We’re back for another semester of NMD Capstone, and as many others, my capstone has gone through many changes from its original iteration. The first semester of Capstone ended up becoming more of a research of my project rather than an actual building of my project, which I originally considered a failure. But now with a new outlook on my project, this semester which originally looked bleak now looks doable, and I have a new set of goals to achieve apart from the original.
I’ll attach a blog post with my in-class slide show that I had prepared, but I will also summarize it here: my original intent was to allow users who wanted to get into amateur shoutcasting to have a place to start. Most amateur shoutcasters I see on youtube and twitch were already famous in their own regard, so they already had some video/broadcasting experience along with the fanbase to present this to. I wanted to create a community to allow these “no name” individuals to have someone to broadcast to. This mainly focused on recorded videos that the user would upload and share.
My capstone also originally started with building my own forum site for my needs. Not wanting to re-invent the wheel I decided to go with a default, freeware forum site. After much feedback from not only class but my other peers, I realized I needed something in between the bare minimum and building my own site if I wanted to effectively build this community. That’s where Reddit came in; Reddit is the best of both worlds, both a social media tool that already exists yet is customizable and plays well with other social medias allowing for certian streams, videos, and ideas to go viral.
Although the intent of my capstone remains true, the new tool of Reddit and the new notion of live broadcasts via twitch.tv as the main form of media rather than uploaded youtube videos are the biggest change to my capstone. At this point my capstone is in the rebuilding stage; building a subreddit from the ground up and recruiting some of my earliest users. I’m excited to see where this project goes.
Blog post of Milestone 4: https://policapstone.wordpress.com/2015/01/21/milestone-4-in-class-presentation/