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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
