It’s time, once again, for folks to vote on the panels that they would like to see at SXSW. My proposal this year is all about how to document transmedia projects. I hope that you’ll vote for it.

Transmedia projects are, by their very nature, complex productions. You have a story that is big enough to be broken up and distrubited onto multiple platforms and, in many cases, told over a period of time. Because of this, solid documentation throughout the the design process is instrumental to a project’s success. Sadly, it is also one of the areas that we talk about the least.

Freelancers, like myself, who go from agency to agency and team to team see the ramifications of this more than most. When we ask for something to help us get up to speed, it’s not unusual to be sent a half a dozen files – a couple Word docs and Powerpoint decks, a pdf or three, a spreadsheet, etc. Almost always, bits and pieces of the same information are repeated through all of these documents but not one of them contains the big picture. Of course, this lets us know right away that the team has a communication and organization issues that we can easily help them through (so it’s not all bad news for us ;))

Now, to be clear, fragmentation of information is not only inevitable but necessary. Clients and vendors do not need to know all of the details and the guy doing the filming does not need to know what the guy coding the websites is up to. But when you are providing the exact same information in multiple files but with random other bits and pieces, the team is quickly going to struggle under the weight of too many documents and they are not going to know where to find the information that they need to find (or even know if the information that they have is up to date). So, instead, they’ll come asking and meetings & conference calls will be held just to get everyone up to date.

The way around this is through solid documentation of the big picture. Unfortunately, the big picture isn’t just one picture. It’s actually made up of three biggish pictures: story, design (or experience), and production. It also covers a wide swath of media types and platform – and each of those have their own sorts of best practices as far as organization and documentation. Over the years, I have been exposed to and experimented with a variety of methods and, to be sure, there is not a single method that covers every possible variation that transmedia projects may take. But there are methods that work for the vast majority and are flexible enough that they can be modified to deal with others. And that is what I want to go over in my session.

I envision that it will be as much of a workshop as it is a talk. I plan to provide some standard templates and walk through the design and production stages of a project to show why and how they can be used and modified. And whether or not you like the documents or approach, I’m certain you’ll walk away with ideas on how to better organize your documentation, no matter what stage of development you may be in.

The idea for the panel stemmed from a conversation that I had with a client last spring. I was brought in to find potential issues with a project just a few weeks before launch and to go over their strategy for handling the project once it was live. The project was well designed and ready to go, but the documentation was shaky at best. I immediately sent them a design document that I had used in the past and modified slightly for their needs. It was a huge hit. Several people on the team expressed that they wish they had it sooner and suggested I write about documentation somewhere (my blog was still dormant at the time). A few months later, and just before panel proposals were due, I ran into a similar problem. I decided then that once my schedule cleared a bit and I could do the topic justice, I’d start a series on documentation and make various templates available. I’ve been working on them slowly ever since. Whether my panel is chosen or not (I hope that it is! Please vote!), that series will go live. I’ve already begun creating templates and getting feedback on them from folks. So far, so good! Expect the series to start sometime this fall.

And, of course, you can expect my thoughts & recommendations on other panels as soon as I’ve had time to go through the enormous list. But feel free to go ahead and vote for mine before then ;)