Tag Archives: Michal Blazsczyk

Collating matric exam packs and starting to measure metrics

Michal’s internship finished in March 2012, and Nick began an internship as his replacement.

Our first priority was preparing packs of past matric exam papers. We’d started to source these as part of our initial content list creation, and these were already listed on the site, but the packs themselves had not been prepared. We needed to have them ready in case any orders came in. The primary challenge was creating complete sets of exam papers. The DBE website and WCED didn’t have all of the papers, and their online resources were often buggy or incorrect. We started by creating a list of outstanding exam PDFs, which we then used to individually source as many missing papers as we could (we called and emailed, and bought CD compilations of exams to try to fill the gaps). At the same time we started prepping the packs for those subjects which we had complete sets for.

Nick and I attended some ‘Open Education’ workshops at UCT, in the hopes that this would generate some leads for more content. We found, however, that we already knew much of what the workshops covered (but it was edifying to know we were on the right track).

The aim was that interns or new staff members could jump right in on tasks with a little training, and begin to develop skills themselves. Over the years this has worked incredibly well for the content team. It means that when we do in-person training in those first weeks, it can be much more in-depth (and is thus more valuable) than if we were to do general introductory training sessions.

I began creating and improving upon a series of wiki posts to govern things like document creation and document uploading. The aim was that interns or new staff members could jump right in on tasks with a little training, and begin to develop skills themselves. Over the years this has worked incredibly well for the content team. It means that when we do in-person training in those first weeks, it can be much more in-depth (and is thus more valuable) than if we were to do general introductory training sessions. Ops style posts that give detailed explanations of how to do tasks means that new and old team members alike have something to come back to for reference, and ensures uniformity (which is important when it comes to file naming conventions for version control).

We also began to track metrics for the first time. Our initial focus was on measuring publisher registrations, outlet registrations, and top-ups (i.e. the purchasing of credits in advance). This process of tracking metrics was one that we improved upon over time. It’s interesting how much insight our focus on these three metrics gives to our business goals at the time. We were focused on creating an outlet base, and increasing our content bank, rather than on growing our customer base. And we were more focused on the potential for sales than on sales themselves. The failure here was in assuming that these three metrics were a proxy for other things. We assumed that a wide outlet base represented more potential customers, that increased publisher registrations meant more content (and that more content increased the likelihood of valuable content), that top-ups were a signifier of outlet buy-in, and would ‘naturally’ lead to sales. The reality was that we ended up measuring the potential for success, rather than measuring success itself. It was a lesson we would learn later on.

Publishers approached

  • WITS
  • Hamilton Wende

Publisher registrations

  • Cingela (13/3/2012)

1000 products are listed on Paperight 0.5

Arthur created a mock-up of the poster, and Michal and I assisted in proofreading and product selection, as well as providing pricing information and page extents. Once the poster was finalised, and we’d received the finished products, we were each tasked with selling the Paperight service to a nearby copyshop. Poster in hand, I signed up 3@1 Claremont – our very first registered outlet. By February 2012 we had also started advertising for a sales manager, who would take on the role of outlet sales and support.

By the end of February 2012, Michal and I reached our goal of having 1000 products listed on Paperight.com. We’d created a spreadsheet of metadata for 1001 content items, created individual product pages for each of these items, downloaded the epub/PDF files for every title (and renamed and archived these), and created Paperight Editions of the titles that were advertised on our poster so that we’d be ready to fill any orders that came in as a result of our poster advertising. We’d also designed and implemented the first phase taxonomy for the Paperight website, based on the selected categorization of products on Paperight.com, and created cover images for the titles we’d decided to promote.

The table below roughly illustrates the composition of the current Paperight products database, based on year of publication, as of February 2012.

In further trying to demonstrate to composition of the current Paperight product database, we have created three additional data visualisations. The first provides an overview of the number of books per genre, currently listed on the Paperight website. These genres are also represented as separate and searchable categories on Paperight.com. The second and third charts show the composition of sub-genres within two of the primary genres of ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’.

Publishers approached

  • HMPG (Arthur emailed)

Publisher registrations

  • e-Classroom (16/2/2012)

After six months of funding, where are we now?

It’s hard to believe I’m already halfway through my Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship. Only moments ago I was writing up highlights from the first three months. Those were largely backoffice-building and research months:

  • we got our site (version-named Paperight 0.5) up and running with pilot content from EBW Healthcare
  • tested and established workflows, QA tests and standard documentation
  • spoke to dozens of publishers in South Africa, at the Frankfurt Book Fair and in London
  • finalised our plain-language rightsholder agreement and outlet licence
  • refined our pricing and publisher-revenue models
  • recruited a Content Manager
  • and started on UX and specs for Paperight 1.0.

In our second quarter, we’ve focused on building a viable first-stage content list, planning our marketing for the next six months, and early thrashing for the Paperight 1.0 site build.

  • We added over 1000 publications to paperight.com – Tarryn’s content report on the Paperight blog includes a great analysis of the work she and Michal Blazsczyk did to make this happen
  • created a high-quality poster catalogue that we give to outlets to help them advertise book-printing to outlets (check it out on the Paperight blog), complete with soap-style blurbs for the classics
  • continued collaboration discussions with publishers, licensing agencies, technology companies, consumer-facing businesses with multiple outlets, and our provincial education department
  • planned the 1.0 site in detail, which involved refining wireframes and UI, investigating and negotiating with software development partners, drawing up IP agreements (we’d like to GPL our code eventually, so we can’t build with proprietary tools), and workshopping and polishing a functional spec for the entire build
  • planned a marketing campaign and recruited promotional staff, including marketing consultant Niki Anderson and (soon to be appointed) an outlet-relations manager
  • found and planned the great new office space we’ll be in from April
  • and continued to develop our internal ops manual (guides, standard docs, and reference info) in a wiki, to help new team members get up to speed quickly, and keep existing staff up-to-date.

The team’s now four people, and about to be five: myself, Tarryn-Anne Anderson (Content Manager), Nick Mulgrew (content-team intern), Niki Anderson (part-time marketing), and an outlet-relations manager we’re appointing shortly. Michal Blazscyk (content-team intern) finished his internship and is off the London, where some lucky publishing company will snap him up.

So, that’s two quarters down. We have a gameplan for each one, even if day-to-day things seem to turn on a dime. The first quarter was infrastructure and research. The second: a substantial content offering, marketing planning, and Paperight 1.0 thrashing.

For our third quarter, we’re getting out of the office with direct outlet approaches and a PR-heavy marketing campaign, and getting Paperight 1.0 built and running. 1.0 gives us key new functionality important to outlets and publishers: especially instant doc-delivery, currency conversion, and catalogues defined by territory.

The fourth quarter will also be marketing-heavy, and will include pushing commercial-publisher content that we can only sell with 1.0′s territoriality features.

Behind our efforts, the ever-supportive, midnight-oil-burning team at the Shuttleworth Foundation keeps our mental, emotional, and electrical lights on. And my fellow Fellows are an unending source of inspiration, common sense, and cryable shoulders. Cheers to them.

The very first Paperight Poster

By January we were nearing completion of the content list for the first 1000 titles. It included popular classic fiction, open access educational material and matric exam packs for 2008–2011. The majority of these works were sourced by combing through lists of “popular/top”, “most downloaded”, and “most purchased” lists on various websites which sell or offer free access to public domain works. Other resources used for sourcing product leads included public domain curation and review websites, as well as compiled lists of the “best books of all time”, setwork lists, and the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners’ list (links to each of these resources can be found on the Paperight Wiki).

We also started brainstorming ways to market these titles to outlets, and met to discuss values, pitches, and posters. These were important initial discussions where we began the process of creating the Paperight brand identity. We decided to design a poster that we could send to registered outlets, and take with us when pitching to new outlets and publishers to make the concept more solid. It included a set of featured products that we felt would sell well to matric students and first year university students. Each product was assigned a three letter tag so that they could be found easily.

In hindsight this was a lot of work for one poster to do. We printed out 1000 posters and distributed them, but never received and visible indication that they were increasing sales.

The poster was meant to function as both a catalog and an advertisement, and assist with product discoverability. In hindsight this was a lot of work for one poster to do. We printed out 1000 posters and distributed them, but never received and visible indication that they were increasing sales. More on the poster here.

Publishers approached

  • Kotobarabia (introduced by Arthur)
  • Publisher Registrations
  • Just Done Productions (27/1/2012)

Michal starts working at Paperight

Michal began working as an intern at Paperight in December 2011. He assisted in the development of the list of 1000 open and public domain titles. Together we researched product leads, sourced documents, compiled metadata, and the listed each product on Paperight 0.5.

Arthur set up the Paperight wiki, with both Michal and I as contributors. We began maintaining records of publisher registrations and ops.

With the view to creating Paperight Editions of the public domain titles on our list, I created a Paperight Edition novel template in InDesign.

paperight-edition-indd-template

One of the main challenges I began to experience was the lack of response from people who I contacted ‘cold’. It became evident that one of the most useful resources for eliciting a response, was a mutual connection (a role that Arthur often filled).

One of the main challenges I began to experience was the lack of response from people who I contacted ‘cold’. It became evident that one of the most useful resources for eliciting a response, was a mutual connection (a role that Arthur often filled).

Publishers approached

  • Shikaya (Arthur and I met with)

Publisher registrations

  • Peter Delmar (6/12/2011)
  • Anthony Hambly (31/12/2011)