OUR SIDE-SHIPS: James / Lily, Draco / Ginny, Ron / Luna. This layout's designed for a 1024 x 768 screen, Firefox and Windows.

[gal-texter]

This guide would benefit both interviewees and readers. The we's below refer to the project team, while the you's refer to interviewees or readers.


.

• Purpose of "Portkey Spotlight" Project:
  
  Since 2008, Portkey staff have urged members to "rediscover what we like about our ships, this site and the fandom. " This project would assist us all with that by featuring people who've contributed in making Portkey (PK) the fun place we remember it to be.
  
  
  
• How do we pick whom to feature?
  
  It's not a scientific process. We basically look around our forum, art and fanfic pages to see whose names crop up in there. Then we also get suggestions from our teammates. A big factor would be if we could get hold of those suggested people soon.
  
  We also consider if the nominees have already been featured in similar projects** or if they're members of Portkey's staff. If they fall under either or both situations, then we'd normally put off featuring them until sometime after our 5th issue.
  ** like The Anvil Ezine.com's "Harmonian of the Month", which inspired this project
  
  
  
• Why don't we survey PK-ers at large on whom they'd like to see featured in future issues?
  
  Because we don't want to set expectations we couldn't deliver. It's easy for anyone to suggest names, but it's hard to track those people down and to interview them later. Hence, if you really want to see someone featured in this project, then your best shot would be to volunteer for that particular interview.
  
  
  
• Shortcomings of Interview Topics, Process and Issues
  
  OUR INTERVIEWING SKILLS, OR LACK THEREOF:
  
  Haha, we freely admit that our output wouldn't be magazine-worthy. See, we're just like any PK member in that we're HP fanatics with family, school or work obligations. Only a couple of us would make good pro journalists.
  
  We therefore ask everyone to excuse our inefficiencies and inadequacies. Some questions might sound redundant, poorly-worded or all over the place. We really wish we could do better, but then we could look at it this way: these interviews are intended to be casual chats between HP friends, not between pro journalists and future celebrities (though our interviewees deserve to be that).
  
  
  OUR CONVERSATIONS MIGHT FEEL TOO BRIEF OR LACKING SOMEHOW:
  
  This is due not only to our lack of interviewing skills but also to compromises we have to make in order to sustain this project. See, in the past, we've often delayed in initiating our Q & As because we wanted to formulate a complete set of talking points. We've since realized that this practice would threaten this project's sustainability, so we decided to cut time and other pressures by treating each Spotlight issue as conversation starters which any other PK member could join in afterwards in the forums. Therefore, we encourage everyone to continue the conversation by posting your comments or questions on each Spotlight issue's forum thread. What's that Reply button for?
  
  
  OUR UNFAMILIARITY WITH SOME INTERVIEWERS' WORK:
  
  Some of us project staff were not active in the fandom at the time our interviewees were. This results in questions that aren't as customized as we'd want them to be, yet we have to balance this with our desire to give our featured people their deserved place in the sun. If we put off talking to them until we familiarize ourselves better with their fandom output, we might never get to interview them. In our opinion, the best solution would be for other Portkey-ers (that means you, readers) to participate in the Q & A before and after we put them up in the forums.
  
  
  HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH OUR SUBJECTS:
  
  We usually ask our interviewees their preferred method of talking to us. We've often used email primarily due to time zone gaps which could go as much as 12 to 15 hours. We also normally start by sending our interviewees plenty of questions, many of which could be bunched together.
  
  
  ESL (ENGLISH AS A SECONDARY LANGUAGE) ISSUES:
  
  Many of us "interviewer-wannabes" are ESL speakers, so some of our wording may sound stilted, blunt, grammatically wrong, or confusing. Please excuse that as none of it's intentional. We wouldn't mind you pointing out those stuff to us.
  
  
  OTHER INEFFICIENCIES WITH OUR INTERVIEW PROCESS:
  
  We're really thankful to all the people we've talked to so far for their patience with how we've handled their Q&As. They've often had to wait for weeks before hearing from us again. When they do, they deal with our redundant or poorly-prepared talking points. They're kind enough to understand that we often prepare our questions after we're done with our real life obligations, therefore we're not as alert as we'd like to be in catching mistakes. Some of our teammates work on this project while waiting for their flights, while others before they go to sleep.
  
  Also to date, our team members have had to deal with extraordinary circumstances such as H1N1 quarantines, storm calamities (officially declared by our govt too), moving to another region and preparing for new jobs or additional job responsibilities; on top of things like internet downtimes or power blackouts.
  
  
  
• Release Dates:
  
  Expect us to publish interviews 1-3 months after we've initiated contact with our subjects. This is because we naturally expect everyone involved to have limited time for this project.

.

[gal-texter]

This guide would benefit both interviewees and readers. The we's below refer to the project team, while the you's refer to interviewees or readers.


.

• Purpose of "Portkey Spotlight" Project:
  
  Since 2008, Portkey staff have urged members to "rediscover what we like about our ships, this site and the fandom. " This project would assist us all with that by featuring people who've contributed in making Portkey (PK) the fun place we remember it to be.
  
  
  
• How do we pick whom to feature?
  
  It's not a scientific process. We basically look around our forum, art and fanfic pages to see whose names crop up in there. Then we also get suggestions from our teammates. A big factor would be if we could get hold of those suggested people soon.
  
  We also consider if the nominees have already been featured in similar projects** or if they're members of Portkey's staff. If they fall under either or both situations, then we'd normally put off featuring them until sometime after our 5th issue.
  ** like The Anvil Ezine.com's "Harmonian of the Month", which inspired this project
  
  
  
• Why don't we survey PK-ers at large on whom they'd like to see featured in future issues?
  
  Because we don't want to set expectations we couldn't deliver. It's easy for anyone to suggest names, but it's hard to track those people down and to interview them later. Hence, if you really want to see someone featured in this project, then your best shot would be to volunteer for that particular interview.
  
  
  
• Shortcomings of Interview Topics, Process and Issues
  
  OUR INTERVIEWING SKILLS, OR LACK THEREOF:
  
  Haha, we freely admit that our output wouldn't be magazine-worthy. See, we're just like any PK member in that we're HP fanatics with family, school or work obligations. Only a couple of us would make good pro journalists.
  
  We therefore ask everyone to excuse our inefficiencies and inadequacies. Some questions might sound redundant, poorly-worded or all over the place. We really wish we could do better, but then we could look at it this way: these interviews are intended to be casual chats between HP friends, not between pro journalists and future celebrities (though our interviewees deserve to be that).
  
  
  OUR CONVERSATIONS MIGHT FEEL TOO BRIEF OR LACKING SOMEHOW:
  
  This is due not only to our lack of interviewing skills but also to compromises we have to make in order to sustain this project. See, in the past, we've often delayed in initiating our Q & As because we wanted to formulate a complete set of talking points. We've since realized that this practice would threaten this project's sustainability, so we decided to cut time and other pressures by treating each Spotlight issue as conversation starters which any other PK member could join in afterwards in the forums. Therefore, we encourage everyone to continue the conversation by posting your comments or questions on each Spotlight issue's forum thread. What's that Reply button for?
  
  
  OUR UNFAMILIARITY WITH SOME INTERVIEWERS' WORK:
  
  Some of us project staff were not active in the fandom at the time our interviewees were. This results in questions that aren't as customized as we'd want them to be, yet we have to balance this with our desire to give our featured people their deserved place in the sun. If we put off talking to them until we familiarize ourselves better with their fandom output, we might never get to interview them. In our opinion, the best solution would be for other Portkey-ers (that means you, readers) to participate in the Q & A before and after we put them up in the forums.
  
  
  HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH OUR SUBJECTS:
  
  We usually ask our interviewees their preferred method of talking to us. We've often used email primarily due to time zone gaps which could go as much as 12 to 15 hours. We also normally start by sending our interviewees plenty of questions, many of which could be bunched together.
  
  
  ESL (ENGLISH AS A SECONDARY LANGUAGE) ISSUES:
  
  Many of us "interviewer-wannabes" are ESL speakers, so some of our wording may sound stilted, blunt, grammatically wrong, or confusing. Please excuse that as none of it's intentional. We wouldn't mind you pointing out those stuff to us.
  
  
  OTHER INEFFICIENCIES WITH OUR INTERVIEW PROCESS:
  
  We're really thankful to all the people we've talked to so far for their patience with how we've handled their Q&As. They've often had to wait for weeks before hearing from us again. When they do, they deal with our redundant or poorly-prepared talking points. They're kind enough to understand that we often prepare our questions after we're done with our real life obligations, therefore we're not as alert as we'd like to be in catching mistakes. Some of our teammates work on this project while waiting for their flights, while others before they go to sleep.
  
  Also to date, our team members have had to deal with extraordinary circumstances such as H1N1 quarantines, storm calamities (officially declared by our govt too), moving to another region and preparing for new jobs or additional job responsibilities; on top of things like internet downtimes or power blackouts.
  
  
  
• Release Dates:
  
  Expect us to publish interviews 1-3 months after we've initiated contact with our subjects. This is because we naturally expect everyone involved to have limited time for this project.

.

[gal-texter]

More expectations for Portkey Spotlight interviews and processes.

.
.

• How we post the Q & A
  How to tell when interviewee him/herself posted a reply in the forum
  
  We project staff normally do a trick with our board software trick that allows us to post questions and answers through our interviewees' respective accounts, without having to log in as them (or peeking into their control panels, for that matter). We usually include a small note that says we did this trick. This means that if you're reading a reply that doesn't contain our note, then you can presume that person him/herself logged in our forums to post that reply.
  Examples: project team posted this on interviewee's behalf
  whereas the Spotlightee herself logged in to make this reply
  
  
  
• Topics or Questions that may be added or passed over
  
  Our interviewees are free to talk about something we project staff haven't thought of beforehand. If they've got a family or school/work event happening soon or has occured recently, we'd love to hear about it provided they don't mind.
  
  Interviewees may also skip any question asked by the project staff or Portkey members in the published issue's forum thread. No explanations needed.
  
  
  
• Uneven Quality from One Issue to the Next
  
  This is because some issues were handled by team members who are natural interviewers while others were handled by less capable staff. While they'd love to clean up each issue we put out, it'd be unfair to give them that burden. This project wouldn't last either if we wait for all project staff to get involved in each issue. Therefore, please forgive us if some issues get much better edited than others.
  
  
  
• Some Issues Lack a Proper Intro
  
  Please see above paragraph. Often it's a question of, "should we put off this issue indefinitely until we find time to write a good intro, or should we go ahead and put it out?"
  
  
  
• Follow up questions:
  
  Since we're going to publish these interviews in PK's forums, we strongly encourage PK-ers to post (polite) comments or follow-up questions in there.
  
  To our interviewees:
  We encourage you to get email alerts of new replies by using the .Track this topic option. Please don't be shy to bump up your thread anytime a question comes in. We know you wouldn't want to steal the spotlight from whomever's featured in newer issues (if any). Bumping up your own thread would draw more eyes to the entire PK Spotlight forum, including its other releases.
  
  To our readers:
  You may also post a question or comment anytime,** no matter if it's been months or years since the last reply. You'd have to be patient though in waiting for a response. Our issues' intro would normally include links to the interviewee's profile webpages; you could nudge them through those channels.
  **so long as you phrase them politely and observe limits, if any, set by our interviewees
  
  Again, we know you wouldn't want to steal the spotlight from newer Spotlightees, if any. But adding replies would attract more attention to our whole collection of issues.
  
  
  
• Got feedback?
  
  
  Please post them here or get in touch with us by PM or email. We normally reply to emails and PMs promptly; but if we don't, then something came up with our real life, internet lines or other PK projects. We would reply as soon as we could. If you haven't heard from us after two weeks, please resend your message by email, PM or posting on the forums.

.