trees are people too

Had a fabulously steep learning curve occur at the eleventh hour of our wiki project.

After lots of hard work and nurturing of this ‘baby’ of ours, at the last minute had someone (from another group) do some substantial edits and additions to a page I had created.

At first a little incensed, then realised that (der) this is what the whole thing is about. If I saw someone else’s page and thought I could add to it, of course I would. The wiki means I lose control of my work almost immediately – As soon as the page is created I lose ownership of it, but I also invite other (potentially fabulous) collaborations.

I guess one could always go back and re-edit work that people have changed, but constant monitoring and correction of the wiki would be madness, painful, and defies what the wiki is about. Instead it is like throwing ideas into an open void and hoping they maintain some equilibrium – they could come back defiled, but more likely (as has been my experience) they will come back greater, more developed and more refined than when I conceived them.

What a magnificent tool, then, the wiki is.

Upon what I hope to be my final reflection, the wiki has been a great lesson in collaboration. It’s different to usual groupwork collaboration. There’s no open discussion, debate, or consensus by those involved. Things go on in the background, in the dark, while you aren’t watching. You have to surrender your ideas to the wiki and trust it, hope that stability is achieved at some point, that some sort of happy medium of lucidity and quality can be derived from so many authors.

Uh oh. Control freak much? As I’ve said before, a fantastic lesson in letting go and surrendering my own work, and in democratising the whole process – everybody can have their say, their edit, on everything. Let’s not be so precious. Sharing ideas and creative concepts is the way forward.

further reflections on the wiki. (I promise I will stop soon, but incessant reflection for some reasons seems to relieve me).

Where do you go to, wiki??

After speculating on the beginning and end of the blog, I am starting to draw parallels with the wiki.

Where oh where does the wiki end? Is it defined more by the creative process, rather than the interpretation of it (as my blog might be)?

It’s interesting. I have this strange feeling that I must just keep going and going with the wiki. Every entry I create gives rise to more and more options, more and more potential directions, and so the beast grows. A whole new element to this attitude arises when I realise I am not the only one in control of this creature – others also decide and define its direction.

When reading other wikis, I am sometimes perplexed by particular ‘branches’ – what seems relevant to one may be irrelevant to another. I am learning that this is the beauty of the wiki and what makes it unique – anyone can create it, personalise it somewhat, and it never stops evolving. The importance and relevance shifts with each read, and further, with each edit. Imagine applying those editing abilities to your blog. More than just commenting, one could alter, re-compose. I guess then it would be a wiki, huh.

How do I stop? Where is the end? What is important and what is not? How many links do I need? Am I applying links because they add to the content, or purely because I can, because the nature of the wiki allows it? And does this indicate a slight contempt for my audience? Why don’t I allow them to contribute, rather than defining every direction (which I can’t, I realise)?

The magic of the wiki is I can’t possibly do it all myself. I have to learn to stop somewhere. This learning curve is steep.

Meeting minutes for our second meeting.

Elizabeth, Sarah, Tingting and I met in the labs.

Discussion of what we had done over the last week. What would we do for the next? Plan for our mock interview. Discussion of content. Discussion of publishing a faux interview with Tom Sherman, publishing his correspondence with us. Discussion of use of photographs – Discussion of overall copyright issues, further covered by Adrian. Review of classmates wikis to see if we are on track. How are our creative researching skills? Where do we go from here?

Working in our ‘sections’ seems to be working quite well. We can continue focusing on one topic/area of information (which we can then take a bit of ownership for) and this gives us each a foundation from which to branch out from. I have discovered, since laying down my original posting (on writings), it becomes easier from there to ‘build’ on existing content. I am hoping it becomes a more ‘organic’ experience.

Elizabeth mentioned that the research was taking disproportionately long compared to how much content was prepared, and we discussed how hopefully (as mentioned above) this would become less as we start to branch out, following ‘hunches’ and the research takes on life of its own. It will be more involuntary, more natural. I think we will find this is the case – i have been surprised already at how the research – my research practice – is evolving.

From our foundation, we thought we would spend the next week developing our sections and working on pbranching out from our own areas and also noting areas, keywords in each others research we might like to expand on and develop.

We are going to meet next week to film a mock interview, in which, as discussed with Adrian in class, we can quote our good friend Tom as long as we avoid risking defamation by keeping it in good taste. We’ll brainstorm the interview during the week, and we are also toying with the idea of including content from his email. It was so lovely, after all.

But we all seem to be on track and our little wiki is taking shape. It’s fun watching our applied research, our explorations, being collected and curated there. If we can keep up the momentum the creature should evolve quite pleasingly.

The wiki is a creative project …playful, creative, exploratory, risky. We have to work out the questions and follow the ideas, rather than answer the question after fomulating ideas. This research should give rise to more questions, to an endless stream of ideas, and should encourage collaboration and further discourse – questions, ideas, answers, dissagreements.

Having realised all of that, however, and to be perfectly frank, I still am afraid of my wiki. I don’t really know where to go from here – the possibilities are so endless, the potential magnitude so limitless, where would one begin?? I guess this is the risk taking. Pick a direction and jump.

I am a control freak. I like mastering essays, starting with my piles of information and filtering it down down down until I have only the essentials, nothing peripheral. Working towards a goal which is, if not attainable, at least concrete. Reaching a conclusion, allowing for that ‘closure’. Predictable and safe am I.

But the wiki is wild. It has a mind of its own. Having laid down the basic elements (in this case, our subject, Tom Sherman) I am realising the beginning is the easiest part. From here things could go (gasp) anywhere.

Instead of trying to fit an idea to a form, I have to find ideas and discover where they go. I have to be intuitive, somewhat organic. With no specific ending I am working with hunches, metaphor, what is outside the ‘cone’ that reaches conclusion. I have to listen to the media, as well as the combination of my intention and the intention of the medium (the material aspect of what we are working with has its own properties: ‘Backtalk’) I have to let go.

Even though it is obvious that life itself adheres much closer to the wiki model than the essay model, still I am nervous. What I am realising is that my way of approaching this project, of thinking about this is going to have to change. I have to start getting creative about the way I view our subject and the endless offshoots of information that can be chased. Relaxing my grip on the need to control this information is already inherent in the media itself – the wiki itself is open to changes and contributions from others – but the key (for me) is going to be changing the way I process this information, freeing my thought process so the content is not constrained, using my intuition rather than instruction.

Hence this becomes a project about risk taking and exploration not just within the media, but also within my own personal creative constraints. And, as I now see, there are many.

Our research group got together today for a debrief.

Meeting minutes 1

Our primary questions:

What are we doing??
What have we done already and what are we doing for the next week??

Things are coming along slowly. Peta was not able to attend meeting due to work and sarah has sprained her ankle!! But will prepare (exhaustive lol) meeting minutes to update them on what we did. Which was not all that much.

We had chosen various areas of our subject to research. as follows:

Peta – Biography
Elizabeth – Productions
Tingting – Style/philosophies
Sarah – Research
Caroline – Writings, now moving on to radio productions.

Tingting has contacted Tom and let him know we are writing about him, and asked if we can have a bit of his time for an interview. We will all work on thinking up questions (perhaps relating to our areas of research) to ask him for next weeks meeting.

Meanwhile, I have set up the wiki, so we can start building from here. As this was our first meeting and members were absent, people were still researching their designated areas. We’ll keep working on this, as well as adding anything we find that might be relevant to each others research, for the next week. I’ve emailed the address of the wiki to the group, and we will be sharing resources we come across via email (which seems the most viable method of contact at the moment).

A few questions came up: Is this wiki (i.e. the one I have created) just for our group, or will groups from other classes also be contributing? If so, how do we coordinate our work? Do we just review the wiki each time we add to it to ensure there is no doubling up??

I am sure all will be revealed. This is just a superficial jotting of meeting one. More to be revealed as it comes to hand.

I did it. I made my first wiki.

First it was baffling, then it was frustrating, shortly followed by overwhelming. Following this there was a short succession of research, understanding and then enlightenment, with a fabulous finale of relief.

Still many teething issues. I need to work out how you create a reference list at the foot of the page, how I would attribute Mr Sherman’s quotes and how to put in images (I want to contact Tom and ask him if he minds if we use his mugshot on the page, along with some images from his work). The wiki formatting/editing page seems quite rudimentary to me, but the cheat sheet was a great help. I am sure it will become clearer after a bit of practice.

For now though, I am officially a contributor to a wiki. (Can I put that on my resume?)

Considering that, it’s interesting that much of our most esteemed wiki, wikipedia, is actually written by a small community, ‘a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers’, most of who know each other. I guess this is much like our wiki will be, although it won’t be getting 2.5 billion page views per month, nor will it feature over 2 million articles.

In class today we established the correct Tom Sherman. There are a few, and there are also a few who are prolific video bloggers it would seem, so it’s nice we worked out which one it was. We have also set a regular meeting time for us to meet as a group and action, er, action plans. This will be each monday between the lecture and the tute for one hour. We can review if we need more time, but hopefully we will be so organised and brilliant that this will work ok.

We did a graph on strengths and weaknesses, which offered some insight into who might be suited to doing what. We seemed to have quite a diverse range of skills in our group, we just have to harness them and work together as a team and we should have no problem putting together a good wiki.

My first concern is in regards to contacting him. Sure we can send him an email, drop him a line, write him a letter, but what exactly are we asking him. Is this a conventional interview, or something more lateral. Will he talk to us? (lol)

Brief says that we will develop questions in class, so I am sure it will all become clear. In the meantime I am just reading up on him and checking out his productions, writings and musings on the web. And gazing at the blank iiki.