Professional development

o profiles setup
o front page changes
o opportunities billboard
o rego required to respond to blog or project material
o object for ppl to self promote – showcase their skills
o featured artists (opportunities for Unis) promotion
o attract interested, active, people with something to work towards
o new forum for 'Film'
o new project – video clip: 'Goodnight Thomas'

Featured Artists
Rowan: film maker and lecturer film showing at the moment at Glitch Bar
Deano: web designer, programmer, IT, mobile phones, tech-creativity

adding core value by havin the featured artists
- mentoring
- promotion

Grants/ Funds

o we must maintain control of project
o make sure profit is not the motivation
o we need a list of grant information that could fund polyopticon.org
o gov and private sector funds (explore)
o best method in aquiring (learn and review process of aquisition)

Film
Theatre
Visual Art
Media Arts
Music
ETC??
o promote to other artists, galleries, theatres, opportunities
o meet other artists
o other artist can look for other artist to share
o formation of bands, theatre and film companies, art movements, etc
o interdisciplinary collaboration

1. ego; if you never share your idea, you never face the possibility that it is a bad idea. People hold onto their ideas becasue it makes the idea unchallenged, and honourific.

2. We are made to feel scared to share our idea’s; galleries, record companies, hollywood studio strucutres. They tell artists that they can manage distribution better - and that they will protect the artist, but often they are the ones exploiting ideas, and with-holding profits from the artist. Artists must control The Power of Distribution. That means they must learn how Cooperation Economies function.

3. Fear. Artists can be afraid that by sharing their ideas that they will lose the opportunity to be credited for their work. Ironically by sharing their ideas, an artists reputation increases (if they're ideas are good), which makes them more desireable and more likely to be credited.

4. Capitalist society resists sharing. This can limit imagination, freedom and the individual's opportunity to recognised as worthwhile.

1. ask artists what they want from us and how they want to use it
2. invent contexts that best serve artist members
3. continually review how the entire network functions and improve it

One of the things that comes up here is... What is our mission? What do we mean when we say 'the best context'?
The best... for what?

Today, all polyopticon network members are able to see each others profiles, project development and project outcomes. Also, members can converse with each other on the forums, blogs and contact pages. This creates a fertile and evolving membership that extends the range of skills and possibility of all the members.

All polyopticon members can have visible, public projects (perhaps with some private areas) that promote themselves and their collaborators to anyone on the net. This in turn brings public interest to other projects on the site. Each project and member can benefit from the cumulative public traffic of the network.

Experienced and established artist members are able to find talented collaborators, assitants, employees and skilled members for their projects. Emerging artist members are able to promote themselves and network with established artist members. Each benefit from the shared space and opportunity of being active within the network.

Making individual members an income is not the primary concern of the polyopticon network. However, many projects on the network do, of course, have budgets and by having this extended network, individual opportunities for earning income increases.

My experience has been that by using this network, I am able to work as a subcontractor for other members projects and earn enough to continue my art practice and study full time. Also, I source monies for myself through funds such as the Austalian Research Council, Australia Council, Arts VIC and the countless other bodies that are set up to distribute grants and funds to artists. I am able to then inturn employ people for various things that they are far more skilled at than me.

I also work with the corporate sector as a subcontractor on a number of projects that are not based in this network. I always invite various skilled people I meet from the corporate sector to join, so that the network can benefit from their abilities and so that these people can enjoy the freedom of working in a context that is not as rigid and controlled as the corporate sector.

In this way I am thriving as an artist in that, although I am not yet financially successful, I am able to pay for, and do the things I want and need to do in order to continue changing, improving and practicing my art. And that in itself is quite difficult.

I know of many other artists on this network with similar situations. We can continue to support each other in this way and extend that support through a healthy, growing network of dedicated and self-organised members. This will increase our opportunities and the networks ability to support its members.

This network is not at all about giving our ideas and work away for nothing. In fact I think of it as a place where we can showcase our ideas and work and inturn share each others success. This is how cooperation can create a very strong group of individuals that are able to do things that are individually impossible.

Alright, I know that was a couple of huge posts. I just wanted to lay some groundwork down so we can go straight for the juggular on this.

Basically there are 3 areas that we need to address:

1. Intellectual Property - protecting members and projects from being ripped off, while still working with an open source method.

2. Business - can this be a sustainable, funded organisation? How?

3. What have I not seen? Is there other areas, that I have not addressed?

So - lets talk about this. How can we approach the above questions/ challenges?

hi guys,

I really like the concept of this site and what you have done so far. I have some suggestions based mostly around the user experience:

1. Navigation When I first visited the site I was confused as to where to go. As a user I expect to see an obvious navigation menu, but this was not the case. At a glance this menu tells the user what constitutes the site. But I had to click around to figure it out. Users have the attention span of a gold fish so we must make it easy and obvious for them.

2. Presentation I do like what you've done with the recent design enhancements but do more. Style your h1, h2, h3 headers. But the mini sections in the left and right columns into boxes. I really like the similar community forum site - slashdot.org - very clean and simplistic.
3. Homepage Get rid of the homepage splash. It adds nothing to the user experience and actually detracts from it as the site is an additional click away. On http://www.polyopticon.org/drupal/ put a listing of the latest posts and save the about info to an About Us page which should be a link on the nav menu

4. Email notifications - I'm not sure if you offer this but I think it's a good idea. It's something forum users can opt in for. It works like this - when I reply to the thread, then Alex and Marty get an email saying 'Deano has posted a reply. Click here.' This gets the user back onto the site.

That's about it. I'll post more thoughts as they come up. Keep up the good work!

Deano

Great practical design feedback - and so easy to read. :)

1. Naviagation: I totally agree about the naviagtion. I am thinking about how I can set up the menu taxonomy so that it is easily re-codable for future improvements. I will make that a priority.

2. Presentation: I have added margins around the left and right blocks - I am still thinking about how that should be. I might get rid of the off-black background of the blocks too and just go all black - cleaner that way. What do you mean by 'style the headers (h1, h2, h3)?' Do you mean color, font or everything? I think you mean because it gets a bit unreadable sometimes - refer to the top of this very page.

3. Homepage: I love my homepage splash, but I agree with you. I will fix that... soon.

4. Email Notifications: Great idea. I will look into it.

Thanks Deano, that is really helpful feedback.

1. Intellectual Property - protecting members and projects from being ripped off, while still working with an open source method.

** Proforma Legal documents outlining confidentuality and other summary obligations signed on project initiation.
** Private Project Forums - Only sharing summaries with the remaining community.
** Pulic Recognition of Project Ownership.

2. Business - can this be a sustainable, funded organisation? How?

** Advertising; must be suttle and relevant.
** Projects?

3. What have I not seen? Is there other areas, that I have not addressed?

** Get back to you

See you at the Bar after the show...

MartyG

Here are some great articles on creating a standards compliant CSS nav menu:

• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/
• http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors2/

(anything by this guy is great advice)

The structure of this menu is simply an ordered list and the styling is completely CSS.

Any repeated content throughout a site should be contained as a separate file and 'included' on each page. The concept being if you modify one file then all pages on the site that display it gets updated. So this menu would be it's own separate file and if you need a new selection in the menu, then you add a list item.

Check out the example: http://www.alistapart.com/d/slidingdoors2/v1/ex10.html

I am going to start a polyopticon exhibition. This will be a part of a real-world policy that seeks to liberate projects from the limitations of a linear online approach. Artists and audiences will be able to see work on real space, which should feed into greater understanding between members and will provide a meta-direction for all the projects hosted by polyopticon.org.

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