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This following document was prepared for poojan patel to provide a textual transcription of the video Case Prompt: Designing for Lean Editorial Management (run time: 4:12) from the Real Time Cases platform on March 02 23:16, 2020.

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Case Prompt: Designing for Lean Editorial Management (run time: 4:12)

Company: Spoon University

1. 00:00:08.192 So another 

2. 00:00:09.984 challenge that we face

3. 00:00:11.776 is we're a small staff that's working on editorial. There are three people currently working

4. 00:00:17.920 on editorial and it doesn't seem like there are plans

5. 00:00:21.760 to bring in a 50 editor's nor should there be plans for that.

6. 00:00:25.856 But at the same time

7. 00:00:27.904 as we add  chapters as we expand into something like Spoon City which is going beyond campuses

8. 00:00:34.048  we're going to have thousands upon thousands of people contributing work

9. 00:00:38.656 and how do we

10. 00:00:41.216 screen that and empower writers and make sure that the content on our  site doesn't just become this open

11. 00:00:47.616 platform with

12. 00:00:49.664 plenty of mistakes and kind of lower barrier-to-entry. How do we still maintain that really high-quality brand

13. 00:00:56.000 of content while still staying lean

14. 00:01:00.672 and as small 

15. 00:01:02.720 at the core as we can.

16. 00:01:04.768 And so we're definitely trying to figure out processes

17. 00:01:09.888 different workflows maybe different ways of we can organize our strategy and

18. 00:01:15.776 really any solutions that could keep

19. 00:01:19.104 our team as small as possible and churning out the best quality work

© Real Time Cases 2020

This document was prepared for poojan patel by Real Time Cases.

20. 00:01:23.712 still growing outer contributor base as large as it could get.

21. 00:01:27.296 Currently and this might be out of date by the time this case is going on

22. 00:01:31.392 but currently we work in WordPress

23. 00:01:34.976 and that is the CMS

24. 00:01:37.536 that all of the interactions that take place I know that there

25. 00:01:41.888 are plans and ideas to soon roll out our own proprietary CMS

26. 00:01:46.496 which maybe change some of these

27. 00:01:48.032 processes.

28. 00:01:49.568 But as of right now there are two major things that editorial is doing every day

29. 00:01:55.456 it is coming up with new pitches and finding writers to execute our editorial vision 

30. 00:02:02.624 and also managing

31. the ideas and pitches that are coming from you know 150 to 160 campuses

32. 00:02:11.072 and the ideas of this massive contributor base. How do we approve [or] reject and work on these ideas

33. 00:02:19.264 and I know I said two but the third is actually going through the content itself and making sure it's up to our editorial standards and guidelines we laid out in terms of our style, formatting

34. 00:02:32.832 and also just figuring out ways to empower  

35. 00:02:37.952 teams like social

36. 00:02:39.232 so we're not only thinking okay is this intrinsically a good article but

37. 00:02:43.584 how is this article going to

38. 00:02:46.656 promote growth, how is going to lead to page views, lead to more people being introduced to Spoon. So we are considering all those different things and I think you asked about numbers earlier

39. 00:02:59.968 We  might we will try and edit upwards of 75 pieces a day right now at our current

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This document was prepared for poojan patel by Real Time Cases.

40. 00:03:07.392 and that's all that's published 75 different pieces a day.  So the writers need to respond to feedback and edits and get something that's up to snuff

41. 00:03:17.376 for 75 a day. So that means to be in over a hundred submissions. So it's just really about figuring out a way to deal with that volume of submissions that go with that wide contribute base

42. 00:03:27.872 and turn out a product that is consistent quality.

43. 00:03:31.968 What we're trying to do in this case is optimize the processes and strategies for dealing with this huge contributor network of chapters and maybe that means empowering students, maybe that means

44. 00:03:47.840 figuring out a faster way to edit or a better CMS or a better communication portal with our editorial directors. So regardless of what that solution is what is the best way to deal with both volume and quality simultaneously. 

© Real Time Cases 2020

This document was prepared for poojan patel by Real Time Cases.