Mission 1

Process

For this mission me and my friends decided to form a group. The group was me, Conor Burke and Aaron Goodman. We looked through all the available missions and choose to do Digital Audio, as that was something we were all familiar with, and we were all happy to do a project on. 

Are goals for this project was to create a form of digital audio and to then create a presentation around this piece of digital audio. We wanted to make the mission fun as well so we decided to do it on a podcast, which was new and interesting for each of us, as we had never done a podcast before. A goal of ours was to make it enjoyable for the people who were going to listen to it. We wanted to have fun making it and for the people we were presenting it to, to also enjoy listening to it. Another goal of ours was to have our presentation not be to overloading with information. We wanted our end product to be the focal point of our mission and for it not to be the slides we would be presenting.

In the end we were looking to produce a decent podcast that was interesting for people to listen to. We also wanted to produce a presentation that was informative but also entertaining for our audience which was going to be our class. To complete this project, we were going to use google slides to create our presentation. Google slides was the best way to go about this, as it allows us to work on the same slide show at the same time. We were also going to use a laptop, mic and audio software to record the audio of our podcast. This would be done by having the mic hooked up to the laptop and then having use all sit around the mic, so it could catch all of us talking. The audio software would then record what we were then saying. Another thing we could use is a form of software to edit any of the conversation, such as premier pro. This would allow us to put in potentially an intro and closing, while also editing the overall conversation. 

When it comes to actually doing the podcast, we were thinking about potentially finding a nice small room within the college to do the recording. We also planned on having just say a guest star come on to star in our podcast. This would offer a lot more conversational opportunities, but we also were talking about just having a casual talk as the podcast itself. This would be a normal conversation of about thirty minutes and just see where it goes form there. The main thing was that the podcast wouldn't be scripted at all, we were considering writing down topics to talk about just so there wouldn't be any breaks between talking points. 

Product

In the end me and my group decided to create a podcast as the product for this mission. To do this we decided to meet together to talk about the mission and see where we were going to go with the mission. We all decided that it was best to just have an unscripted conversation. Another thing we decided was to have a guest star in our podcast which would make it four of us. This ultimately backfired on us but it was a learning curve to help us create our final finished podcast.

We gathered together one of the days after college to do the record the podcast. We asked one of our class mates, John, if he would appear on our podcast because of how opinionated he is, which would offer interesting conversational topics for the podcast. On this day we all went to an empty room within the college and sat around a table. We used Apple voice memos on my phone to record the conversation. The podcast started off well but then turned for the worse when it got very political. Aaron and John had what was a heated debate over the controversial topic of veganism, which pretty much forced us to have to restart the podcast from scratch. We did a few more takes but it never really worked. We decided that we would do the podcast again on another day and would keep the conversation more casual. 

Two days later we did the podcast once again but this time we used a proper mic, instead of a phone. We also decided just to do it among ourselves, instead of having a guest. This worked a lot better and in my opinion the podcast turned out funny and entertaining. I really had fun recording this podcast as we didn't take ourselves to seriously. We had a laugh and recored about thirty minuted of content. Once recored, Conor cut out any unnecessary parts and posted the finished podcast to Sound Cloud.

To create the slides we used Google slides. All of us did two to three slides each and then had our podcast imbedded in the final slide of our presentation. The presentation wasn't difficult to create. We tried to keep it to a minimum, as the work for the project was in our podcast. 

The day of the presentation arrived. Me and my group decided to go first to get it out of the way. This was the first time presenting in front of our class, so we were pretty nervous. We presented each of our slides individually, which looking back, was probably a mistake. Overall the presentation was fine, we came across as pretty nervous but we were happy to get it done. The podcast played at the end and was kinda hard to hear due to the speakers in the room. In the end, we were all happy with how the presentation went and was happy with the result of satisfactory, that we got. 

Reflection

After completing this mission, I feel like I learned a lot. I learned that group work can be difficult at times but can also be very rewarding if it is done correctly. When working with a group, you have people who you can rely on and if them people work well together, then that is brilliant and the group will do well together. I learned this working with Aaron and Conor. I found them to be reliable to work with, as they got the work done, when the work ha to be done. This made everything feel easy, as we were never under any serious pressure, as a group.

Another thing I learned was how to present a project. When we presented our project, we presented as individuals, which wasn't how we should have done it. We should have presented as a group, where every slide was everyones slide, rather than certain slides being my slide or Conor's slide or Aaron's slide. This is something I've learned through the presenting of our mission. I feel the presentation would have been a lot better if we presented together rather then individually. 

One thing I discovered about the mission was that creating a podcast is not as easy as it sounds. I went into this mission thinking I chose the easy mission out of the options but that didn't end of being the case. I discovered that there is a lot of things that effect how a podcast can turn out, like for example, we chose a small quiet room to do the recording for our podcast. Even though this room seemed perfect for recording audio, we still picked out a lot of sound interference from echos of our own voices. Small things like this could ruined our podcast, but luckily we got away with the sound interference. Doing this mission, I also discovered that I work very well within groups. I am capable of getting the job done and also helping people get their jobs done. Doing his mission helped me clarify that I like group projects more then individual projects

When looking back at the project, I think the podcast itself was a success. It took a lot of takes to get but in the end, I feel like the one we got was funny and entertaining. Another thing I feel was a success within our project was the overall presentation. I feel the presentation went well and I would say, was a success. One failure of our project was the editing of the podcast. I personally feel some form of editing should have been done, such as an intro and closing, but this was never put into the podcast. This could have been easily done and is why I put it done to be a failure. 

In the end, I can truthfully say I'm proud of how our group worked to produce the podcast and presentation of our first mission.