Narration X

Summer Update

I have been beneath the surface of more creativity than you can shake a stick at over the past few months. Namely, a software project at work and a demo version of my first album at home. I also have been helping my partner set up a company brand and website, and some logo side projects. I even had a cameo role in a friends movie. Over the next few months I intend to share my new insights into the various activities that I have been engaged in. Some of the topics I would like to discuss include.

• The presentation of the presentation layer
• Using personas in design: My “A-HA” moment
• Wireframes, mockups and prototypes: not just design tools
• One-man music making
• Promoting a music demo online.

In the meantime sit back and enjoy my friends movie “The Athenrides”

A blast from digital storytellings recent Past

Hate to be revisiting old news, but whilst I was perusing some old emails I came across some interesting links:

The first is an old article about digital Storytelling on the hp iPaq. I remember the product launch being right around when we were in the middle of creating The Organic City.

The second, Ye Olde Digital Storytelling Festival from days past.

Lets Reminisce!

The Organic City Interview Podcast

Sarah (my fellow OC creator) and I were recently interviewed by the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, Ca. The interviewer was Joe Lambert, a pioneer and author in digital storytelling. The final interview is available as a podcast at StoryMapping Stories.

The Organic City featured at Metafilter

I was delighted to discover that The Organic City got a mention at Metafilter this month. I have been a big fan of this community blog for years so it is an hono(u)r. Speaking of hono(u)rs, I also recieved a certificate and a cd in the mail from the PRIX ARS Museum in Linz, Austria where The Organic City recieved an “hono(u)rary mention” award in 2006. They are also looking for entries for this years PRIX ARS Electronica, I highly recommend entering the competition: They have many categories to choose from (listed below):

• Computer Animation / Film / VFX
• Interactive Art
• Digital Musics
• Hybrid Art
• Digital Communities
• u19 – freestyle computing
• [the next idea] Grant
• Media.Art.Research Award

January found The Organic City also featured on the following Blogs:

• Platial News & Neogeography
• PKB
• Mobile Art
• Internet Scout Project
• Marc Escobosa
• Community Technology Network of the Bay Area
• High Earth Orbit
• WowBlog

Organic City picks up a 2006 IMA Award!

[In film trailer narrator deep male voice]

That’s right! Finally The Organic City received the recognition it deserves, by winning a “prestigous” IMA Outstanding Achievement Award, with an overall score of 467.

[enough of that voice, resume normal one]

We received an email stating:

[serious BBC style female newsreader voice]

The Outstanding Achievement award is the second highest honor bestowed by IMA and an extremely challenging award to win. Your website has excelled in all areas of our judging criteria and represents a very high standard of planning, execution and overall professionalism.

To win an award your entry had to successfully pass through our comprehensive judging system. Our judges utilize a points-based scoring system which allows each entry to receive a maximum of 500 points (we scored 467-their second highest award). By adhering to the specific guidelines and criteria of this system our judges are able to maintain the highest degree of fairness, accuracy and integrity; competently and effectively evaluate entries; and, deliver clear results.

[elated game-show host voice]

And what you ask… is the prize for this?
The answer is a beautiful, online certificate for all the WWW to see!

[serious voice]

We just entered the Comm Arts Interactive competition, so fingers cross this latest win will bring us some luck.;)

Word of The Organic City virally spreads across globe in 2006

I had a chance to check out the webstats for TheOrganicCity.com and discovered an international array of blog posts surrounding the project. This demonstrates the viral power and organic nature of the web and sheds new light on how the global community perceive a very local storytelling project

I have compiled a list of links to these posts.

MIT Museum without walls

Spatial Thoughts

Atlas(t)

Liberal Education Today

Plataforma Urbana

GeoLibro

Land Of Lime

PBS Teacher Source

Also featured in the following blog rolls:

StoryMapping Stories

High Earth Orbit

WOWblog

Minus The Spine

Webs Random ideas

GeoText

We Riders

Organicity: Issue 5

Public Presentation
You are invited to attend the CSU East Bay Multimedia Graduate Program’s Final Thesis Project Presentations on Wednesday, June 7 from 7 to 9:30 PM. The presentations will be held at the Hayward Campus in the Arts and Education (AE) building. The five graduate teams (including yours truly) will give brief presentations at 7:00 in AE 1203. For the rest of the evening, the teams will be showcasing their projects in individual rooms. The Organic City will be in Room 169, where visitors can meet Tour Guides Seamus and Sarah, explore The Organic City’s storyworld, and receive a tour packet souvenir. You can travel through our website from desktop computers, attend workshops on our mobile experience, and view video stories in a mini-theater. We will also be inviting the winners of our Oakland Storytelling Competition, held in coordination with Watchword Press. We look forward to seeing you there!

Upgraded Story Tours Section
In order to address usability concerns and highlight our new downloadable Featured Tours, we have upgraded The Organic City’s Story Tours section: http://www.theorganiccity.com/wordpress/tours_main/. Now you can explore story tours via a variety of platforms: you can download audio and video featured tours to your iPod or other mobile media player; you can explore a mobile version of The Organic City’s website on your internet-enabled Pocket PC or Smartphone, or you can explore custom author and genre tours from the comfort of your personal computer.

Announcing The Organic City Mobile
We have just released the mobile version of our website! You can check it out at http://www.TheOrganicCity.com/mobile. We encourage you to use the mobile website to find stories, tell your own stories, and take story tours while physically exploring downtown Oakland. The Organic City’s mobile website was created specifically for Pocket PC and Smartphone devices equipped with Windows Mobile 2003 or later, GSM Internet, Macromedia Flash Player 7 for Pocket PC (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_pocketpc/), and a headset. In particular, the following devices will support this site: HP iPAQ hw6500 series and T-Mobile’s MDA Smartphone. If your handheld computer won’t support the mobile, you can still download our featured tours (http://www.theorganiccity.com/wordpress/tours_ipod/) to your iPod or other mobile media player.

Announcing new iPod Featured Tours
Now you can you can select one of The Organic City’s eight featured audio or video tours to experience on your iPod (or other MP3 or portable video player) with a printable map while exploring downtown Oakland. The featured tours are showcased at http://www.theorganiccity.com/wordpress/tours_ipod/. For example, you can download William Wong’s Oakland Chinatown Tour. In this video tour, Mr. Wong, a distinguished journalist and author, guides you to memorable locations in Oakland’s Chinatown, the place he was born and raised. You can also download Joyce Whitelaw’s Musical Tour to enjoy songs from her place-based musical album “A Musical Celebration of Oakland” while walking around Lake Merritt. Ms. Whitelaw, a fourteen-year resident of Oakland, composed the album for the 100th anniversary gala of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. Her music accompanies lyrics written by local authors.

Oakland Storytelling Competition Winners!
The Oakland Storytelling Competition turned out to be a great success. Thanks to all of the local aspiring authors that entered the competition. Because it was such a tough decision to choose just one winner from all the wonderful stories, the generous editorial staff at Watchword Press decided to select three winners.

Congratulations to all three winning authors who are listed here in alphabetical order.

On a Search for Alien Sea Creatures by Christian in the “Urban Myth” genre.

10 Years Old by kmleahey in the “Other” genre.

The Tragic History of Harrison Street by mikee in the “Comedy” genre.

They will each get their story published in the Watchword Press Literary magazine and appear as featured authors at The Organic City. A big thank you to the Watchword Press crew all the folks at for all their hard work.

Competition Watch
Over the last few months The Organic City entered several different competitions. We wanted to keep you up to date with how we did. Unfortunately, there were no wins for The Organic City team. We did however secure an honorary mention at Prix Ars in Austria and have had the honor of being a Webby Awards nominee.

New Beginnings
And so as we reach the end of our thesis project we plan on reemerging back into the real world. We have had a blast building this project from the ground up. Sarah and I would like to offer our sincere thanks to everyone who has collaborated and helped to make The Organic City the vibrant and diverse community that it is today. We would also like to thank our thesis advisor and our professors for providing us with crucial feedback, advice and state of the art technology.

We hope that our project shows you the possibilities of creating stories about your local community and publishing them instantly online. We hope that by showing “the kind of thing” that you can do with today’s free technology that you will be inspired to create your own media too.

We intend to keep the site up and we hope that you all will continue to contribute more of your wonderful stories so we can keep the virtual community campfire burning. We will of course have no access to the fancy technology that our school provided us with so if you possess the skills or technology please get involved. We still intend to collaborate with the community and encourage you to do the same.

This is only the beginning of our community story!

Peace,

Seamus and Sarah.

The Organic City Team.

For the Record: Organicity Issue 4

Oakland Tribune Article
The Organic City is featured in an article written by Annalee Allen and published in the Sunday April 23, 2006 edition of the Oakland Tribune. The article is titled “Cloggers share Oakland experiences online.” In the article, Annalee writes that theorganiccity.com is a Web site where “…stories about Oakland abound, and new posts are appearing daily.” Annalee also quotes team member Seamus Byrne describing the new concept of clogging: “There is blogging and now their is clogging. . . Clogging is a community blog for people who want to talk to each other about where they live and what that means to them.”

Storytelling Competition Launched
The Organic City recently launched the “Oakland Storytelling Competition.”
The winner of the competition will have their story published in the Summer 2006 edition of Watchword Literary Magazine and will be interviewed as a featured author at The Organic City.

Thousands of postcards, inviting Oakland community members to submit their own stories have been sent to English teachers and students at schools throughout Oakland. For more information please visit our competition page.

Webby Award Update
The Organic City has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Best Student Website category. Currently we are in second place, a mere 8% behind the leader. Looking at the latest positions we still have a chance at catching up.

So if you haven’t already done so, please vote for us as the Best Student Website of 2006. It takes just a couple of minutes! Voting is open to the public from April 11th to May 5th at http://peoplesvoice.webbyawards.com

Featured Story
The Cleveland Cascade was a stunning Italian-inspired water feature on the shores of Lake Merritt, built in 1923. Its water cascaded 100 feet down a steep hill– pouring through a sequence of ornate bowls– from the Cleveland Heights hill above almost into Lake Merritt below. Two flights of steps flanked the Cascade and are heavily used today by walkers, runners, and extreme exercisers.

In 2004, neighbors came together to reclaim the cascade– to revitalize it as a park, to restore the water feature to its original beauty and vitality, and to create some long-lived magic in their city.

On April 8th 2006, The Organic City film crew interviewed the two local residents behind the excavation and restoration of the Cleveland Cascade, Barbara Newcombe and Jim Ratliff. Check out the first two episodes:

The Cleveland Cascade Story (Part 1)
The Cleveland Cascade Story (Part 2)

Keeping the fire burning

I recall an occasion where I was staying with my in-laws on a ranch and we decided to light a fire. The wood was damp which proved difficult to catch fire. Three men spent a good 2 hours trying every method to get the fire to take whilst enduring the onslaught of giant smoke belching from the center of the smoldering wood. As an Irishman I grew up around many a fireplace so I confidently approached the fire using all the tactics I knew to evoke a flame.

Sadly, the night of sitting around the campfire never happened. After what seemed like an eternity of futile fire inducing actions we all resigned to spending the evening inside with the sensible female members of the family.

Building an online storytelling community is a similar feat. The Organic City is one such community and we are certainly throwing everything we can onto the metaphorical fire in an attempt to utilize its magnetic attraction to lure people to sit together and to share their stories. I can only hope that the fire catches soon or that someone with more pyrocentric skills lends a hand so we can keep this online fire alive.

Clogging in the neighborhood

It gives me great pleasure to introduce the term “Clogging” or community blogging as it is currently known. Clogging has become more prevelant over the last year with the advances made in content management systems, databases and open source software.

A blog is a personal weblog voiceing an individuals opinions or a journal listing the authors life activities. It is an individual activity that features the authors contributions or posts in an isolated manner. A Clog however is intended to be contributed to a community based forum for others to not only read but to also participate in too. As such the content of Clogs are normally centered around a common theme or goal emulating a community group in the real world.

I coined the term “Clogging” with Sarah whilst trying to desribe a community weblog such as our thesis project The Organic City.