 9). Intentional fallacy. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 28, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Intentional_fallacy&oldid=183068850

KNOWLEDGE

I've always been taught that there is a hierarchy when it comes to 'knowing' something, in general terms.
*Data is raw facts.
*Information is data that has meaning within a context.
*Knowledge is the understanding, accumulation and familiarity of information.
*And then wisdom is the ability to apply all sorts of knowledge in an advanced and experienced way.

Knowledge is one of the key levels of this hierarchy so a person can be able to apply education, learning and perception to their everyday life. Knowledge is using information in a way that gives a person the ability to make effective and important decisions.

This is extremely important for a person's career development and, most obviously, needs knowledge at least in one field to be able to do work.

In the field of architecture and the built environment in general, fundamental knowledge would be understanding and interpreting plans, being familiar with the architectural practice in society etc.
But being able to create 3D views of buildings without having them built, there should be at least some prior knowledge to aid this process. Also knowledge can be acquired during the process.

As with Group A, we all had knowledge with Computer-Aided Design (especially with Revit), and at least some 3d modelling experience (esp. with 3DsMax). We acquired this through education and practice prior. But there is never a limit to how much you 'know' when it comes to programs especially, so there is always a constant learning curve when creating this 3D environment.

We are all going through the hierarchy of 'knowledge' in terms of learning and applying UT3 skills. We use the raw facts of data from tutorials and internet forums and our brains convert them to information as we create meaning to the facts in their certain context. Then we acquire knowledge as we get to understand and familiarise ourselves with the information and therefore forming our skills.

We also do this by learning from each other and our tutor and i believe that's the best thing about collaboration; acquiring knowledge from others!!

With the help of my text book for my last year's elective Information Management in Faculty of IT;
Haag, Cummings and Philips (2007). Management Information Systems for the Information Age (Sixth Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin

RECORD

Record Management is, according to RMAA Records Management Association of Australasia, 'field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records.'

Record keeping should be a part of all the various stages of business's life cycle: 'from their creation or receipt, through their processing, distribution, maintenance and use, to their ultimate disposition.'
Making sure that the records are efficient and effective, the 'useless records' should be destroyed and valuable information 'protected and maintained in a manner that facilitates its access and use.' (AIIM, p48)

Ways that Group A record:
*We try to record the activities we do on computers by 'recording' using Cam Studio program. This is a great way of showing visual proof of work.
*When we discuss ideas and challenges we try to have it written down on what we want to accomplish and so on. This is evidence of our meetings and discussions.
*Emails are the best way we've kept record because we mostly communicate with emails when we cannot be all present at the same time.
*Blogs are (and should be more often) used to help keep track of our individual and team work, showing our progress throughout the weeks. Unfortunately this type of record keeping is a bit bias as it is only the person's recollection of their work.

There are many products available to assist in the records management process and they should allow the following-

• Organize records
• Define retention schedules
• Define file plans
• Declare records
• Maintain record security
• Manage records access
• Provide circulation management
• Help preserve records
• (Optionally) provide email management (AIIM, p49)

Educating people to keep records in a very efficient way is necessary in business and project management.

Being a very efficient recordkeeper is essential as information is much more easily retrieved if the records are in an organised way. This does impact on time and the better the record management the quicker the retrieval!



Dearstyne Bruce (Nov 2007). Why Records Management Matters, Public Management, vol. 89; issue 10 p. 24-27. Retrieved April 15 2008 from EBSCOHost

Records Management Association of Australasian, Glossary, RMAA. Retrieved April 16 2008

AIIM, Records Management, AIIM E-DOC Jan/Feb2008 Guide to ECM Purchasing, Vol. 22, p48-52. Retrieved April 15 2008 from EBSCOHost

DISCIPLINE

Discipline- a 'sphere of knowledge' that an individual has chosen to specialise in. (wikipedia)
Projects with multiple disciplines involved are very hard to control. This is mostly due to the varied sources of information that are available from the different disciplines to achieve one common goal.
Therefore the best solution is to allow the team members to stay in their own individual disciplines but still be interdependent to and consult with the other team members for delegation and making sure that they are all working towards the same goal.

Project management methods and tools are increasingly relevant as today’s globalized organizations accomplish more of their goals using cross-functional, and often cross-cultural, geographically dispersed, project teams. The increased diversity of skills, knowledge, cultures, and perspectives of these project teams can potentially have both positive and negative influences on group processes and outcomes. (Beise, 2004)

Peterson & Stohr identify virtual teams (a.k.a. Geographically Dispersed Team) as a “group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. They have complementary skills and are committed to a common purpose, have interdependent performance goals, and share an approach to work for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” [3]
(http://www.managementhelp.org/grp_skll/virtual/defntion.pdf
Free Management Library: Copyright 1997-2008, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. )

We have been using electronic mediums to communicate throughout our week to collaborate our ideas. In most academic papers, it would list the benefits of virtual collaboration but would still comment on the difficulties that may arise in comparison to face-to-face and on-site collaboration.

Task complexity can be viewed from four perspectives: How a team structures it activities (eg. pooled, sequential, reciprocal or intense), how dynamic the tasks are (ie. Characterized by high uncertainty and a high need to exchange and monitor information), how dependant team members are to those tasks, and how dependant team members are on other team members (Riopelle et al., 2003). (Chiocchio, 2007)

When tasks are complex synchronous meetings are much more useful such as video conferencing or document editing, and when the tasks are less complex and more independent, electronic asynchronous communication such as email are more appropriate. As we begin our project, we have allocated tasks that use both asynchronous and synchronous communication depending on the degree of complexity the task has and whether the task could be independent.
We have used the email and blogs to communicate our ideas and when we get closer an d closer to writing documents collectively, we decide to use more synchronous communication to allow for time-efficiency.


Peterson, Stohr (2000). Definition of Virtual Teams, Virtual Teams Toolkit, from Free Management Library: Copyright 1997-2008, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Retrieved March 26, 2008. http://www.managementhelp.org/grp_skll/virtual/defntion.pdf

François Chiocchio (2007). Project team performance: a study of electronic task and coordination communication. Project Management Journal, 38(1), p.97-109. Retrieved April 2, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database.

Catherine M. Beise. (2004). IT project management and virtual teams. Proceedings of the 2004 SIGMIS conference on Computer personnel research: Careers, culture, and ethics in a networked environment. p.129 – 133. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library.

Asynchronous Messaging!!

To complete a task with contribution from each member, a team needs more than just face-to-face meetings or real time chatting. There needs to be communication where the people involved do not need to be available at the same time and in the same place, that is, non simultaneous. Asynchronous messaging aids this concept with uses of email, fax, weblog and electronic bulletin boards.

“E-mail communication initially mimicked aspects of the memo genre”, with the emergence of the internet, and still using the same principles. (Yates et al, 2008)
Collaborative writing and editing needs tools that will allow copies of documentation to be sent to each team member and therefore can be edited to make multiple versions. The best option for this is email in that the members can save the copies of each document, edit it in their own time and send it to the others.
Email allows copies to be sent to many at the same time, even offering CC and BCC so others can view the emails. There is forwarding and also we can save sent items to keep a copy of what the individual created themselves. Management of documentation is easy with folders and filters.

“…As e-mail captures an increasing share of an organization’s total communication volume, individuals progressively appropriate their e-mail client as a habitat in which they spend most of their work day.” (Ducheneaut, 2001)

It is used very often as a group information management tool to organize information between members. Not only is it used for document exchange, it is also a means for organizing and scheduling meetings. Email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird, have calendar features that coordinate with that. They help to coordinate emails much more efficiently and allow the receiver to be notified instantly if they have received an email. These clients can also allow the user to work offline with the email documents.

There is also web-mail such as Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. These are email services that are primarily used via internet browser. This allows the user to see their email on any computer as opposed to the email clients.

“…E-mail is now a central medium for document exchange” (Ducheneaut, 2001)

The traditional fax machine consists of a scanner, a modem and a printer. It transmits information to the receiving fax machine through a phone line and then prints out the copy on paper. (Wikipedia, 2008)
Nowadays there is a more modern version of the facsimile- Internet fax. This reduces the cost dramatically. No phone line, no need for an actual fax machine, no ink or paper, just hardcopy of the document transferred.
This form of collaboration and communication only allows for documentation transfer, and a heading. There is not much versatility and extra features to this form of communication like email.
Discussion boards or electronic forums are used extensively in universities and companies. There have been multiple studies that test the effectiveness of using this medium in the light of education purposes. (Mock, 2001)(Yates et al, 2008) (Ellison and Wu, 2008)

These allow threaded discussion and are for users only. These allow for an easy and straightforward way of communicating at different times and places.
The user needs to sign in to website to see the new posts, not personally sent to the individual like emails.

A very popular and new emergence in the Internet world is weblog (blog for short). Not only is it used by individuals to post anything they would like on the internet but also used as a medium for constant communication on a specific topic/task.
“The features of a weblog include instant publishing of text or graphics to the Web without the user’s need for sophisticated programming knowledge, and mechanisms with which people may provide comments or feedback to each weblog post.”(Chuang, 2008)
Multiple academic papers have studied and written about weblogs other than Chuang (Ellison and Wu, 2008) (Yates et al, 2008)

Blogs allow hyperlinks to others’ blogs and other internet sites therefore allowing a direct connection to other contacts. This is the only asynchronous medium mentioned here that can also be public.

The problem of synchronization is dissolved as the members can decide when and where they will process the information. Therefore asynchronous mediums such as email, fax, discussion forums and weblogs are just as useful and efficient as any other collaborative medium.

References

JoAnne Yates, Wanda J Orlikowski, Anne Jackson. (2008). The Six Key Dimensions of Understanding Media. MIT Sloan Management Review, v.49 n.2, p.63-69. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from ABI/INFORM Global database.

Nicolas Ducheneaut ,Victoria Bellotti. (Sept./Oct. 2001). E-mail as habitat: an exploration of embedded personal information management. Interactions, v.8 n.5, p.30-38. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library.
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/382899.383305

Nicole B Ellison, Yuehua Wu. (2008). Blogging in the Classroom: A Preliminary Exploration of Student Attitudes and Impact on Comprehension. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, v.17 n.1, p.99-122. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from Academic Research Library database.

Hsueh-Hua Chuang (2008) Perspectives and issues of the creation for weblog-based electronic portfolios in teacher education.British Journal of Educational Technology, v.39 n.1, p.170–174. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library

Kenrick Mock. (December, 2001).The use of internet tools to supplement communication in the classroom. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, v.17 n.2, p.14–21. Retrieved March 26, 2008, from ACM Digital Library.

Wikipedia.com, (2008). Internet Fax. Wikpedia, the free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_fax. Retrieved March 26, 2008.

Notes for Leonardo's Dome Architecture

The majority of [his series of designs for churches or ‘temples’] work ingenious variations on centralized plans- square, polygonal, round or in combination.

Centralised church designs were beloved of Renaissance theorists…but they were rarely commissioned on a large scale for reasons of liturgy and function.

He was fully conscious of the proportional and structural similarities between the ‘dome’ of the skull and his domed temples… [He also put forward] an analogy between a sound building and a healthy building.

The plans are all derived through a process of setting together a number of simple geometrical shapes in symmetrical patterns.

Leonardo’s compositional procedure is so systematized, and so close in spirit to some present-day ideas on computer-aided architectural design about ‘shape grammars’ and rule-based generative methods for plan layout…

Leonardo is be considered as a theoretician in architecture [even if his only direct influence was on the Santa Maria delle Grazie by his friend Bramante]

[The more we examine the Italian architecture of the Renaissance and its] complete expression of that perfect eurythmya, that rigorous equilibrium…, the stronger and clearer does the figure of Leonardo stand out.

It represents Leonardo’s concrete contribution to the architectural development of the Second Renaissance.

Do these summary expressions of Leonardo’s thought, which never took form in works fully studied and translated into reality, suffice to prove his influence on the development of architecture? We have no doubt of it. Leonardo is an architect potentially.

After Leonardo’s time, the development of the ideas of the central plan seems to be filled with a new spirit, directed to reappraisal of spatial values, which multiply and become stabilized and fused, dominated by the cupola, that Roman element par excellence.

Also there is a certain structure for the stability of domed roofs that he discussed with the use of geometric shapes.

Leonardo da Vinci : Hayward Gallery, London, 26 January to 16 April 1989. London : South Bank Centre, c1989

Leonardo da Vinci. [rev. ed. / edited by Emil Vollmer] New York : Reynal in association with William Morrow, [19-], 1938
"Originally published in Italy by the Instituto Geografico De Agostino just before the war, in conjunction with the famous exhibition of Leonardo’s work in 1938."

All Steel House

Frank Lloyd Wright

All Steel House in Los Angeles

1937

Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper

Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper

Ludwig Mies van de Rohe

1921

(maybe too big but still interesting)

references coming soon...

Leonardo da Vinci's Dome Architecture

Leonardo da Vinci

Sketches of Domed Churches

At the time of his designing of the cathedral of Milan as he was finding a solution to the problem of equilibrium and harmony like Vitruvius and Alberti.

references coming soon...