LifeWay's Open Access Project
For the past few weeks, I've gotten to be a part of the planning for a "secret" LifeWay project called Open Access. I'm incredibly excited about the potential that this project has for us, as it is going to do a lot to develop an online community for us. I'm looking forward to the continued movement towards transparency and development of employee personalities here at LifeWay and this is a major step in that direction.
The Open Access line of projects will be products that allow customers to access our materials while we are working on them. Participants who purchase the product will get a rough draft of the study and literally get to see it mere weeks after the author turns it in to us. This will allow the participants to give us feedback about the ideas and concepts in the study, as well as share any personal stories that might be applicable to the study. All of the feedback will be read, and turned to constructive criticism for the author and editors to choose how to implement.
The participants will also be able to communicate with each other via an online forum, so we can see how the group as a whole react to the study and how they interact with each other. LifeWay employees will, of course, interact there as well.
The first product that we're doing with Open Access is a new Priscilla Shirer study... that doesn't even have a name yet! I believe there are meetings next week to finalize the name; hopefully we'll be able to announce it soon.
The Open Access project will have a blog as well, here.
The blog will talk more about the development process than the actual product, and we hope to utilize it to give people a behind-the-scenes look at how a study is crafted here in the offices. As a part of that, I'll get to interview various employees throughout the next few months about what they're working on for the study.
The first of these video conversations is/was with Jennifer McCaman (our project manager) introducing what Open Access is and what we hope to accomplish:
[kyte.tv appKey=MarbachViewerEmbedded&embedId=22245474&uri=channels/30228/143907]
The Open Access line of projects will be products that allow customers to access our materials while we are working on them. Participants who purchase the product will get a rough draft of the study and literally get to see it mere weeks after the author turns it in to us. This will allow the participants to give us feedback about the ideas and concepts in the study, as well as share any personal stories that might be applicable to the study. All of the feedback will be read, and turned to constructive criticism for the author and editors to choose how to implement.
The participants will also be able to communicate with each other via an online forum, so we can see how the group as a whole react to the study and how they interact with each other. LifeWay employees will, of course, interact there as well.
The first product that we're doing with Open Access is a new Priscilla Shirer study... that doesn't even have a name yet! I believe there are meetings next week to finalize the name; hopefully we'll be able to announce it soon.
The Open Access project will have a blog as well, here.
The blog will talk more about the development process than the actual product, and we hope to utilize it to give people a behind-the-scenes look at how a study is crafted here in the offices. As a part of that, I'll get to interview various employees throughout the next few months about what they're working on for the study.
The first of these video conversations is/was with Jennifer McCaman (our project manager) introducing what Open Access is and what we hope to accomplish:
[kyte.tv appKey=MarbachViewerEmbedded&embedId=22245474&uri=channels/30228/143907]