Read an interesting paper by Ken Newman on “non-linear narratives.” (*Using a non-linear narrative framework in an online community*, Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference Web Based Communities 2004, p. 83-90) He used it to solve a health-care problem: Engaging hospitalized kids in a web-based community arround a teddybear that travels the world. In order to be interactive, the story he tells about the teddybear must be able to be integrate different viewpoints (his account, the account of the people he met, the role-playing of community members, and spin-off stories). What are the important issues?
1. Character breakdown, a strategy used by TV series screenwriter collectives: The characters are described as a set of statements, which can be efficiently reused by other authors, eg. value system, quirks, approach to life.
2. Multiple points of view, allowing stories to be retold from a different perspective by “fans” and people the teddybear met on the trip.
3. Macro-narrative, underlying all “episodes” are some key features, points to be made that are not directly related to the character, nor to the narrators. These reflect the major issues and features of the narrative, the stuff you would see in a trailer: The trailer rarely has plot, characterization, or view-points: It’s just a mess of the major themes that will appear in the movie, eg. the One ring, the dark riders, a mountain, walking trees, hobbits, and a huge battle.
This might explain why most collaborative story-telling efforts that try to connect one scene to the next seem to have failed in online communities. In that sense, playing on a MUSH with other people is far closer to what Ken talked about:
1. You are encouraged to write up your own character breakdown because experienced role-players knows that it will help you react faster and act more consistently if you have such a breakdown at your hands.
2. The various people interacting automatically provides various view-points. The objective “truth” in this kind of system is not really relevant, compared to what people say, since what people *say* defines nearly all of their MUSH environment.
3. The macro-narrative is provided by the MUSH theme, and the existing environment (room descriptions, legends, gaming culture tradition).
Two other speakers, **Christopher Andrew Priebe** and **Philip Laird** had written a community web application to help them bind their university and its students closer together. It seemed like a typical application, with pictures, hobbies, friends, messages ¹ and a graphical chat! It looked like a Southpark drawing of their campus, where you had your little Southpark character in a kind of gold-cart, and you could drive arround, from building to building, and chat with people. Nobody was online when it was demonstrated, so I don’t know how well it works in practice: Does it scale to 50 people in the same room? In a MUSH, more than five or six people talking in the same room is a mess; you need to be able to talk with your friends in a separate room. IRC, on the other hand, showed very well how you can have more than a hundred people in the same room, as long as there are not too many people talking at the same time. But IRC clients have lots of specialized features to help you deal with short-term InformationOverload.
Coming from Europe, all this “bonding” of students and universities looks like fundraising ploys. I liked their idea of “Universities as Lifelong Learning Communities” – but their community seems rather closed: Can you move your profile when you join another community at another university? Aren’t you raising your students to remain dependent upon their university counselors, coaches, and peers. Of course, connections, networking, and friends are good. But if the application is not *open* in some sense, then you’re actually having a lock-in situation.
What kind of openness are we talking about, then? Just the kind of openness we’re expecting from free software service hosts (and not always getting): When we’re moving our project from SourceForge to Savannah, we want to move not only the source, we want to move bugreports, histories, newsgroups, developer profiles, project memberships, etc. Yes, there is no perfect solution, and no, that’s not the end of it. We need to do more research in this area: Data mobility, openness in terms of data exchange (connectivity) and legal framework (CopyrightTrap)...
Also heard a talk by Alastair Weakley (who also has pictures about the trip). Instead of writing it up here, however, I will write it up on CommunityWiki:VisualGrouping.
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At the end of the conference, the message was passed around again – today at 19:30 at the Praça da Figueira, for food and Salsa. First we went to the Casa do Alentejo, which looked fantastic (and expensive). They had something big going on however, and wouldn’t take 17 hungry tourists... We ate nearby, in a typical tourist joint for €20. We had great fun...
Late at night a small group of us went to hear some Fado (traditional melancholy music from Lisbon and Coimbra) in the **Clube do Fado** in the Alfama (the old moorish part of town, right below the Sé). Andreas Bischoff, **Fabrizio Rozzi**, Francesca Menegon, Vaggelis Igglesis, and me... (gotta find the links and post some pics!)
Vaggelis, me, and Francesca in the restaurant
Andreas, Fabrizio, me, and Vaggelis in the Club do Fado
Andreas when we started to talk about his age
Andreas also has more pics. ²
#Conferences
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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“Quando a tristeza me invade, Canto o fado Se me atormenta a saudade, Canto o fado Haja ciúme á vontade, Canto o fado Por uma esperança perdida Não passe na vida Por um mau bocado Se acaso a sorte o esqueceu É fazer como eu Deixe andar cante o fado...”
– Vaggelis 2004-03-30 15:20 UTC
Very nice! ;)
“When sadness takes me over, I sing the Fado When longing torments me, I sing the Fado Whether there be jealousy or desire, I sing the Fado For hope lost Don’t let life pass you by because of a little hardship Should luck have forgotten you Do like I do Let it go, and sing the Fado...”
I found more Fado texts on a blog called Fado. ¹ I wonder who this Ana is that keeps posting them. Lovely read! Now I just need to translate them all. 😄
– Alex
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In the first pic I seem not so bad thanks alex, you are a wonderfull photographer!
I know this is not a mail box but I tried to send you an e-amil to the address in your business card and it didn’t work so... How are you? I’m fine, now I’m taking some relax at my parents home and at the beginning of May I’m going to leave to Paris, to visit one of my friends which is living there... I feel lucky in this period! What about you? Did you receive the invitation for the conference in Las Vegas from the prof. Kommers? Unfortunately I cannot accept, first of all because I have any new findings from my research so I am not able to write another paper and also because my department does not have money to pay my partecipation. It’s a pity... can you image what great time in Las Vegas??? I’m still missing the fado night, thanks for the link to the Fado blog...
– Francesca 2004-04-08 20:31 UTC
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Nice to know you’re still around, Vaggelis. ;)
– Alex Schroeder 2004-11-01 16:42 UTC
