Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Welcome!

I am creating this blog as part of an Outhink sponsored SpinFlow project. I am delighted to be working this summer with Rachel Toole, a talented student at NYU. I would like her to help us with SpinFlow: the fine art of moving digital media. I have lot's of fun and interesting activities in mind for this.

Here are the main goals of our summer work together:
  • Practice SpinFlow and help others do the same.
  • Assist Outhink team members in implementing SpinFlow principles.
  • Become involved in web communities and promote SpinFlow.
  • Attend and interact at BlogHer on July 30th, 2005.
  • Create content for publication at SpinFlow.
I have created this blog to communicate with you and to record and share our experiences. I want you to do the same.

Here is your first assignment: work with me and Rich to ensure that you can access this blog and all it's content (especially video) on any Mac or PC that an Outhink member uses (especially Dave). This may require the installtion of software such as QuickTime or Windows Media Player.


Here is a video I created. Click the pic to view it. Please leave comments here to document any issues or observations you have related to viewing it.

Your second assignment will be to create a blog like this one and begin posting daily about your SpinFlow experinces.

9 Comments:

Blogger RachelLauren said...

Markus- I just read the blog that you created about our summer goals and I'm very excited to get started. The video you made worked perfectly and talking to you via msn messenger was a really cool thing to see as well. Can't wait to really start working towards something...and to see you tomorrow...Rachel

10:44 AM  
Blogger Markus Sandy said...

Cool. Did it work on all of Dave's machines? What is your new blog's address?

10:50 PM  
Blogger RachelLauren said...

Yes it did work on all of the machines here. My new blog address is summerspin.blogspot.com/
I'm still editting but so far its been really easy and very fun!

10:41 AM  
Blogger Markus Sandy said...

Fantastic! Please have Dave look at these videos:

ANT

and

Participatory Culture/Broadcast Machine

(in both cases click on the pic in each page)

They are all the same format as mine, so they should work fine. Please let me know if he has any problems with this.

Please be sure to watch the ANT video yourself. Then download and install ANT for everyone (they have both MAC and PC versions).

Ant is an example of an "aggregator".

This will bring videos to you every day if you leave it running (it gets them at night). It will come with some "channels" or "feeds" and you will eventually add and remove the ones that suit you best.

Please explore ANT and get everyone to use it. You will meet Ryanne, Jay, Raymond, Chuck and many other strange and interesting people.

I don't watch TV anymore (well hardly). I watch "NOT TV" (ANT means "Ant's Not Tv").

Even these blogs that we are creating now will become channels. So will SpinXpress groups. This will allow anyone to create their own "channels" easily.

But that is for little later...

12:11 PM  
Blogger Markus Sandy said...

One more thing...

Please post to your blog often. Short or long is ok. Personal or work related is ok. Whatever.

I do not wish to set rules for your content or presentation (although I will ask you to add features to your blog from time to time, such as a movie or an RSS feed). I just want to guide you through some parts of the net that I believe we will find interesting and useful in our work together.

Of course, this is not just for entertainment; my goal is to help us acquire the skills and resources that we need for Outhink and SpinFlow related tasks ahead.

Also, I want us all to become adept at using these tools as productive forms of communication.

For today, the emphasis is blogging, comments, video and ANT. Next will come SpinXpress.

After that, will come music and video that I hope will delight and inspire you creatively in ways that are beneficial and fun for us all.

Let's open our conversation up using our blogs to post and comment.

Someday, perhaps others will join us.

12:51 PM  
Blogger RachelLauren said...

Markus- I am now downloading the ANT video for my dad and myself to watch. It is taking a very long time to upload. (Not sure if I can do anything about that) After I watch both videos I will post on my blog, but for now the comments are extremely helpful!!

2:04 PM  
Blogger Markus Sandy said...

The downloads can take a while, depending on connection speed. Once you get things setup, this will not be an issue too much as most media will just be waiting for you, already downloaded and ready to go.

Ant makes this possible. So does SpinXpress. Both use RSS (though in different ways).

RSS is a "dialect" for descriping your information flows. To me, there is great artistic potential there.

Part of our goal is to make it so that we don't have to learn all these crazy technical dialects and languages. We just want to drag and drop and click a few things to make it so!

SpinXpress is the key to that.

SpinFlow is being able to find the key in the dark!

2:15 PM  
Blogger RachelLauren said...

Markus- I downloaded ANT onto my computer and added a post on my blog about it and a sort of review of my day. It didn't download onto my dad's PC so I'm going to work on that tomorrow. I guess you are not coming here today seeing as though you posted something about an hour ago so hopefully you will have some sort of assignment for me when I come in tomorrow. Today went really well though....talk to you soon.
-Rachel

3:56 PM  
Blogger Markus Sandy said...

Rachel,

you are doing GREAT!!!
absolutely, I have more - but, I can't imagine how I could keep up with you if I was there right now
i am doing a hundred things and love being able to jump in an out of conversation with you as part of that flow
i will always try to have more to do, it's my teaching style
i like to assign enuf so that the very best are kept interested (not busy for busy sake)
you just need to let me know if you need help, more stuff or less stuff

this is perfect - this is a big help
i think you will ultimately be surprised how much so - it will be huge

I have to run and moderate a meeting (it just formed this afternoon - 16 people at once in a virtual room) - there's a pic of a similar meeting on my apperceptions.org blog if you're interested. No big, but a lot of fun. Some of the people are people I would like you to meet someday (like July 30th to be specific).

- mss

4:14 PM  

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