creative commons

Textbook remix

This is super cool, both in content and process: Python for Informatics is a new textbook that Chuck Severance, a professor at the University of Michigan, compiled in eleven days. It’s based on an existing Python textbook that was released under a Creative Commons license; Severance culled, sharpened, and extended it.

And if you were one of Severance’s students in Ann Arbor, you could get a physical copy printed on the university library’s Espresso book machine.

I find every part of this scenario really exciting. It’s like the pieces are all starting to click into place.

(Via Publishing2.)

 

The Remix Fund

I’m launching a program today that I’m really excited about. The idea is this: I wrote and printed Annabel Scheme; it’s out there in the world, people are reading it, and I’m getting good feedback. Cool. But I have to say, what I really lust after—maybe irrationally—is like… Annabel Scheme fan-fic. Images of Scheme herself, or Sebastian Dexter or Jack Zapp, by some kid at deviantART. Tracks from the Beekeeper’s server. Remixes, reimaginings, and reboots!

I’m under no illusions; this is asking a lot. People want to appropriate and remix the pantheon: Batman, He-Man, Sherlock Holmes. Who cares about some new story that’s only existed for two months and only a few thousand people even know about?

Economists talk about using well-designed incentives to correct market distortions or to encourage a certain kind of development. But to my knowledge—please tell me if I’m wrong—nobody’s ever released a piece of work under a Creative Commons license with much of an incentive attached. Usually it’s just: “Hey, do something… with this… if you want?”

So, I’m experimenting with a Remix Fund for Annabel Scheme.

There’s an important dimension to the fund that I really like, but am having a hard time explaining clearly: You can pitch an idea that you yourself want to do, of course, e.g. you’re an artist and you want to draw a portrait of Annabel Scheme and you’d like $400 for your efforts. But you can also pitch an idea that you’d like someone else to do. It could be a friend of yours, of course; it could also be someone whose work you admire, e.g. another writer you dig, a webcomic creator you love.

This is a bit tricky, obviously, because, like, don’t the creator get any say in the matter? Of course they do: if an idea pitched on someone else’s behalf gets the green light, I’ll email them and explain what’s up. I actually have a theory that this could be a powerful message to get: “Hey, out there in the world there is someone who’s a big fan of yours, and they set it up so that you could do this mini-project and get paid for it.” I don’t know; maybe it will be too out-of-the-blue. “Wait, what? Who are you? Annabel WHAT?” But I’m hopeful, and I want to try it out, because that’s the only way we’ll know for sure.

Anyway, this is fair game for Snarkmarket readers, obviously, so check it out.

In 2010, every media budget should have a line item for remixes!

 

Telling stories about stories

Increasingly, I’m convinced that no media is successful or even complete until it’s been transformed or extended. I know this is not super-controversial—it’s sort of the Creative Commons party line—but it turns out things don’t transform themselves! A lot of media gets CC-licensed and then just sits there.

I’m also influenced by Henry Jenkins’ notion that the most successful fictional worlds (Star Wars, Harry Potter, and so on) are not so much straight narrative stories as they are “platforms” for people to build on. You need a central story to get people excited about the platform in the first place, but then you also need lots of hooks for them to extend it, both formally (movies, comics, video games) and informally (fan-fiction, fan films, art). The central story is like the iPhone; the extensions are like the App Store! (And P.S., the platform-worlds aren’t all robots and wizards. Ulysses is a platform, too.)

Okay so, I’m a long way away from building a platform on that scale, but it’s fun to sort of “act it out,” even at this stage. Thus, when patron-guests arrived at the Annabel Scheme launch party, they were presented with a piece of evidence from Scheme’s collection. The evidence was all dated and tagged in ziploc bags; it was all very strange.

The mission: come up with the story behind the evidence. There was a Narrative Evidence Research Database collection station set up, off to one side of the party, to capture these stories. Here’s a taste of what people recorded:

I have to say, it is unreal to see other people saying “banana box” and “Sebastian Dexter” and “Annabel” on camera. It really is the next level. Somebody reads the book, enjoys it, even tweets or blogs about it: awesome. I mean, just really wonderful. But somebody acts it out? Sublime.

There’s more to come on this front—I’ve allocated $1000 from the book’s budget for a remix fund, and next week, I’m going to post a form where people will be able to submit pitches. After that, the book’s patrons will all vote on their favorites, and those projects will get funded. Hey: things don’t transform themselves.