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!