A slight change to the term “Town Square”

Pool has recently been asked to stop using the term “Town Square” when explaining what we are. It is an internal ABC political issue that relates to the emergence of ABC Open and how they are branding themselves to their audience. The idea of Pool still remains the Town Square or open space for conversation, we believe, so by all means refer to it being the idea without using “Town Square”.

Unfortunately this impacts on you guys and how you describe Pool to your audiences. Apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.

JH

Some Interest from the University of Wollongong… and America!

Sue Angel has just submitted some fantastic content to the My Tribe project from some of her Journalism students attending the University of Wollongong. The content reflects the theme of my position within the tribe and is demonstrated rather well within the Wicked WIRD piece I think. She also said that her current Convergence Class will have some more content ready for upload around July (Sue said to expect 10 extraordinary pieces), with some video pieces coming through by the end of this week. You can check out the three pieces already uploaded here.

On another note of promotion, we have had some interest from the East Coast of America, namely Chicago. One of our Pool/My Tribe members, Rich Halten, uploaded a piece of content last week which unfortunately had to come down due to copyright breaches. But the good that came out of the process was that he is cross promoting the project through one of his public radio buddies, Hearing Voices. Hopefully this provides the group with a global voice representation.

I cannot stress how much that people are really interested in this project and that people from all corners of, well, the globe, are now raising their eyebrows – people just want to be involved.

You’ve Built The Fire, Now Which Signals To Send?

Original image by brothergrimm and published under Creative Commons Licence.

How indeed do you communicate with the people of Pool? How does your tribe signal to another tribe for some inclusion?

I have been looking at some of the student blogs for this PP1 project, and there have been some fantastic reactions. Emotions from intrigue, confusion, and to complete cynicism describing the role, the project, and even the space that is Pool. Each position is completely OK, as great arguments have been used to back the mixed bag of emotions expressed. However I thought this is a good opportunity to offer my version of what Pool actually is, to assist as you develop My Tribe.

In its most simple form, Pool could be described as a place to meet and hang out with friends. This type of connection has brought many of the members together and seen friendships and collaborations forged. These types of community members aren’t interested in producing media, but might enjoy viewing the work of others. I liken this to an art gallery – we don’t all walk in and start painting, but more so come to enjoy the work of others (even take some ideas away with us). The strongest example of this can be seen in the forums where healthy (most times) debate occurs between the Poolers over everything from technical development through to what constitutes safe or offensive material. Another way of looking at it could be described through someone like d. who finds much joy in commenting on other’s work.

To further the idea of collaboration, Pool is also used as a meeting place to find other artists to work with. This builds on the idea driving remix culture and a good example of this comes from Renegade Penguin and their piece BlackBird. One brain can create so much, but it can potentially double with two. This is exactly what happens when collaboration works where an idea is seeded, and then executed by someone else (where geography even has no boundaries).

Another use of Pool is that is to merely be a storage space for someone’s portfolio. This works as a place to store stuff on line for free, and then doubles as a space to display stuff. With the amount of media professionals passing through, it can also be a place to receive informative critiques of your work to fine tune how others interpret your pieces. This equates to free permalinks that you can direct other external people to, and you may even receive a comment or meet another artist

Both externally and internally at the ABC, Pool is also a research and development space. Currently, we are looking for internal community managers and are incorporating the internal members to help shape this position. This provides us with great learnings on how to implement user-led innovation, and is something that is unique to a space like this. From an external point of view, we encourage users and groups to use the space as something that we haven’t thought of. A great example of this is present in last year’s Underbelly Arts Festival group. This group of artists used Pool as a place to document the processes that the artist residents went through as they created their works for the festival.

Finally, and this is where My Tribe will be a success, Pool is seen as a space to get picked up by the ABC. Having extremely close ties with Radio National, they are utilising the talent from within the Pool to experiment and produce programs that are driven by the social media producer. To quote the findings of the ACID team last year, 16% of the people on Pool are there for that very reason, so to be in a position where all of that talent and enthusiasm exists is very exciting indeed. An instant crowd that is willing to participate in projects such as My Tribe, provides an extremely solid foundation to build a program from.