Cut, Copy & Paste: Use (analog!) open source collaboration to make your own MozFest Zine

[mozfest-bot]

[ UUID ] 8313245f-a710-4547-9375-7c63702c109b

[ Session Name ] Cut, Copy & Paste: Use (analog!) open source collaboration to make your own MozFest Zine [ Primary Space ] Open Innovation [ Secondary Space ] Web Literacy

[ Submitter's Name ] Sam Muirhead

[ Submitter's Github ] @cameralibre

[ Additional facilitators ] Judith Carnaby

What will happen in your session?

Visitors can create a story, drawing, comic or collage about their experience of MozFest.

They stamp their name and a 'commit number' on their work, make a photocopy, and file the original on a shelf labelled ‘repository’.

The copy is displayed alongside many more works: where others are encouraged to remix, translate or build upon them, allowing stories to evolve with different contexts or voices.

Copy. Cut. Paste. Draw. Copy. Participants are invited to help on specific tasks via a noticeboard.

Participants can draw from an existing library of public domain images - plus the growing pool of MozFest contributions - to create their own individual zines, enabling a diverse expression of experiences and perspectives at MozFest.

What is the goal or outcome of your session?

• To give people a tangible experience of working creatively in an open source way, without needing to install software, open a terminal, learn git commands, or even use the internet.

• To make & publish zines, expressing the diversity of experiences at MozFest! (conversations visitors had, projects they discovered, awkward moments, fails/wins, new friends and ideas...)

• Drop-in participants can very quickly tell their story via text or image, fulfil an open task on the 'help needed' board, browse and remix the work of others, and get to know how open source works. More sustained participation can result in their own individual MozFest zine: their own input combined with their favourite contributions, images and ideas from other people.

If your session requires additional materials or electronic equipment, please outline your needs.

My proposed session requires a lot of different materials, and I can take care of bringing, borrowing or renting the various bits and pieces I need, but any help in finding the following would be appreciated:

• photocopier

• paper guillotine

• extra typewriter(s)

Time needed

All weekend, as an installation, exhibit or drop-in session

[cameralibre]

This is a further development of a collage-based workshop I ran at 'Arts & Commons' in Berlin a year ago:

blogpost

recipe

Here are a few images to flesh out the idea some more:

[KirstieJane]

[ Facilitator 1 Name ] Sam Muirhead [ Facilitator 1 Github ] @cameralibre [ Facilitator 1 Twitter ] @cameralibre [ Facilitator 2 Name ] Judith Carnaby [ Facilitator 2 Github ] NA [ Facilitator 2 Twitter ] @Illus_Illued

Requirements

• office shelves (like in the setup picture above)
• work table
• magnetic whiteboard + magnets (for the Help Needed board)
• photocopier & paper cutter/trimmer/guillotine
  • Note: I will look into hiring one in London, but just in case anyone else has a suggestion for somewhere that we might be able to borrow a photocopier from, that would be great! Or maybe I could sweet-talk somebody at Ravensbourne College?
• a typewriter, or maybe 2, depending on space
  • Note: I can get second-hand typewriters here in Berlin but they will be QWERTZ so thez maz lead to annozing tzpos and things cöüld get ä bit umlauty ööÖ. I will arrive in London a day or two early in order to sort out all the equipment I need, but just in case someone in London has a typewriter that I can borrow, please let me know!

[bunnybooboo]

I'm mentoring Sam's project in the Mozilla Open Leaders program right through to December. Looping myself in to stay up to date.

[cameralibre]

Thanks for the prompt @KirstieJane! [ Facilitator 2 Name ] Judith Carnaby [ Facilitator 2 Github ] nope. She's got a website if that's at all useful? [ Facilitator 2 Twitter ] @Illus_Illued

Requirements

• office shelves (like in the setup picture above)
• work table
• magnetic whiteboard + magnets (for the Help Needed board)
• a photocopier. I will look into hiring one in London, but just in case anyone else has a suggestion for somewhere that we might be able to borrow a photocopier from, that would be great! Or maybe I could sweet-talk somebody at Ravensbourne College?
• a paper cutter/trimmer/guillotine. Same deal as the photocopier ↑
• a typewriter, or maybe 2, depending on space - I can get second-hand typewriters here in Berlin but they will be QWERTZ so thez maz lead to annozing tzpos and things cöüld get ä bit umlauty ööÖ. I will arrive in London a day or two early in order to sort out all the equipment I need, but just in case someone in London has a typewriter that I can borrow, please let me know!
• I can bring the rest of the stamps, posters, scissors, glue and other equipment that I need, and I'll do a shout-out on twitter for help gathering the missing pieces.
• space... how much space is available for us to use? (We can adapt to different sizes but as you can see from the setup illustration I included in the proposal, it is not the most compact of setups...)

Meta

As @bunnybooboo mentioned, I'm working on this project for Mozilla Open Leaders - further info on its development can be found in the Cut, Copy & Paste Gitlab repository.

[pdurbin]

I just noticed this at https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/teaching-open-source-collaboration-to-designers-without-digital-tools/289 and think it's a neat idea. Good luck @cameralibre !

[cameralibre]

Thanks @pdurbin! 

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions for:

• other ways to replicate elements of open source collaboration in an analog way?
• examples of other attempts to do something like this?
• aspects of open source collaboration which you think are really important to get across? (eg a friend pointed out one missing element here: in the digital world, an improvement to a file/project also gets reflected in all downstream projects. I don't know if it's possible to replicate this in analog but it's useful to think about)

[KirstieJane]

Thank you @cameralibre!

I've updated my comment above w the (hopefully correct) information.

I'm going to ask @auremoser to have a think about the equipment list and answer your question about space - we don't know yet is the answer to be honest, but we should know more information in a couple of weeks and we'll pass that along asap.

[auremoser]

Hi all, I think this is an awesome session idea, but I think we can probably pare-down the equipment requirements and instead bring some magazines and Courier font-print alphabet sheets. Is there a reason why that low-tech arrangement might not work? One of my favorite parts of zines is the recyclability of older materials into newer publications/projects; so it would be awesome if this could involve recycled media. I think the photocopier might be particularly tough to score.

We'll also be featuring zines that our Open Web and Science fellows have assembled at this year's mozfest so I suspect there will be plenty to decorate the table without the need for a photocopier on site.

[cameralibre]

Hi @auremoser, thanks for the suggestions!

One of my favorite parts of zines is the recyclability of older materials into newer publications/projects; so it would be awesome if this could involve recycled media

I agree completely! The only concern for me when it comes to magazines is the issue of copyright - because any magazines I'll be able to get my hands on are entirely All Rights Reserved. I would prefer to stick to the public domain materials that I will be supplying (there will be a lot, my collection is growing!), and the CC-BY-SA contributions of other participants. I want participants to understand that they can genuinely do anything that they like with these materials - they already have permission. Yes, they can do a little experimentation in a non-commercial way, but there's also no stopping them from using the material in a commercial way, or publishing them widely, adding them to Wikipedia, etc. I am always very supportive of hacking the system and being a bit cheeky with copyright, but with this particular workshop I want to get across the feeling of experimenting within a genuine commons, and doing so with confidence.

The idea of alphabet sheets is great, also for making headings etc. I can arrange and print a number of alphabet sheets in different typefaces which participants can use. However, I don't see these sheets as being a replacement for a typewriter - the speed at which you could 'write' a paragraph by cutting-and-pasting is vastly slower in comparison, so it isn't suitable as a tool for generation of written content & drafts. One alternative way around needing a typewriter could be to 'cheat' and allow digital creation of text on a laptop, which can then be printed out. Not as elegant, but it would do as a last resort. My first choice would still be a typewriter so I'll put the word out and see what I can come up with.

I think the photocopier might be particularly tough to score. We'll also be featuring zines that our Open Web and Science fellows have assembled at this year's mozfest so I suspect there will be plenty to decorate the table without the need for a photocopier on site.

The photocopier is the only method that I have been able to come up with so far which allows for the concept of 'forking' in an analog medium, so for me it's the key piece of equipment in this workshop. (It doesn't need to be a big one). In this case, though the end products of this workshop (zines) are important - what is much more important is the process of creating them.

I'll get in touch with a few different photocopier rental services and try to organize this myself - I'll keep you updated!

[cameralibre]

I have been working out how to reduce space a bit, and I think that an expanding file will work as the repo, and a cutting mat, utility knife + ruler will replace a paper trimmer. I can hire a small desktop A4-only photocopier too, and I'm sure that I'll be able to get one of those compact travel typewriters.

I'm still not altogether clear on how the Gallery format works, I see in the draft schedule that we've got an hour on Sunday for demoing it. So I'll just share my understanding of how this might work, and you can tell me if I've got the wrong idea, or what is actually possible ;)

In order to have something to show, we'll need time for different ideas to be contributed, different versions to develop and for people to gradually add to the pool of commons. My theory about how this would work is that we would be based in a little corner throughout Saturday (whether this is in the Gallery zone or anywhere else where there may be a table free) and could invite people to come along after their session and write or draw something, and then that would be added to the repository. The Sunday morning demo would be putting the workshop in context, showing the process and what had already been created over the course of Saturday. Participants would then be encouraged to either continue adding their own stories & images, or to start collating elements into their own zines.

Is this similar to what you have in mind as well?

[cameralibre]

There is now an (illustrated) explanation of the main process involved in the workshop, to give you a better understanding of how it works:

How to commit

@auremoser @KirstieJane

[pdurbin]

@cameralibre this is great!

[auremoser]

Thank you @cameralibre! I'm sorry for my radio silence, it's been a busy few weeks of Mozprep, but I think your idea is spot-on for the gallery. Installations will be persistently available throughout the weekend, every gallery session is given a dedicated slot to demo/explain or describe their install to an audience that we'll guide toward the install space at the time of your session window. Hope that makes sense. I'm soooo looking so forward to your session!

[cameralibre]

Hi @auremoser & @KirstieJane - I would like to add Judith's bio to the Guidebook as well if possible, I asked on the #help slack channel and David suggested asking my wranglers nicely - could you please arrange it for us? 🍎 🍬 💐

EDIT: all good! @bunnybooboo has sorted it out. Thank you!

[auremoser]

Sorry for the delay @cameralibre, glad it was sorted! Thank you @bunnybooboo