Yesterday's Progress

Yesterday, we placed our edited videos on our Web site. We also edited down our slideshow and got the accompanying music to correlate with said slideshow. Finally, we made our site more interactive, creating links from one coffee house's page to another and to the corresponding blog, video and slideshow pages. Great success!

Sunday in the Wakerly

Tonight we all met up in the Wakerly Center to continue developing the website. We created a few new pages including an Enter Site page. Additionally, we played around with different color options, fonts, and formats. We went through the pages of our site to create more links and enhance the clickability of our site. We spent the majority of the night implementing various links, videos, and other multimedia onto the site to make it more interactive. We uploaded several videos, a slide show, and various images to each page. After tonight, we feel extremely confident in how the project has come together. 

Last Night

Our group met in Wakerly last night to work on our project. We essentially completed our two-page newspaper spread and made some progress on our Web site, particularly the blog. Today, we plan to work on the opening page of the Web site. We also scheduled a meeting with Ms. Carole Burns later today to work on making our Web site more interactive.

Work, Work, Work

On Sunday night, the three of us got together to work on our project. We revamped our newspaper spread, worked on our powerpoint, and worked on a new article for our center spread. So far we're looking good, but the thing we need to start concentrating on is our Web site!

Today, we met in the Wakerly Center to continue working on the website layout. We put the finishing touches on the newspaper spread, and are now turning our focus on the website pages. We finished writing several articles for the site and edited each other's looking for last minute errors and suggestions. We have made plans to meet Sunday in addition to possibly another day this week depending on our schedules. At our next meeting, we plan to edit the videos, photos, etc. and begin to add them to our webpages. Ultimately, things are coming together very well and we're looking forward to see how everything turns out!

Today, we met in the Wakerly Center to begin working on our website layout. We gathered, organized, and edited all our pictures. We also began working with iWeb to design our various pages. We played around with different layouts, fonts, colors, and designs. We structured each page of the website. Additionally, we made a list of questions, comments, and concerns we hope to get clarified by Prof. Briggs-Gammon and Carol before turning in the final project. Finally, we used today's time to plan a team trip back to these places to gather more photos, videos, interviews, etc. for the site. 

Visual Editing

Our group met today and put our files--videos, pictures and word documents--into a bigger final project file. We looked over our photos, decided which ones we liked, and came up with some ideas on we would like to change in the photos. Our hope is to receive critiques from others about which photos look best and what should be edited in them. We also developed some plans to visit the coffee shops we haven't been to yet.

-Brian, Liz and Natalie

I called Alterra on the Lake and Mocha today. It looks like we will have to go through some higher-ups for both: the Alterra worker referred me to their HR Department, with which I left a message. I also expect a call from Mocha's manager next week. It still looks like weekdays are the best time to visit those coffee houses, but that shouldn't be a problem for me to stop there next week.

-Brian

Today we discussed the design, layout, and overall style of our writing assignments and web design for the final project. We decided that we want to focus the newspaper portion of the project on one coffeehouse in particular--Brewing Grounds for Change. For the website, we want to focus on 5-7 other coffeeshops around the city. In class today, we figured out exactly which shops we were going to highlight as well as the style of writing we would like to employ. For the newspaper, we are planning on writing a more feature-style article on Brewing Grounds for Change. For the website, however, we are going to write our articles in a more hard news style, focusing on key information like location, hours of operation, directions, etc. All in all, I think we got a lot accomplished today in planning what we want to cover, how we want to cover it, and when we hope to meet.

Visiting Coffee Shops

Today we visited Brewing Grounds for Change at 2008 N. Farwell Ave. (the only 100 percent fair trade coffee house in Milwaukee, says owner Matt Nelson). We talked extensively with Matt and took many photographs and video of Matt making a popular Café Cubano drink.

We also stopped by Rochambo and plan to return on a weekday when it is less busy and the owner can talk more with us. We will do the same at Alterra on the Lake.

Finally we encountered a coffee shop called Brewed Cafe (1208 E. Brady St.) that we hadn't known about. We spoke with two recent UWM graduates who were eating there for the first time. Sheila, the owner for a year and a half, also talked with us about how she hopes the shop can be a place for artists to show their work and students to do their homework. She showed us how to make the popular mocha drink and offered us one for free!

All in all, today was a very productive day for us. We got a lot of great video, photographs, interviews and new places to study!

Hey guys,

What time do you want to get started on Sunday? I'm thinking if we're going to go to three coffee shops, we might want to do Alterra by the Lake, Brewing Grounds for Change and Watt's Tea Room. That way we'll go to at least one environmentally conscious shop, one that MU students know about and the tea room for an alternative experience. Let me know what you guys think. Also, I was wondering--do either of you know if we can actually get a backpack on Sunday? Because if we can't, it might create an issue...

See you Sunday!

Tuesday 3/17

Today we learned how to use iWeb. We came up with a few ideas for videos as we were being shown how to post YouTube videos on our pages. We decided to try to take videos of workers at each coffee shop demonstrating how to make specialty coffee drinks. We also came up with a few ideas about our Web layout and plan to meet Sunday to begin gathering information about the different coffee houses we visit. Finally, we learned how to post maps on our page, which should be helpful in showing users how to get to the different coffee houses.

We've pared down our list of 20 plus coffee houses to include six to eight that we're going to visit in the next few weeks.  These include:

Alterra by the Lake

Mocha

Rochambo

Watt's Tea Room

Trocadero

Hi-Fi Cafe

Brewing Grounds for Change

Fuel Cafe

We're searching for unique coffee shops in the downtown area. We plan to work together, visit sites together, and write together. Over the next two weeks we plan to visit at least four sites to retrieve stories and multimedia for this project!