The Maker Culture project – Media episode goes live!

Finally! Episode Six of the Maker Culture series is now live on thetyee.ca and rabble.ca! Eeeee! Check out DiStef and I hosting up the MEdia podcast here. I’m so insanely proud of the work we all did on this project, and psyched to finally see it go public.

Let me back things up a bit to give you a little bit of context…

Last semester, my j-school cronies and I took an online journalism course. All 30 of us got to take it together because it was one of those mandatory “everybody has to take this class” classes (and with good reason, I would say. It’s no secret that the news industry is changing – some might even say dying – and the internet is playing a huge role in this transformation).

Anyways – a major component of this class was our term project – and what a freaking project it was…

It was such an intensive, all consuming project, in fact, that the very name of this project came to replace the name of the course among j-schoolers. We weren’t taking “online journalism” anymore – we were taking “Maker Culture“. Thursday was “Maker Culture” day. Professor Wayne MacPhail was “Maker Culture guy”. Soon, we were having Maker Culture weekends, Maker Culture conferences, Maker Culture road trips, Maker Culture panic attacks … near the end of the semester, the print room, radio room, TV studio (and the hallways in between) became the Making Maker Culture Workshop. Maker Culture Land.

Makerculturemakerculturemakerculture. It was THE buzzword around the department Fall semester 2009. Hell, it was the buzzword around our LIVES…

“Sorry mom – I can’t make it home for Thanksgiving – I’ve got to work on Maker Culture…”
“Maker Culture? What’s that?”
“Um… well…”

Funny thing is, nobody really even knew what the heck it meant for a while (I’m still not entirely certain). Eventually though, most of us ended up getting it at some level – some of us even got INTO it, becoming makers in our own right (more on that later).

One thing’s for certain – between the 29 of us, we created some insanely good work. Podcasts, videos, feature articles, photo galleries – you can see it all (and the behind the scenes methods to the madness) on our class wiki and project blog. I highly recommend that you check them out.

Between what our class and the class we collaborated with at Ryerson produced, there are now enough Maker Culture multimedia stories on the great wide interwebs to satisfy INSTRUCTABLES-BOT himself!

You’re probably waiting for the beat to drop eh? Enough of the build-up, you say! TELL ME WHAT IS THIS MAYKER KULTCHER PROJEKT NAOW!

I’m going to pass the mic to professor Wayne MacPhail (our fearless leader) for this one. He writes on rabble.ca :

For twelve weeks in the fall of 2009, 45 students Online Journalism students at Ryerson University and the University of Western Ontario, under the direction of rabble board member Wayne MacPhail, worked together to document the evolving Maker Culture community.

Maker Culture? That’s coders, fabricators, foodies, artists, educators, activists, citizen and even scientists grabbing the Do-It-Yourself ethic with both hands and changing our world in the process.

These are people who aren’t just making things, they’re making a point of sharing what they’ve learned, what they’ve made, and why. Often, for free. Makers are responding directly, locally to globalization,commercialization, copyright and central command and control.

And, they’re everywhere: building printers that can print themselves, mashing up music, doing science at home, changing their cities and countries, even imagining how we could print out our own organs. And nearly four dozen students caught up with the movement as it grew. Sometimes they even helped it grow. You’ll see.

Each episode will contain a podcast on the rabble podcast network, video clips on the MakerCulture You Tube channel and a feature story right here on rabble.ca and, for the first time, co-published by our friends at thetyee.ca. Look for new episodes each week over the next three months.

This a feature series that is a series of firsts: The first time Ryerson and Western have worked together journalistically, the first time rabble.ca and thetyee.ca have co-published and the first time journalism students have used social media tools so completely from the very beginnings of a story.

Yup. In a nutshell – that’s the makerculture project. My group (Daniela DiStefano, Brittany Seki, Laura Schober and Isabella Ssozi) was TEAM MEDIA. We tackled the DIY indie media scene in Canada and abroad – and had a blast doing it (for the most part). We took a road trip to Toronto one day for Canzine, another roadtrip to Windsor for a 48 hour film festival / visit to Broken City Lab, and a whole bunch of other cool things.

Highlights for me include talking to hilarious artist Jacob Borshard, writer Hal Niedzvecki of Broken Pencil, and Stephen Chao – CEO of wonderhowto.com (and former FOX Television president who created COPS and America’s Most Wanted. Yeah – he’s a big deal.) I also got to play guest panelist in a test run for the Education group’s live streamed Edupunk conference, and that was fun.

But my biggest contribution to the project was probably this video from Canzine that I produced. I know I’ve posted it before, but hey – I’m proud of it… sheet, I worked DANG HARD!

For more makerculture-y goodness, check out our class youtube channel and flickr photostream.

Oh – and as previously alluded to, over the holidays I sort of “took things into my own hands” and became a bit of a maker meself! I wasn’t exactly aiming to “stick it to the man” by crafting my own gifts, but I did make a conscious choice to remove myself from the cult of Christmas consumerism this year – and that’s makery… I think? Does it matter if my choice was motivated by the fact that grad school has made me dirt poor? Let’s just say that it doesn’t. My name is Lauren O’Neil, and I’m a maker because I made…

CANDY SUSHI for my bff’s Holiday Bash!

:

Mario art for my Brother’s wall:



(which I guess isn’t much of an affront to consumerism since it was designed in Photoshop, printed at Shopper’s, framed at Wal-Mart and features a character created by the Nintendo corporation. Whatever.)

A Mouse Pad, custom letterhead and jar labels for my mom’s (DELICIOUSLY FIERY AND SOON TO BE SUPERFAMOUS) hot peppers):





And… well, I caved and bought the rest of my gifts (I can’t exactly make my own “University of Western Ontario Grandma” mug, or a copy of a Best-Selling novel that my dad wanted. I mean, I could… but it would take a really long time.

I felt really good about these projects though. Making these gifts made me feel like I was crafty or something. Like an inventor

I’ve already got a couple more 8-bit art projects planned (nintendo coasters, HOLLAH!) and I bought myself an entire book dedicated to the art of making monster plushies. And this magazine, too:



Once I get a little bit of time (and actually allow myself to chill out), I’m going to start making my own little guys – then maybe I can join the PLUSH TEAM and sell them on Etsy! Eee! I can’t wait.



Maybe I’ll start… in 56 days, when I graduate


Share / Save :
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•