Going Places

Update: we've moved! But never fear, you can still follow our blog here. Thanks for reading and sticking with us, and look out for more content (again, here ;-)) in the near future!

A ‘Site’ For Sore Eyes

Today saw the birth of a beautiful thing – our website, that is! We referred to our previous game plan, which had an outline of a prospective structure for TheInfinetwork. Basing our work today off that, we began to build the pages, adding in some filler text and images, just so we could map out our path. They’ll still be under construction until we are able to contact the other interns and mentors, but in the meantime, we’re having fun familiarizing ourselves with Wordpress! We've made quite some progress so far, and we’re looking forward to continuing the development of the website.

Draft Day

It's a big day in sports.  Team USA suffered a loss to Germany today; but thanks to a win from Portugal, team USA is advancing anyways!  We are looking forward to watching Team USA play in the quarterfinals.  In other news, the NBA draft is tonight.  Speaking of drafts, we wrote up a draft of our email template, which we will be sending out to interns and mentors to invite them to The Infinetwork.  It explains a little about what our project is and requests some information of our members.  Soon we will be able to start building up our network.

Back in Action!

After a beautiful weekend filled with World Cup excitement and amazing weather, we were back to work at the Forest Hills Public Library.  With our website and template still being set up for us by our friends in the Golden State, we focused this meeting on drafting some writing for the website.

First, we wrote descriptions of some projects we were involved in.  Each description features basic information (location, years active, and status), a brief summary of the project, a list of interns and mentors involved, and a section for media related to the project.  We added these descriptions to our database and will continue to build our collection as we learn more about other projects that will be presented on the site.

Additionally, we brainstormed some ideas for the design of the website itself, including a logo.  We’re thinking of an infinity sign (for the “infinite” part of our name) with “The Infinetwork” written along the curve.  As soon as we get our hands on a graphics editing software, we can begin formally designing it. 

Until next time!

‘Bio’ Experiment

It was a gorgeous day today in the city, so we decided to take advantage of the beautiful New York weather. Central Park was bustling with runners, tourists, children, and dogs alike as we brainstormed our next steps for the website. We experimented with different intern biography styles (bullet points, paragraphs, Q&A style), and further familiarized ourselves with WordPress and our selected theme, Chariot, by watching tutorials on the website and YouTube. So far, so good! We’re looking forward to moving to the back end of the site.

We also did some team bonding today, attending Shakespeare in the Park’s production of Much Ado about Nothing! Granted, it’s only 5 P.M. and we’re still waiting for the show to start, but we’re excited and hope it’s going to be good!

Working in the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center.

Wordpress vs. Weebly

My sister recently created a website using weebly, so we thought it might be a good idea to check it out for our own project.  We explored the benefits of using weebly by creating a sample website.  It is extremely simple to use, with an easy drag-and-drop function.  We liked that it was so intuitive.  However, the big question was whether we would prefer weebly over wordpress.

We had a conference call in which we took a tutorial of wordpress.  We took a tour of the back-end of a wordpress website, learning the ins and outs.  Now with a better idea of the differences between weebly and wordpress, we could make a more educated decision.  Ultimately, we chose to go with wordpress.  It is not terribly difficult to use and we will be able to use wordpress to create the website that we have envisioned.  The template that we initially picked out was made for wordpress, which is an added benefit.

We have also begun to compile a list of interns and mentors who will soon become part of theinfinetwork!

Organization Day

Without proper organization, tackling a large project can become a nightmare, especially if you are someone like me, who can only function under schedules, to-do lists galore, and color-coded folders.  Personally, I get a little overwhelmed without a structured foundation.  That’s why, we spent our meeting yesterday discussing and laying out an online workspace for this project.

We kicked off our meeting at the Forest Hills Public Library (which, side note, has been “my” library since I was a child and has developed tremendously since my last visit into a public haven for bibliophiles and budding academics alike.)  We decided that a collective g-mail/Google account would be our best option for an online workspace because of the variety it offers.  All three of us have access to this new account and plan to use it to send out e-mails from the team (until we can get an e-mail address linked to our website).  When we start contacting interns and mentors about our project, it will be a lot easier to collect all of their responses in one central location.  It will avoid our own personal e-mail inboxes from being flooded with responses from this project.  We also created a Google Drive for all documents pertaining to this project.  This online database will hopefully continue to grow throughout the summer.    

We also created this very blog to chronicle our journey this summer.  We plan to post regularly after every meeting in order to keep our mentors updated on our progress (as well as any other curious visitors to our blog).  Note that our goal is to eventually to create a blog on theinfinetwork.com, so this blog is sort of only a temporary arrangement.

Lastly, we made arrangements for a “special” meeting this Friday.  Stay tuned to find more!  

The Game Plan

Here is a preliminary plan for our website!

Home Page

Heading would include the name of the website and also a subheading that would be brief catchy explanation that summarizes the purpose of the website.

About this Website

Include information about the purpose of the website, Putney Financial, Placer Partners, Ray Lent, etc.

Meet the Interns

            Intern Profiles

Subpage which will would be a general roster of all of the interns, listed in alphabetical order.  At the top of the page, there will be a way for visitors to the site to view interns by specific projects and mentors.

            Individual Profiles

Each intern will have a profile page, which includes a brief bio, a list of all the mentors they’ve worked with (links to mentor profile pages), list of all the projects they’ve worked on (links to projects they’ve worked on), links to blogs they have written, and a separate sharing section for resumes and portfolios.  

            Search for an Intern

Subpage which will allow visitors to the site to search for a specific intern by more advanced categories (years active, location, interests, etc.)

Meet the Mentors

            Mentor Profiles

Similar to the Intern Profiles page, except with a roster of all mentors listed in alphabetical order.  At the top of the page, there will be a way for visitors to the site to view mentors by specific projects.

                                    Individual Profiles

Each mentor will have a profile page, which includes a brief bio, list of all interns they’ve worked with (links to the intern pages) organized by projects (links to projects)

            Search for a Mentor

Subpage which will allow visitors to the site to search for a specific mentor by more advanced categories (location, specialties, associated companies, etc.)

Blog

This will be a general blog which will document the progress and journeys of interns working on a variety of projects.  All projects will post to this single blog.  Posts will be tagged by project and contributor (individual interns) so that a visitor can choose to view posts about a specific project. 

Connect

This would be part of a log-in system for interns and mentors only.  This area will not be viewable to the public. 

            Discussion (Forum)

A forum for mentors and interns to discuss a variety of topics, including stories about their internship experiences, career resources, progress on previous projects, internship opportunities, etc.  Anyone can create their own topic.  The forum will be divided into several sections:

1)    Internship Experiences- discussion on internship experiences past and present. 

2)    Job/Internship Opportunities- discussion of any upcoming job and internship opportunities

3)    Resources- discussion related to future career paths

4)    Miscellaneous- discussion of anything that is not related to the above topics.  General chat page. 

            Contact

This section will allow mentors and interns to contact each other via an online form.  Each mentor and intern will have a specific contact form, which others can fill out to contact them about job opportunities, questions, advice, etc.

**NOTE: The reason why this section should ideally be private is because not everyone feels comfortable having their e-mail displayed to the public (spam and personal reasons).  A private “Contact” section is important so that all interns have the opportunity to be contact by potential mentors.   

                         

To Infinity and Beyond!

On Friday the 13^th, a day some consider unlucky, we kicked off our summer of website launching. Luckily, our first meeting of the summer saw no obstacles and sailed smoothly all the way through. We finally settled on a domain name, and picked out a lovely template – one of the things we found really cool and versatile was the “Meet the Team” page! With a tentative schedule set and a to-do list in hand, soon we’ll be able to start the building blocks process as we piece the (infi)network together.