There’s a post so-great-it-makes-my-head-explode by Robin Sloan at Snarkmarket hypothesizing that in the future (though it’s a bit of a stretch), magazine articles, albums, and novels could converge into events like TED or Phootcamp.
TED is one of the surprise media successes of the last few years, but not by chance. Their insight was that a conference can be a machine for making media—media that can build a big audience on the web. They invested in media production, and it paid off.
I think everyone’s frustration with TED is that we’re not exactly sure what it accomplishes besides the fact that A) it leaves us with a warm, glowingly-inspired feeling and B) we love that.
But TED is just a starting point. They’ve done a remarkable job, but—this always happens—it’s almost too big at this point. Too homogenizing. You could squint your eyes and recognize a TED talk by its red-blue glow. And—snark aside—it has a real weakness.
This is what got me so excited a few months ago about PhootCamp, a get-together-and-make-things style photography meetup organized by Laura Brunow Miner, a former editor of community photography magazine JPG. Where Phootcamp bested TED, writes Sloan, is that instead of “recitation” it was a fest of “generation.”
Riffing on this, Liz Danzico thinks that this is “evidence of a potential return to the oral tradition in practice.”
Studies of some of the oldest living oral cultures demonstrate that the structure of oral narrative itself, before the advent of writing, show this pattern. Prior to the advent of writing — long before texts of any kind — performers would compose oral narratives much in the way Robin describes, relying on generative formulas. They were composing texts while they were performing them live. The “publishable” aspect was different, of course, but the intent the same.
Social media has long been showing signs we’re returning there, but the event aspect pointed out here feels like a new step in this direction.
It reminds me of a previously linked to reblog from Attention Industry, full of interesting notes about New Models for Online Journalism, like:
5 person teams: editor / writer (2), developer, videographer / editor, designer. Publishing on a dual schedule: ongoing social media updates from dedicated accounts, and weekly complete, collaborative stories.
And of course, of McSweeney’s, the publishing house that seems to be 10 years ahead of the game _(with a fantastic iPhone app, upcoming one-time reinvention of the newspaper, tutoring centers across America, I could go on…). Issue 18 of their Quarterly Concern had a beautiful intro by editor Eli Horowtiz:
After a couple of somewhat elaborate issues in a row, we were excited to settle down, get back to basics—a paperback book…but it leaves us still with our hunger for simplicity. Thus, the following vow. Issue 19 will be handwritten on a large sheet of butcher paper. There will be only one copy. We will pack up a 1991 Volvo 240, black, with tinted windows and a broken sunroof, and drive around the country, visiting each subscriber. Each will be given one hour with the text, or maybe slightly more if we’re provided with lemonade or granola. Non-subscribers can visit our offices in San Francisco, where the issue will be available for viewing on our back porch. As usual, we’re grateful for your faith and constancy.
I wish.
As I was putting together the second issue of Process, I was telling Phoebe my muddled thoughts about the combination of conversation, video, transcription, slides, creative response, and interaction and she said to me…”you mean real life?”
D’oh!
See also: the recently posted vignettes by Jonathan Harris on building meaningful experiences online.
And don’t miss: the aforementioned Liz Danzico, Jason Santa Maria (who designs every single one of his blog posts individually!), and Paul Ford (who by some act of strange magic moved the entire printed history of one of the oldest magazines ever onto the internet, and made it well designed) will be doing a panel on meaningful experiences on the web this coming Tuesday, but unfortunately I will be in class. Luckily for me, I have no doubts that the video will end up on the internet.
