This is very cliché, but this semester I learned a lot about taking risk and having patience with a project. Starting both Mukurtu and Blender was unintuitive at sometimes and took a lot of adjusting, but I gained valuable insights from learning both programs and am proud of my work. I would tell myself as a new Vivero Fellow starting out that I should not be afraid to experiment and make mistakes (though it’s always good to save backups as one does so). While getting things done in a timely fashion is essential, in learning new programs it is important to take time to grapple with a concept or feature until you truly understand it, especially as a student mentor.
I really enjoyed the project proposals and the freedom it provided by being able to suggest a project and pursue it. More to this point, where last year’s trainings normally allotted one week per program, these longer self-guided projects offered up more time to explore the program. I found that with more time I could dive deeper into a given program and thus gain a more holistic understanding of it, which was awesome. Additionally, returning to old trainings and reviewing them got me to think on a metalevel, and I think that this process not only informed my opinion of the programs, but garnered a deeper understanding than I had of them before. The process got me thinking about user interface and how programs are designed.
Were I to continue with Instead of Redface in the fall of next year, my goal will be to fill out a lot of the websites content by adding material I had researched this semester. While I did add some content this semester, more time was spent researching and I would like to put that research to good use. Moreover, as I discussed in my documentation, a long term goal of the project is to make a space that can connect people. I will need to think about what steps I can take now to lay the groundwork for this kind of thing next year. Maybe having a dedicated page for things like upcoming conferences and Indigenous theatre events? The downside of this is that the site would then need to be consistently updated, so good documentation will need to be done to explain how to do that. Maybe a carousel could be added to the homepage? Much to consider.
