Project Management
Project Management, as defined by Wikipedia, is the discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives.
To me project management means a familiarity with tools of creating structure and communication and the understanding of not only how, but when and why do use them. To be a project manager is to be the networking link between segments of an organization (like vendors, media and pr, asset creators, coordinators, infrastructure and technologists, decision makers or directors, staff or volunteers) and keeping the project on track by knowing where all the pieces are--seeing at once both the big picture and the details and all salient steps or possibilities in between.
Here are several projects I have managed:
- web design/maintenance (including managing clients and the site project)
- media projects
- directing/coordinating
- Directing (including managing and training personnel; scheduling and managing deadlines; organizing the disparate elements of the productions; working with different departments and craftspeople; break down and re-form the individual elements of the overall event; attend to the details of the different sections of the project, bringing them together as a cohesive whole; maintaining the overall aesthetic vision)
- Executive Producer on an independent film, Traveling Faster Than the Speed of Light
- Artistic Director of the Ugly Duckling Theatre
- Directed and performed in performance experiments utilizing cutting-edge technology and personnel from across numerous departments in Outside/In, and Elements
Examples
Outside/In
- In the work I assumed the role of local coordinator which developed into writer, actor, and director. Though the piece was intended to be an egalitarian collaborative with participants writing or selecting text, it ended up being a loosely directed, yet fully scripted short piece.
- I managed artistic and technical personnel from multiple, geographically disparate locations across the globe. (The final performance was staged at the University of Maryland with participants sending video feeds in from Utah via the University of Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing; Ottawa via the National Research Council, Canada; and outdoors at Maryland via OIT’s Visualization and Presentation Lab (VPL), the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, and the Theatre Department.)
Elements
- Founded, coordinated, and performed with the Digital Performance Group for Elements, 2006, an original, collaborative, interdisciplinary digital media performance combining telematic performance, MIDI-triggering, tap-tiles, and projection at the University of Maryland,
- I came up with the concept of creating a collaborative piece using new technology, pulling together members from music, dance, art, and theatre, whose skills I had identified. (Recruiting members with like minds, who were skilled in new media.)
- I facilitated meetings with these different members, coming up with a structure to divide the performance into four segments, thus allowing the same group of people to work in four teams, and collaborate on the whole, so that their aesthetics and skill sets could combine in an egalitarian and cohesive manner.
- I oversaw the structure; assisting the different teams in working together to create content, innovate technology, and shape the thematic elements. I did this while also participating and contributing to the different elements.
- I matched up the technologists with the creative performers, and helped steer them in a hands-off way toward the thematic container.
- I managed the project, dealing with PR, facilities, coordinating the content, working with the technical director, etc.
- I felt that the technologists should not be subservient to the performers, but that there should be a conversation. To that end, I facilitated the creation of the environment in which the artists and technologists could work together, both in a physical space, and in an electronic space.
- In summary, I pushed the frontiers of technology and interdisciplinary involvement by applying delicate management skills to produce a unique, innovative, original production.