Internet for Introverts

I've seen a few posts about people's siblings so I thought I would jump onto the bandwagon!

A little while back in this class I took a particular interest in the music industry and Web 2.0. After my midterm discussion with Dr. Burton I've decided that I really want to revisit that. Ideally, once a week I'll try to blog about my group's project and progress and once a week I'll try to blog about my other interests. Which will most likely be music.

In the beginning of September there was a little bit of buzz on the Google plus stream about introverts and the internet. Sarah Talley and Hannah Ballard both explored the idea in some of their blog posts and there was an excellent discussion about it on one of Tara Pina's posts. I briefly chimed in with a comment about how the internet is actually a really great place for introverts to explore their interests.

Now to mesh these three ideas. I have a sister. She is obsessed with music. Like, literally obsessed. She is also an introvert. Like, really an introvert. Just to give you an idea. In her spare time she is in her room, on her laptop, listening to music, finding music, playing music, pinning music, blogging music, finding pictures of music. Everything is music. And she does this mostly in her own little solitude. It's not that she's not a likable person. I think she's great! It's just that she really does not enjoy being around people at all. And hello Web 2.0. Because of the web she is able to do all of the things that she enjoys on her own. Yes, sometimes I think that it's not healthy. Yes, sometimes I really worry about her. But. I also have to be grateful that she's found a meaningful way to express herself.

For an introvert the world is a hard and scary place. From what she's said, even harder and scarier than I see it to be. Through the internet she can be part of this underground world that shares her interests. So thank you internet for giving my little sister a way to be happy and discover more about who she is.

Tiny Progress Is Still Progress

Yesterday in class we discussed the idea of the spiral. You have a starting point that you spin around and move out from. A spiral can go on forever and is always developing, but it always revolves around that one central idea.

Our online compendium (I really got tired of calling it a magazine) definitely has a central idea that we always go back to. But it kind of seems like right now instead of going in a spiral form and developing and moving out, we're going in a circle around our idea. I'm sure a lot of groups can relate to this feeling. We need more submissions for Menagerie so that it can look legit. But to get more submissions we'd really like for the site to have a better design. But for it to have a better design we would need a little funding. To justify funding we would need more submissions.

We met with a small group last night for a bit of a feedback session. The outside perception was incredibly valuable. They did say many of the things that the class told us, but with new eyes and a fresh perspective. After that I feel recommitted to our cause. We just need to be slow and steady (emphasis on the steady) and we'll find ourselves somewhere new and exciting.

"All I have to do is take one little step at a time and I can do anything."

Mid-Term Post

The semester is halfway over. And what does that mean? Halfway through the stress of another semester and one step closer to graduation and the real world. But as I get closer to entering the what they tell me is the real world, the more I realize that I am nowhere near prepared to be part of it. I've found myself frantically grasping in my classes to find things to help me with my future. Luckily, this class actually has been fairly helpful with that. 

Nonfiction Book
Admittedly, the bits and pieces I read of Digital Culture by Charlie Gere were a while ago but a quick review reminded me of some key things that I learned from it.One thing that struck me the most is that as much as it may seem like the changes in technology have been an abrupt surge over the past 20 years or so, it has actually been a gradual wave throughout the 20th century and even before then as well. In the grand scheme of things, yes it has been a quick change. But those who have been willing have been able to dip their toes in and get a feel for the digital age before everything digital seems to have taken control.

Fiction Book
My fiction book, Lord of the Flies, and the theme I pulled away from it go along well with what I learned from Digital Culture. While we have had time to adjust to the technology in the digital age, it seems as though we have yet to adjust to the social rules that accompany that technology. We have yet to find where certain boundaries are: how much is too much to post on Facebook, when have you spent too much time online, when are you too connected to your phone, etc. To be really in tune with the digital world, how far out of the real world must we become? And what does it do to us when this happens? If we're following the same rules that applied in Lord of the Flies, becoming that disjointed with our two societies can break us down. We need to find a way to unite the two and avoid making one less sophisticated than the other.

Self-Directed Learning
I struggled with finding my niche in the class at the beginning. As was mentioned many times, there was a lot going on in the Google Plus stream and I didn't know where my voice could fit in. After deciding that I would take my interests and try to apply them though, I found that I would do a little research here and find a little social proof there. I became really interested in music sharing and now, thanks to my searching and asking, I have a folder full of sites. Once I became involved in the lit mag group the same thing happened all over again. Even if I didn't learn a crazy amount digital stuff, I did learn that simply asking people what they know and using them as a resource is a valuable and powerful tool. No way in a million years could I have discovered all that I learned just by looking around online and standing back. Once I tried to get involved and get other people involved I was finally able to see the real Web 2.0 in action.

Student Influence
A turning point for me in my learning was a conversation I had with Gwendolyn Hammer and Tara Pina on Google Plus about gaming wikis. I realized that the things I had to say could be valuable and the interests that I had could be applied. I've also enjoyed reading Tasha Watts' blog and the things she has to say, particularly her initial post that launched us into the elit mag group.

Other Things
Crowdsourcing and the Longtail were probably two of the more interesting concepts for me to learn about. Particularly when I could apply them to the areas that I was really interested in. I feel like learning more about these terms, as well as others, has helped me to better understand how to use Web 2.0 for myself. It is a vast world of knowledge and if I can apply it correctly, it has great potential to help me in the future.

The 3 C's and Me

Consume. Create. Connect.

I'm mostly writing them here on my blog so that I can remember the 3 C's a little bit better. Also so that I can try to understand them better. We do have a midterm coming up.

I'm awfully good at consuming. I am what you would call the typical consumer. I download music from iTunes onto my iPod. I get my textbooks and DVDs from Amazon. I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I check my email regularly throughout the day. It takes me a month to fill up my phone's inbox with texts. I watch TV on Friday nights and Saturday mornings if I'm not doing anything else. I listen to the radio in my car about half the time I'm driving. I am really quite average. There is not a whole lot about me that is beyond average.

So yes, I'm super good at consuming but this makes creating and connecting particularly difficult. However, my group's project to create an online source for creative content does force me to expand what I'm familiar with.

Still I have a nagging voice in the back of my head that says that it doesn't really matter what I do in the digital world because it doesn't make a whole lot of a difference. Yes, technology is fantastic and allows us to do things faster and with a bigger group of people, but ultimately I feel like I'm doing the same things with technology that I do in real life. I'm not saying this is the case for everyone, because it really isn't. I just have yet to find my niche in this digital world. Or in the real world. Until then I will consume, I will try to create, and I will attempt to connect in a way that I hope would be meaningful. And who knows where that will lead me.

Schmoe: An Online Literary Magazine

Schmoe

An online literary magazine that seeks to highlight a variety of genres and provide a place where writers and readers can interact via comments and online sharing. Pieces will be selected based on regular literary criteria as well as an additional emphasis placed on showcasing literature that is accessible to young adults of all interests.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP4xtCLzlOU&feature=youtu.be

Created by Sarah Talley, Rachel Mahrt, Tasha Watts, Shelby Boyer, Hannah Ballard, and Nicole Black

With consultation from Allie Crafton and Greg Williams

After asking around with our classmates and friends on Facebook, we found that there would definitely be an interest in this project. Enough to fuel Schmoe and make it successful. There was interest overall in the project as well as in the interaction between writer and reader and the accessibility to the common reader.

We also attempted to get some outside social proof for our project. Laura Cebula, author at Thought Catalog commented on Tasha's post, giving us some feedback and ideas for the project. Tasha emailed Chris Lavergne of Thought Catalog with an introduction and some links and got the response, “Looks good. Seems like you have some exciting ideas going on here.  Keep me in the loop with your progress!” She also commented on one of Simon Staffan’s posts about transmedia that was somewhat related to the concepts we’d be employing, as well.

There are plenty of other existing resources out there that we've seen but have yet to tap into. There are blogs about ways for writers to become more involved, websites with ideas and layouts similar to what we're interested in, and professors with special interests in media and writing.

This post was starting to get really long and I needed a visual break. Visit this Tumblr for more time wasting.

If you want to know what the group members think of this project, I could just tell you that we're all excited about it and can't wait to really get it going. But if you want to know more I guess you could read Tasha's post one and post two on the topic, take a look at Shelby's enthusiasm, or look at my own ramblings. 

We've found a few sources to give us some ideas on the interactive nature of our site. Net Smart gives a description of how people use and pay attention to the internet and how that will develop it in the future. Rachel gives a great review of it on Goodreads. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchel explores the impact that different sorts of stories and genres can have upon a life. Each story frames the next. There is also some content about the changes that the digital world makes with communication. The Wisdom of Crowds is also a good source for information on user activity on the web. Shelby provides a great review of it on her blog.

Rachel read The Hunger Games and found ways to compare it to literary magazines. Tasha also found connections in her book I Am the Messenger. It explores the power of everyday, ordinary people. Our magazine aims to benefit ordinary readers and writers alike by providing an outlet for deep thought and beautiful expression that does not seek to alienate anyone who hasn't read the complete works of James Joyce.

Our plan for the project is to use a pre-existing platform like Wordpress with layout possibilities. The audience we are going to market to is the young adult audience in the 17-25 age group because they typically familiar with the internet and will be more willing to experiment with us as we go. This group will also provide us with a lot of potential writers through creative writing classes, friends, and peers as we seek out submissions.

Since it is a website, success will be primarily measured by page views, subscriptions, likes, comments, and interaction. However, success will also be measured by the number of submissions that we receive. The idea will not be successful unless it is taken seriously by the writers and the readers.

The prototype idea was originally posted on Tasha's blog. The layout will tentatively be similar to Thought Catalog and different layouts found on Wordpress.