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So I guess it's my turn to write something about what we do here at Bumblehood. But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Aleksandra, and I've been a content writer for Bumblehood for some time now. I started as a member of "a skilled network of writers" as my colleague Petra smartly put it, and today, some 18 months later, I still write articles that are at your disposal to read or edit. Alright, I did some formatting and editing as well, and more recently, I translated some shorter texts from German into English. Oh, and I also had to rewrite the Help section. This was an extremely tiresome work demanding of me to deal with some very technical terms I didn't understand. Thankfully, my IT colleagues were there to help. :)
So, what's it like to be a content writer for Bumblehood? Well, if you're into creative stuff like writing or searching the right photo for the article you've just written, then being a content writer is a satisfactory venture. Mind you, if the longest you've ever written is a text message to your partner explaining why you couldn't make it to your date, stick to reading.
A great deal of content writing is research work. This means digging through various sources for pieces of information that would back up your article or simply confirm your knowledge on the subject. Sounds time consuming? It is! But it's a must and it's worth the final product, i.e. the finished article. Of course, personal experience is always welcome, if not required.
Although the articles are proof-read and edited if necessary, it's advisable to refer to various dictionaries and grammar books. I always keep my collection of Oxford dictionaries close at hand. However, being a graduate student of the Faculty of Philosophy, this does not come as a surprise.
Being a Bumblehood writer has its ups and downs. As almost every work on the planet... WSISWYG Bumblehood editor is really easy to use, and certainly is one of the ups of content writing. It enables you to change your article in whatever manner you want; to play with paragraphs, titles, tables, pictures... It almost allows you to act like a child. The downs include some minor bugs,although, these are now in the past.
So, to return to the main topic of this blog, and that's my current work for Bumblehood. I've been fortunate enough to have been able to write about places I've visited and was permitted (urged, even) to put some of my own impressions into those articles. I consider myself an experienced traveller having visited most of European countries, slept in various hotels and having tasted many national dishes. So for the last couple of months I've been writing about two top destinations - the city of Munich and Italy, or more exactly, the regions of Italy. Last year's trip to Venice was my fourth visit to Italy. Before Venice, I had visited Tuscany, Rome, Lombardy... Come to think of it, I've actually travelled through the entire upper half of the country. Writing about these Italian destinations was a trip down the memory lane for me, reimiscing the sights and sounds, tastes and smells. The latter two largely referring to the delicious Italian cuisine. Enough about that (I'm becoming hungry). Munich is one of the largest cities in Germany and Europe, and I've been lucky enough to visit it last October. Yes, you've guessed it, I went there just because of Oktoberfest. But I had a great time! Munich is a truly fascinating city! It has so much to offer (besides the vast amount of beergardens). There are galleries and castles (be sure to visit the Nymphenburg castle), the biggest park in Europe (the English Garden) and highly entertaining festivals (the most famous being Oktoberfest of course).
For me, being a Bumblebee is fulfilling. I get to combine two things I'm really good at, travelling and writing. Oh, and my fellow Bumblebees are also great to work with... :)
Posted by Aleksandra Mladenovic on December 11th, 2009 --- Permalink --- Tagged in categories: Content team --- Comments on Forum
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As this is my first blog post, I believe a short introduction is in order: My name is Petra and I've been working on this project as content editor for a year and a half now. As the project grew, so did my tasks and responsibilities – writing Help section, formatting texts (which was the most boring part!), content selling, and, most recently, translating an entire website into German (BumbleMap).
In the initial phase of the project I worked as content writer as well. The plan was to cover 30 countries in a year, which seemed to me as quite an ambitious plan, but we managed to do it. At one point, as many as 55 people worked on content writing. However, while some countries are covered into detail, there are some which need to be further elaborated, thus giving the community a possibility to join in and contribute.
Anyhow, my role of content writer lasted only less than a month, as the amount of content grew rapidly. Since Gabrijela, being the chief editor and content team leader, also had to take care of things such as administration, and acted as a mediator between developers and content writers (which consumed a lot of her time!), at some point I was practically left alone to edit the content. I think you would all agree if I say that it's simply impossible for two content editors alone to go through the whole content (some 40,000 topics!), created by more than 50 people. So if you come across content parts that need editing, feel free to jump in. We'll be grateful :).
As majority of content was written by a skilled network of writers, its quality is unquestionable, though I remember coming across an amusing image caption describing a fjord in Norway, which said: Preikestolen – a lovely nature spot or suicide paradise – no fence, no one to hear your screams as you jump headlong into the abyss. Morbid - as if we were a suicide travel guide :). I still don't know whether this was intended as a joke or not...
Having graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy (my majors were English and German language and literature), most of my working experience was somehow connected with translating and I consider myself everything BUT a tech-savvy person :). So naturally, an encounter with this kind of platform was a completely new experience for me, but not an unpleasant one. Bumblehood's WYSIWYG editor is very easy to use, one just can't make a mistake... Though, I remember, in the very beginning, work was sometimes annoying due to repetitive bugs that drove us all crazy (content writers and developers equally) – sometimes content just disappeared, country templates didn't display flags, we had problems with positioning images in articles, etc. Content writers were simultaneously testing the application and reporting bugs to developers through Gabrijela. It took a lot of time and effort to remove bugs, but we're now proud of the results.
In addition to all that, I've broadened my vocabulary – I've come to understand terms such as Topic Maps paradigm, syndication, RDF and similar. Working on this project has been dynamic, creative and interesting. I think we all contributed to developing a product of high quality. And luckily, my job is not as stressful as that of developers. I do stay longer when necessary but I still haven't spent the whole night(s) in the office. And hopefully I won’t have to :).
Posted by Petra Kekus on July 23rd, 2009 --- Permalink --- Tagged in categories: Content team --- Comments on Forum
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It is most likely customary and polite to drop a few words about oneself in an attempt of non-fictional writing such as blogging. Well, my name is Gabrijela and I am managing the content production for the Bumblehood project. I have been working for this nice project for a year and half and most of that time I have been trying to bridge the gap between the technological constraints and wide-ranging ideas of imaginative but not tech-savvy content writers and myself. In this first entry I will try to briefly present the content and the context of this project. Just a small note - it is been a while since this Bumblehood content editor has written anything, but a while ago the forces of the universe have united and triggered off this Bumble blogosphere. While I am rediscovering myself as a writer of anything, sincerely apologizing that any reader has to go along through this process, let’s scratch the surface of the Bumblehood magnificent realm.
If Bumblehood would be a printed book it would have approximately 20,000 pages, not counting the images. The images alone make up a photo album of 20,000 pictures. Good that we saved all those trees and haven’t tried to print it all :) According to our developers, there are 40,000 thousand topics in our tree. The thing we call a “tree” is this left-hand structure that evolves as you click down. The material of the topics prepared here aims to help people to get to know better the place they live in and also to thoroughly guide the travelers to their destinations. This was created by 55 people over the one-year period, creating the ground for the community to jump on and carry out. We have covered 30 countries and approximately 250 cities, writing about some of them into the slightest detail, but truth be told, some have been only scratched, leaving enough place for the community to catch on.
As you browse through the blogs of my colleagues you will probably read about the pains and pressures they experienced while the deadline was approaching. We all somehow managed to get ourselves together for those couple of weeks that preceded that famous 16th of February, and remain after that in one piece :) This process was an intimate and personal struggle for each of us. It simply had completely different implications to content writers, developers, mangers, founder and investors, so each of us fought in their own way.
It would be fair enough to say that probably the least of the pressure was laid down to content writers who were working in their own pace, giving their best to fulfill the given requests, but not undergoing the same pressure as developers or managers to get things done. Only in those last couple of weeks we discovered that there had been additional 1000 topics to be written and decided to put in 2500 reviews about the business worldwide, all that with no more than 25 people available for the job. Pressure or no pressure,.. some things were simply impossible to achieve. At first, we even estimated that one person will be able to write it all down by himself/herself. When I think of that now, I can't stop laughing. Those 1000 topics were called splash screens, or as renamed later – the Quick facts page, and at the end four people have still been working on them, even now. This page is basically the first link that opens when you click on a location. It seemed the best that this page had a small image, a map, and a little bit of text, summarizing the most important information about the location and leading the way to other topics written about it already. Not to forget that there were also couple of people formatting the pages, trying to give the similar look and feel to the layout of all the pages, which was a huge task. I would not bother you with numbers, just imaging yourself clicking on each and every topic, reading it, editing it, and inserting images and links into it. To a certain extent, this is an ongoing process and there will always be some things to polish up. I almost forgot, our bright idea of the Quick facts page required also for the 100 interactive flash maps to be produced in a three-weeks period. We eventually hired two graphic designers, one to draw maps, the other one to illustrate the topics with our Bumble mascot, another cute thing we came up with while the clock was ticking.
Who could remember all those small details arising every now and then, preventing even the mere attempt of a normal workflow!? Those were the days when all of us finally mastered the multitasking. I remember that sometimes I would have been working simultaneously on 10 different task, very often remaining still in my chair for several hours, forgetting to eat, drink, or God forbid, take a quick break. While we were working with the system that was about to go into production every minute, stopping our work sometimes even couple of times a day, all of us became immune to the small and repetitive bugs, not even getting excited if we had to go through one and the same thing all over again. It became clear that simply there comes a time when people just push forward. It was nice to see all of us diversely complaining but harmonically getting things done. Basically, as of 16th of February the internet is richer for one website and we can look behind and say that one big thing has been accomplished. Perhaps we would not get the straight “A” for it; as you can see, most of us have dedicated this first log to sweet struggles we went trough, but this project of ours was made with a unanimous team effort and genuine cooperation.
Posted by Gabrijela Djebro Hodnik on February 27, 2009 --- Permalink --- Tagged in categories: Content team --- Comments on Forum
