geek week 3

this week has been all about web specs.

and i don't actually know how the rest of the world goes about developing their online spaces.

presumably in big corporate land there's a fair amount of outsourcing to peeps who do it all day everyday. and then there's your extremely ugly SME (small-medium enterprise) site that never gets updated because, really, whose got the time to develop that stuff when you're so time poor as it is.

the nature of the artist-run-initiative (ARI) as a cultural space (similar to that of an SME, in business terms) is one of nimbleness - projects can turnaround quite quickly and they are dynamic and responsive projects. i believe that's why they're important spaces to exist and support - they feed back into the culture quickly and allow for current and relevant thinking. they can also allow for flexibility and mobility in the presentation of works, which is vital for most contemporary art practice.

considering that artists and ARIs are SMEs, i think most of us have pretty spanky sites. compared to your local plumber, electrician or even bookstore, say. and, having said that, for the larger, more established and pro-active ARIs, it can still be pretty difficult to maintain a decent online space, when the real world is taking up an extraordinary amount of time.

especially when the site has outgrown you.

in empirical terms, try building a new gallery building, on your own (or with minimal contractors), whilst still maintaining, programming and staffing the current one. not really an easy task.

which is where i've come in. i'm helping these kids design, spec-up and hand over for development a new site. yeah, i know, doesn't sound all that fantastic really.

BUT, what we will be doing is setting up a template and a documented process for such a renovation. these scribbly, scrawly notes, lines of links and cool widgetty bits that we've used in the mean time will be compiled and edited. then put out into the world somehow.

other artist-run-initiatives can then use them and learn from what we've done, to do their own version.

we don't want to make it oh-so-modular-cut'n'paste, but we want to open up the dialogue. the business/structure of making art is not actually our IP. if we can share the process a little, it can save everyone time. which leaves more room for art production, curating, writing, performance and the goodness of making/presenting art.

we don't actually want to be administrators, believe it or not.


HIGHLIGHTS

and hey artists, all those exhibition proposals and grant applications you hate? well, they help write web spec documents! yay! you too can spec up a website. it's just like proposing a massive group show in an open gallery space. huzzah!

this week some of the other highlights include: rediscovered my love of basecamp.
and iplotz is totes rad too - wireframe a website online to share, save, export with html-ness. good times.
printable checklist has been in fine form
as has word tables. very daggy, but really helpful in project managing for the time being.

i'm almost looking forward to talking to the developers now....