Making Beyond Social

[HOw did I became excited about Beyond-social.org]

When Iris X and Roger Y approach WdKA's Publication Station to co-develop a web-magazine, for the Social Practices program's, my first thought was that a web-magazine was something not very exiting. The image that formed in my head, was of those online magazines that try to resemble their physical counterparts in every detail possible, from the glossy look, to the turning of the pages' animations, accompained by the indissociable sound "shhhs". Beyond all those forced imitations, what tends to mark them the most is their fixity – from the imutability of the words, to the perfect and still arrangement of images, text and colorfull backgrounds. All seems to be still, permanent, untransformable. They seem to exist in contraction to the digital container that hosts them. In the Web everything is fluid. Pages appeard and dissapear, content appears, changes, moves, or is removed, visual elements shift position and dimension as a result of the dimension of the screen where they are rendered into texts and images. Nothing is still, so why should a web-magazine be?

How ever when Roger and Iris began to describe their ideas for this publication, it was cleary that they had in mind something entirely different, at least as to how it would be developed. Its intent would be to serve as space for documenting, reflecting, and building upon the work being developed within the Social Design programs, not only within WdKA, but also in collaboration with other invited institutions, currently developing similar work. That got me excited! The vision of a collaborative online working space, where content is developed in a collaborative and shared manner, and ideas grow from intrepretation, edits, conflicts, disagreements, sound familiar and yet exciting, at least in these parts of the woods. It sound much like the way content is developed insides [wikis-wikipedia article wikis], most proeminenly on Wikipedia. Not knowing yet, what was I myself into I said yes. It seemed like the perfect change to create an online publication, by having having fun experimenting with the possibility of the tools we would use and the methods we would adopt. Thankfully Iris and Roger were equality eager to begin working on the publication and didn't seem too worried about my bizarre ideas and incomprehensible terms.

Tools and Protocols

Before starting we had to agree on what were the tools that were going to help us develop the web-magazine, and start to sketch necessary to get things done.

• wiki - working space
• Website - a more appealing and crafted outlet (front-end) for the content
• API - connection between wiki and Website that would import content from the former to the latter
• A series of protocol - would determine how content would be developed and published (team devised a system of cataegories that allowed content to move from a stage of being written to being published) but also the ways in which that content would be structured into the website.

As the blueprint for this publication became more clear, the team behind it became larger, with students, designers, and tutors starting to take part in it. All became actively involved in the development to the publication, and didn't shy away from proposing changes, finding problems, fine-tune small but meaningfull elements.

• code repository
• how does an article become published on Beyond Social:

An article from Beyond Social, such as this one, becomes published through a series of stages it undergoes on the wiki. ...

• image browsing story

How does an online publication becomes physical?

How would this magazine would become a physical entity, was a difficult questions. None of us knew exactly how. It was certain that he had to exist in paper, but how?

It's not straight forward/usual to translate online content to physical form.

• the discussion had about the physical publication:
  • epub or pdf: "why do you want to have it in another digital format when you can read it online"
  • ...
  • template's proposal

Future

It is yet to be seen if this strategy is viable on the long term. If new editions of Beyond Social can under this platform of multiple parts and outputs without the need of changes and fixes to the structures and protocols that sustain it. It is also unclear it is inviting to some that comes for th e first time to the project and is in another physical spaces, with a different set of ideas for how he or she would like to develop contents on social design. And it is even more questionable if the same infrastructure, the same set of tools and protocols can be useful outside the specific scope of this publication.

I, for certain do not the answers, but I begin to glimpse possibilities for opening up them to other uses and goals. One, like to happen in the near future, which will take place in the Graphic Design (ACTUAL NAME) department, will be the use of the front-end website as a learnign tool. Students will use it as a sandbox where they can learn about essential Web technologies such as HTML markup lange and CSS style formating language, by creating alternative visual intrepretations/visual renderings for the content of Beyond Social.

Let's wait and see.