O/B: Week Fifteen

Good lord, things are wrapping up quickly aren't they? All the sudden there are a mere ten days left in the semester and, of course, I feels as if I have more to do now than I ever have before. There's not even time to panic about graduation.

This week at O/B has gone by even faster than the others. Today was the deadline for summer submissions, so I've been in the office since 7am putting the finishing touches on my own work, and am now inundated with copy-editing everyone else's. I have another deadline on Friday of this week for some of my excel tasks, that to be honest, I've yet to start. It's difficult trying to manage all my work for finals, my job, and the deadlines for this internship. Leaves no time for anything else, and a viscous thirst for whiskey on my lips. I'm confident that I'll get what needs to be done finished, but until then I will radiate stress.

Wednesday was our creative art meeting, where we looked at the photo layout for the summer edition. These meetings are usually very beneficial to me as a writer. They serve as a meeting of minds; everyone is in the office and we all come together to discuss what has thus far been separate pieces of work and try to figure out how they will talk to each other in the final drafting of the publication. Angie and Ryan spearhead this meeting, and Mike, Tuck, Drew, Christopher, and I get to sit back, postulate, and give our input. Something I hadn't give a lot of thought to as a writer, before this internship, was how photos are chosen to accompany a piece of text. Often times the writer doesn't get to make this decision, and it's really quite interesting to hear someone removed from the piece try to work out what should be it's focus. It's a good test of clear, centered writing.

We began our proofs for Cast 8am Friday morning, which turned out to be a nicer day than I had expected. Mike bought the whole office pizza, and everyone was stoked it was Friday, so the day passed quickly. I found lots of errors in the PDF mock-up, so it was refreshing to know that the work I was doing was actually useful. Sometimes it's hard to tell here. We will second proof the publication tomorrow at 8am.

O/B Week Fourteen

For the first time in a long time, I only spent one day on the weekend working on things for O/B and had a day off! I actually got to go out to Virginia City for their winter series Chautauqua and a NRDC-sponsored conservation banquet, which was a lot of fun... until my boyfriend got violently ill and I had to drive his manual (which I do NOT know how to drive) back to Bozeman so we could get him to urgent care. Lesson in that? Apparently fun comes at a cost. Or don't eat Virginia City cheesecake anymore. Either one.

I'm having a hard time remembering what I even did this past week in the office-- that's how thrilling my work has been lately. I mostly have been writing my articles for the edition, and working on small tasks like updating our social media and distribution things. I audited the spring edition article uploads (again) and finally have found those to be complete. If I never upload another thing online again, I will die happy.

I met with Mike to discuss a piece I wrote for Cast on hiking to fish at alpine lakes. He had a lot of critique for this particular piece. On his dual screens, he pulled his edited-final version up and my original side-by-side and discussed the changes he made. I found this incredibly helpful because I could see and hear the difference in the final version, and get a small explanation from Mike to reinforce the idea. Most of what he pointed out was so obvious to me that I couldn't believe what I had written originally. It was a good reminder to keep editing and to stop and ask myself "what work is this doing?" or "is this needed here?" since I have a habit of being verbose, and adding details that, though pretty, are non-functional.

During this same  meeting I was able to talk to Mike about my final days here. Looks like we'll officially end the internship May 1st, but I'll be coming in sporadically for a couple of weeks to help Tuck finish up the copy-editing and fact-checking for the summer edition. (UGH, I thought I might have gotten out of that one.) I also got to talk to Mike about writing for O/B after I'm gone as a paid writer, which he was game for, and we even discussed a few articles he's been wanting to get in the works that he thinks we could feature for the fall issue. Hopefully my first summer free from the binds of school is just angsty enough that I can bring myself to get going on that writing!

O/B Week Thirteen

You can tell it's been a busy few weeks, since I forgot to post last week! Things are rolling forward and with graduation on the horizon, deadlines are becoming more and more real. I have ten thousand things to do before May first and have started back up at my airline position, so I'm just continuously trying to check things off the list and keep my head above water.

Surprisingly, the internship feels almost like a break at this point. Don't get me wrong-- I still have an immense amount of work to do for O/B, but since the Cast copy-editing and fact-checking (the worst part of this gig) is now done, I'm just focusing on writing for now-- which is kind of nice! As I mentioned from the first week in April, Mike and Tuck assigned me a feature article for the summer edition on catch and release fishing. I have to admit, I was overwhelmed by the idea of the piece. Mike felt really strongly that we had something to prove by publishing it, so there was a lot of pressure on me to find the right kind of content. Just for background, they wanted me to look at the number of licenses sold in the state of Montana in a fishing year (there are more than FIVE types), and somehow calculate based off a now-outdated fishing pressure survey how many fish are likely to be dying as a result of catch and release, and decide whether it would be more ecologically beneficial to just operate on a bag limit premise. I'm sure you can see how quickly that becomes complicated, and just as easily inaccurate. I would have had a little less than three weeks to complete the research, conduct interviews, and write up the damn thing. 

Thank goodness they came to their senses. I'm not going to say that Mike and Tuck were crazy in thinking that I could reasonably get a project of that size done in that kind of time frame (not to mention the overlap with finals week and the completion of my capstone paper), but at the very least it was an unrealistic assignment. They tabled it for the fall issue and gave me a few other articles to write for summer, which has been the focus of most of my energy lately. 

I was assigned a small news and notes piece on the GLVT's guided walks, a single page spread covering the A.R.T. utility box project, a segmented article on trail food, including foraged and homemade foods, an energy bar comparison, and a profile of a few different energy goos. I am in charge of the Outlook again for the summer edition (yay!), and wrote two gear reviews for a pair of mountain biking gloves and my Scarpa trail running shoes.  It doesn't feel like as much writing as the spring edition did-- but then again, I'm settled in now and feel much more confident in the kind of work I'm doing. 

The most difficult part of the magazine right now is how hectic things feel. All the deadlines are culminating at the end of this internship, and though Mike has significantly pared down my to-do list here, I still find myself concerned with the amount of smaller, menial things I need to find the time to get done. I have several spreadsheets to work on by the first of the month as well as an intern-wide coupon contest , and the deadline for the summer edition is the 27th, Since we just got things sorted out with Cast, and the summer issue follows so closely there's really no break at all. 

Did I mention ANOTHER intern quit this week? Our video intern, Morgan left us since her work was sub-par. Only two more weeks to go. 

O/B: Week Tweleve

I have a thousand things to cover this week. It feels like a month has passed in a short five days.

This week was dedicated to copy-editing and clean-ups. Luckily, Cast is a smaller publication than O/B so the editing process isn't nearly as extensive. I edited my own work, then suffered through grammatically-inconsiderate work of the fly guides writing for this edition, and then finished up by reviewing the "final", reprinted articles that we will recycle into the 2015 edition. Next week will be the proofs.

Overall, I spent 9-5 on Monday editing and was in the office from 9-11:30 on Wednesday to finish the additional articles. Tuck sent me home with a few over the weekend that I finished on Easter Sunday. I spent Thursday evening working on the second round of hyperlink editing for Chris in the sales department, and finally got that in to him at 12:30am. Friday I worked on fixing the spring edition online article uploads-- I had forgotten to label about half of the pages with departmental headers (who would have thought that something so minute could mess up the entire organization of the site! Lesson? Attention to detail, always.) After I fixed those, Tuck did an audit of the winter article uploads which the intern before me (who quit) had uploaded. He was missing a lot of them, so it's my job to fix them. It's a busy week, and the next one coming even busier, but it's productive work. I just never want to fact-check again. Ever.

The meetings on Monday are what I want to talk about. I mentioned earlier we had three: the Spring post-mortem, the Cast alignment, and the summer idea meeting where we offer up our best potential drafts for the summer edition. I really liked the ideas I had, and left the meeting feeling confident about what I had suggested. I found out today Mike wants me to write a feature in the summer edition on the implications of Catch and Release fishing. Exciting! I'm a little bummed I won't get to write the things I wanted to, but it's a great opportunity to get my name headlined in the magazine. I need to discuss how long I'll be with O/B, since the internship requirements are coming quickly to a close. Three more weeks, give or take!

O/B: Week Eleven

This week at O/B has been nothing short of overloaded.

However, I did have a lot of chances to be productive and really work hard to get things done, which is always good practice (because, inevitably the "real" world will be just as demanding.) Wednesday was a day entirely spent plugging away at the article uploads that I've been on for the past couple weeks. The process is tedious and boring, but needs to get done. I spent a long day in the office Friday (9am-11:30pm) finishing these up, and damn it feels good to be done.

I was able to take a break on Friday to go out with another intern to MSU Friday to represent Outside Media Group for the incoming freshman. I ended up having a really great time talking with prospective students and getting to give advice about MSU, O/B, and the awesome valley we're all nestled in. I was surprised to notice some of the trends in questions I got, like most freshman wanting to now super close locations for recreation, probably because most won't have a car on campus. This means that I can use this kind of observation to better tailor the MSU Pocket Guide facebook posts to reflect the kind of thing freshman are going to be into, which potentially means more "friends", and more $$ for O/B. It was a rewarding experience, and gave me a much needed break from the hum-drum of working away at my desk in the office (8 hours there can be taxing).

Monday was the deadline for Cast, so I spent a good chunk of time this weekend working on the articles I wrote for the guide, and fact-checking our sidebars. This is a collaborative process with the sales team, which I realized can be tricky. Even though my deadline to get this stuff in was the 30th, the sales team didn't quite have all the ads laid out yet, so Tuck and I will have to wait. This can be more stressful for us, but as long as we can get the rest of the copy-editing done we should be okay.

Monday also brought an onslaught of meetings, an intern meeting with Mike and the post-mortem meeting for the spring edition, and then the summer issue idea session. Pizza and beer was had by all. I'll talk about how these went and what we discussed in next weeks' post.
For now, I must edit!

O/B: Week Ten

This is it.
The moment I've been waiting for since I dumped my picture-books into the bathtub as a six-year-old child, proclaiming I wanted "the real thing"; the moment I'd craved since that child grew into a bold teen who fawned over T.S. Eliot instead of T-Pain, since my fingers first found cathartic pleasure in stringing letters into lyrical phrases to say more powerful things than my mouth could even manage. The moment when I can call myself... a writer.
This is it.

The spring edition of Outside Bozeman is officially here, and I am officially published. My eight articles are not much, and they're neither the most beautiful pieces of writing I've produced, nor the most engaging, but they're out there for the world to see, and that's one hell of a foot in the door. The road could have been shorter, simpler, and less strenuous, for certain-- but I'm glad it was not, and I'm thankful for every mistake that now makes me a better, tighter writer.

BUT-- there simply isn't time to revel in the beauty of what's done... there's still so much more to do! Production deadline for Cast, the fishing guide, is set for the thirtieth of this month, and I have several articles to write for this publication, as well as a few other tasks before the craziness of copy-editing resumes next week.

In the "post-mortem" meeting for the 2014 Cast, I pitched a couple ideas that I'll get to write about in the 2015 edition. The one I'm most looking forward to is a piece on river stewards, where I'll get to highlight some of the great non-profits that work to keep Montana's rivers clean and healthy. I'm especially excited about this because it's the closest I think I can get to eco-crit/lit. with this internship. Though Cast isn't as big of a publication as O/B, it will be a nice challenge to see what I can produce in a limited space that's working within a niche with which I'm not as familiar (I'm sadly just a novice fisherwoman). The best part about this magazine though, is now that I've been through the production process with the O/B spring issue, Cast will be much easier to prepare for.

Right now it seems to be deadline week. Aside from the overwhelming amount of class work for MSU that I have due and my production deadline, I've been charged with article uploads for the spring edition. It's an incredibly tedious task, and I've been getting through the 128 page magazine at the rate of about 2-3 articles an hour. I've managed to work on uploads for four straight days, and am approaching the half-way point. It's slow progress, but it also teaches me to be careful and meticulous-- traits important to hone for the next round of copy-edits, and my own writing.

Other tasks this week on top of writing and uploads include checking the hyperlinks for the digital edition of O/B for the sales department, and working the booth for MSU Friday. I had a re-alignment meeting with Mike at the beginning of the week and thankfully he offered to give me an extension on a few excel spreadsheets he asked me to work through, so those are off my plate for now. Something he said to me in the meeting was nice to hear, "Ask for help before you sink, not after". I think too often with school and work, we feel like, in some way, we're not allowed to reach out when things become a struggle. Personally, I feel ashamed when I can't manage everything that's thrown at me, and I really hate asking for help in any way. But honestly, had I not taken the deadline extension when offered, I would have sacrificed the quality of the job I did-- which wouldn't help anyone. The lesson? Everyone gets overwhelmed, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT-- that's stepping up to the plate, even if it means admitting you need to take a step back.

This is a busy one, and I'm now certain that it's going to be a very long five weeks...

O/B: Week Nine

Mike graciously gave me a week off for spring break, which I took full advantage of by heading to the Netherlands for a couple of days and biking all around Amsterdam. Had a blast, but now back to the grind.

The magazine is done-- and it's incredibly rewarding to know that on Wednesday the months of hard work will be held in my hands, finished, and I'll be a published writer. After countless late night sessions, meticulous edits, and a slightly buzzed-for-creativity captioning session, production is done. I learned a lot about the publishing process, and I'm grateful for the experiences I've had here. I can look back and know that when I submit a query or am assigned an article for a future publication, I know what's happening on the other end of the process as well, which means I'll be familiar with ways to make it a little bit easier (like proper formatting!).

Out of all the writing I did for the spring edition of O/B, my raptor center article was the most important to me. I felt compelled to portray the center the way I experienced it, and it was the only article I wrote that required face-to-face communication. I felt obligated to "repay" Becky and Jordan for the great work they were doing in any way I could. In this case, through a well-written and thorough article. Well. In the process of all that editing, my eyes must have glazed over a few errors in the text. I made an awful mistake and called Jordan, the assistant director, Jason, and never caught the error. Luckily, Mike called me into his office on Monday and we went through the article, which by pure luck had be edited by a volunteer at the center who fixed the error and found a few others... like a bird named Chaco that I said "fluttered from perch to perch", but who, in fact, cannot fly. These small errors killed me. I'm a clean writer, and if I want to be a journalist or anything similar, there is no room for those kinds of mistakes. I have to work on tightening up my prose and fact-checking. Lesson learned. 

This week is reminiscent of my first here-- I'm in charge of uploading articles from the spring edition to our website. I remember how confusing and complicated this seemed to me in the beginning, and now-- thought it is still incredibly time consuming and equally frustrating at points-- I feel like I can take it on no problem. It's cool to see that kind of organic growth goin' on. 

O/B: Week Eight

Layout's were done this week, meaning we have a full mock-up of the magazine, and the editorial team segments it into three parts based on page number. We then use Adobe to go through it digitally (though Mike does it all by hand) and look for aesthetic problems, like too much white space or mal-aligned photos to text, as well as another round of copy-edits to be sure nothing has slipped by us as far as the writing goes. Each editor (there are four, if you include me) looks over each section, with Mike doing the final approval of our comments. We will then repeat this process again (tomorrow) when the creative team has finished their corrections. We also have a meeting today where we will brainstorm titles and subheadings for the articles, which will be worked into the final edition.

This past week was unpredictable. There were a lot of assignments for the magazine that were last-minute, like a few sentence captions for photos, or fact-checking assignments. The proofing is tedious work, but it keeps me on my toes and makes me more alert to the small errors that pop up in my own writing.

We begin our post-mortem sessions for the Cast Fishing Guide today, which means assignments will begin coming later this week. I just keep telling myself I'm halfway there!

O/B: Week Seven

This week was a slow one, comparatively. Turned in two blog posts-- one on winter riding and one on  for the MSU Pocket Guide blog on study snacks to avoid gaining weight in the winter. They both came out rather quickly and easily, but necessitated much editing.

I had a good lesson this week-- Mike and I went over the study snacks blog, and got into a minor dispute over the nature of the type of food I chose: mostly healthy, and unintentionally meat-free items. I wholeheartedly disagreed with his critique, but it took me a while to realize that wasn't the point-- and the change was then made, and the article published. Respect the editor, respect your boss, they have the final say.
After all of this, I had a few additional changes to make before publishing the blog on a Friday night, so I made them and went home, forgetting about it. Saturday morning, while glancing through the online version, I realized that the edit session with Mike hadn't been saved, and the published version reflected the original draft of the article... and all it's errors. I had to go back through it quickly and try to remember everything Mike had corrected. In a way, it felt like a blessing in disguise because it tested my ability to retain what Mike had taught me and spot those small errors in the text again. He hasn't mentioned anything to  me, so I think I must have caught (nearly) all of them.

Copy-edits for spring are done, and now we wait for the end of the week to proofread and finalize the layout. Assignments for Cast will soon be allocated, and then we will repeat the process. This week one of the other editorial interns quit, which I have mixed opinions about. It means less competition, but now more work for me.

Today I'm bogged down with administrative tasks-- sorting through excel spread sheets, de-duping, updating, organizing, etc. It  makes my head hurt, and is completely uninteresting, as well as rather hard to understand and make decisions about because of the nature of the material. It's frustrating and slow work, but it's sort of nice to have a break from the editing and writing... for a little while.

O/B: Week Six

Stressful week. Copy edits, re-writes, more deadlines.

The week was a slow one for all those not in the editorial department. We're getting closer and closer to our production dates, so articles are reaching the final stages of their drafting. Once an article has been written, it becomes a draft which is then fact-checked (by an intern), and goes through it's first round of copy-editing. A second round is done by an out-of-house editor who checks for content consistency, and then the drafts are sent to the managing editor to be copy-edited again, laid-out in the appropriate category, and for any changes to be made. These drafts are then approved by Mike, who does the final round of editing and sends the finished article to the writer for consent. This process ends this coming week, so the art editors can have the week to work on creative layout and photography. Then, next week, we will begin proofreads of the mock-up, and the issue will be go through the final stages of editing before print.

This week I did some editing, then some writing. I've been assigned two more blog posts, and had to work on the Outlook, a more creative photo-accompanied piece for the beginning of the mag., as well as some rewrites for the articles I already turned in.

Things are still going well overall, and every day I seem to learn something more about the language that I didn't know (like "cleanup" is one word when used as a noun!). I feel stressed about the amount of work I know I have coming up (Mike assigns to-do lists so we are always responsible for deadlines, which is stressful), on top of school, but I am motivated by knowing this is my last semester and that this work will be paying off in the long run.

More to come.

O/B: Week Five

This week at Outside Bozeman was one focused on reflection.

My tasks have been short and focused, as I'm copy-editing and fact checking the 60+ articles we've received for the spring issue. I've found I really enjoy the process-- it fits in well with my natural inclination for organization-- but it makes me painfully aware of how many disorganized writers there are. How on earth do you not realize that a link like this --> (http:\\www.nocommonsense.com/outside-bozeman-cannot-prin?t-this\345869799199) 

CAN NEVER be printed in an issue? It's a big pet peeve of mine, having to fix all of the errors because the writer was too lazy.

Which brings me to formatting. On what planet is it okay to write in Comic Sans? What magazine have you written for previously where you didn't include a by-line, or word count? Why would you put three spaces when beginning a new sentence? Or type in grey font? The benefit of doing all this work and experiencing these errors (and how much they annoy me) means that the next time I go to have something published or to send a query to a magazine, I can make sure I avoid these same problems and KEEP CONSISTENT... because I know how valuable time is for an editor. 

Each day of editing-- each article, really-- teaches me something new, and my style guide is now covered in ink with amendments I find necessary to make as I wade through the waters of compound adjective hyphenation, dangling modifiers, and serial commas. I know so much more already than when I began, but I still find myself questioning the most basic of things-- like capitalization of certain proper nouns, like the Headwaters, or Missouri River. I wonder if I'll be wondering about this stuff for the rest of my life... 

Otherwise things are moving along, as we come closer and closer to our production deadline. I had another small article (a sidebar, actually) added to my piece, and got some positive feedback from the editors! Though tomorrow is another day... 

O/B: Week Four

It's been about a month now since I began with Outside Bozeman, and we just keep on keeping on.

This Monday was my first production deadline with the editors-- which means all my articles had to be ready to hit the press: researched and written, fact-checked, and copy-edited. For the most part, I feel like the seven pieces I was in charge of have come out well, though I do feel like they don't do much. I can't wait for a chance to write what needs to be written, but this whole experience is about paying my dues so I can learn how to climb to the top.

That being said, I learned some valuable lessons via the process of writing these pieces. First, I held an interview with the Montana Raptor Conservation Center, a local non-profit, and was surprised how very different it went than I had been anticipating. In my mind and my experiences, interviews always consisted of a relatively formal process where questions are laid out (though certainly flexible, as good interviewers should move where the speaker takes them) and there is a certain level of expectation from both parties on the Q/A format. But when I walked in to the Center and met Jason and Becky-- the only two paid employees at the Center-- I quickly realized I needed to ditch my spiral notebook and just listen. Thank god I had picked up a recorder the evening before because being able to go back and transcribe the conversation was the single most helpful tool for the completion of the piece.

Becky took me from cage to cage and introduced me to each of the recovering birds. It was easy to see the clear respect and awe she had for the wildness of the raptors, and from the way she spoke about them I sensed how rewarding being able to release these birds again must be for her. I met owls of all sizes and vultures, golden and bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and several smaller raptors that I only know by the names Nekka and Watson, the friendly buggers-- Nekka liked to roost on my head as Becky showed me around.

I could talk about the experience there for longer than I care to here, but I found it really interesting that what I had thought I would walk away with in terms of content was so far from what I found most interesting. I was so captivated by the raptors and what these two incredible individuals are doing that I wanted to focus on giving them something in turn for what the birds gave me while I was around them. I wrote the piece much more heavily geared toward advocacy, making clear that the Center is a 501c3 and that they offer some really unique opportunities to the community in terms of their education courses. None of my work has been reviewed yet by the editors, so I don't know if I hit the nail on the head or nailed myself in the head quite yet... but I have faith in the quality of my work-- which counts for something, right?

I find that the office dynamic is rather engaging at Outside Bozeman. There are several other interns, two other editorial who I see and work with frequently. For the most part we are separate in terms of our work, but there are smaller mutual projects that we collaborate on. I find that I seem to be the most serious of the three of us, which has proven beneficial since I also seem to have the most responsibility. It's nice to have partners to ask the stupid questions, or who understand when you just need to sigh and say "fuck" every three minutes because you have so much to do that you can't keep straight in your head what to work on next. There's also an aire of competition between us, which seems to help keep me motivated and gives me a place to compare others' work and my own-- don't think this happens nearly enough in a classroom setting.

Again, I am staying hopeful and positive. There is another copy-edit deadline rolling in on Friday, meaning the rest of this week will be ten hour days working non-stop on the 60 submitted pieces for the spring issue. Vamos!

O/B: Week Three

Despite the warming weather, this week has brought with it a storm... of new projects, responsibilities, and learning experiences. Though I know much of the work I'm doing is rather menial, I find that I'm really enjoying my experiences with the magazine. I'm swimming in assignments, but I am staying afloat. It's an inseparable part of my nature that I can't help but feel invigorated by the stress of a deadline and motivated by the pressure from the editors to excel.

This past week kicked off with an art show at Sola cafe, to celebrate and thank the contributors to the magazine and also functioned as a meet-and-greet for all the writers and new staff, all focused around the issue-published art from the past 15 years of production (bonus: all profits went to Friends of Hyalite, local NPO, to help  keep the road accessible). I met Parks Reece, a local artist whose work was as energetic and vibrant as he was. The show was also a great opportunity to chat with the team outside of the office, and to get to know the editors a bit better over a few glasses of wine. Mike brought in a wonderful array of salads (roasted zucchini and goat cheese, yumm!) and lots of pizza, while Sola supplied us with beer, wine, or hard-cider to make the night seem even smoother. I can't speak for everyone, but I had a surprisingly great time in such a lively atmosphere and found myself reluctant to leave. 

Once we were all loosened up, the week at the office felt more natural than previous days. I'm spending 32+ hours a week in house and find it nearly impossible not to check my work e-mail even when I'm not. But on that note, I'm getting more and more involved and learning a lot about the way the magazine is set up. As a writer and editor, I'm responsible for proofreading, fact-checking, copy-editing my own work... as well as the 60 submitted articles for the spring edition. Heavy load? Yes. Looming deadline? Yes. Capable of completion? Yes. And as I found out today, hard work does not go unrewarded. 

I've now completed a blog post for Outside Bozeman online, and have turned in my first two articles ahead of deadline. I'm in the process of writing an additional five that range from charities to raptors (and beer), creative writing to infographics. Despite the stress from researching and writing, it's pretty cool to be able to have a finished product, however small the piece, and have it be yours- through and through. Too often for school projects it's easy enough to scrape by with something half-finished. But whats becoming clear at O/B is if I'm putting my name on it, it damn well better be great. 

In my first "this is where we stand" meeting with Mike, we went over to-do lists and he explained in more depth some of the tasks I'll have after we meet the deadline for the spring issue. My brain has mentally blocked out some of the tasks farther in the future, but some that I am excited for are the monthly blog assignments where it's mandatory that I have an "outdoor adventure". On the list is fat biking, ranger-guided wilderness walks, skydiving, Yellowstone snowmobiling adventures, and many other thrilling options. I couldn't be more excited! It's just now a matter of finding the damn time to adventure then write... 

At the same meeting, Mike also had edited more of my work and we were able to go through it together which was so rewarding. His feedback made a lot of sense to me, and I could actually anticipate some of the changes he was going to make, which means I'm progressing as an editor and learning to be a cleaner writer. Hell yeah! Some of the things we discussed were balanced personification, or the idea of feminizing the landscape to build a relationship if I also masculine it in places as well. The eco-critic in me cringes, but I see the relevance and utility of this decision. 

It became clear to me that I need to work on precise punctuation, since many of the errors were ill-placed semi-colons or dashes that had a large effect on the way the work read overall.

So much happens in a week that it becomes really difficult for me to sum it all up in a blog. Overall, the tone of the week was productive, with Tuck and Mike both checking like rather curt mother-hens to make sure I was on point with my work. I'm looking forward to reaching this deadline and moving on to new assignments, and excited to see what this next week brings since my writing will be on the line.

O/B: Week Two

There's a lot of fucking stress involved with this internship.

Week one can be summarized as... hopeful. Week two? Terrified. I have turned in a blog post for O/B that focused on the Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Bozeman on the 21. There were a lot of potent editorial changes that helped strengthen my writing, and I'm really grateful for the opportunity to grow in those ways. I know I need to be careful to always use the oxford comma, and I need to work on tightening up my language in many ways-- starting with OMITTING NEEDLESS WORDS. This work space will function as a practice field.

I still hold fast and strong to my opinion that the editors are on my side (in the end). Mike and Tuck both have been super helpful and thorough while explaining some of my mistakes, which I really appreciate.

So far this week I was assigned my articles for the spring issue. I have five main articles (I won't go into complete details here for fear of infringement). They focus on running, drinking, wilderness areas, raptor conservation and the outlook, which is a photo-accompanied piece. I should also have a gear review on the horizon, but I can't comprehend that quite yet. These are due by a deadline that makes me queasy, Feb. 2nd. With a full semester load, capstone, 2 jobs? Bring it...

______________________

Some things I'm learning:

1. Don't ask needless questions. If you can find the answer in some way yourself, do that. Always.

2. Don't assume you know more than anyone.

3. Anticipating something will only bring problems. Example: There was a clarification issue about the publication of an online article. After not hearing back from either of the editors for 30 minutes, and dealing with a time-sensative article, I published. Mistake. Not only did this bring me enormously spiked stress levels (on the night of my birthday, to top it all off) but it made me look like an idiot, sending out chains of inquisitive emails and finally taking the wrong action upon myself. Lesson learned, I suppose.

4. USE AND LOVE YOUR STYLE GUIDE: I wrote my first article and wanted to shoot myself when half the corrected errors from the publisher were right in front of me in the guide. Reliability-0.

5. The single return is the best keyboard short-cut in the books. Shift + enter. Badaboom.

Today we began looking at the beginning steps of copy-editing for the spring issue. Thank goodness for less OCD interns. And vodka.

Outside Bozeman: Beginnings

I am officially an intern with Outside Bozeman magazine. That's a pretty cool phrase to be able to say. This is truly the beginning of something, and as I have my first few "days" behind me, I can say I still remain relatively optimistic about this. 

Despite several... warnings about taking on this particular magazine and editor/publisher, Mike, I haven't felt anything more than nervousness upon my first day's completion. I think Mike is a great writer and editor, and a hard boss, which most likely will make me both a better writer and stronger person. Though I don't expect this to be easy in any way, my first few assignments have  been received with little to no kickback, and I find myself anticipating what's to come next. 

My first project was assigned by Mike upon accepting me as an intern -- I was to take a "How Far Will You Go" photo in the Dominican Republic (I was going for a few days) as well as submit ideas for the spring issue of the magazine. The next issue was set to be released in mid March, so the sunny environment of the Dominican helped me get in the mood to be thinking about spring in Bozeman. I submitted a series of ideas, of which I'm most looking forward to a running guide. It still seems strange, when paging through the most recent issue of Outside Bozeman, that the ideas I just submitted could be published, immortalized in print, on the pages I'm turning. My words may take up space there some day soon... that's the hope, right? What I find most appealing about the suffrage I know will go into these next few months, is that at the end of it all, I'll be a published writer. That's worth more than anything they can throw at me. 

Speaking of, my next few assignments have been tedious and, I'm sure, designed to inundate me with boring, administrative tasks. Chris, the sales manager, gave me the job of paging through the online edition of the winter issue and fault-checking the hyperlinks. I needed to consider both placement of the link on the page and the effectiveness of the hyperlink itself. After meticulously checking 128 pages of the issues (~140 hyperlinks) and having hand written their placements, I noticed an attachment on the email from Chris. I really wish I had seen it three hours earlier, as he included all the information I have been writing down manually, as well as specific locations he wanted the links to be. So, first lesson learned: always double check everything, or you end up wasting time. 

I met with Mike last night and got a key to the office, a work email, O/B swag, etc., but the most exciting moment was when we sat down and he ripped apart my resume and sample writings. I actually loved every minute of it because it's such an invaluable experience to be able to sit down with an editor and hear first hand what he liked and didn't like and be able to utilize his experiences to better my writing. Though he categorized much of my writing as verbose, he said he was willing to continue reading because he enjoyed my style (score!).

In this first and quick meeting, I learned the differences between hyphens, en dashes and em dashes, and became embarrassingly aware of my tendency to be inconsistent in voice and tone. Mike helped me look through some of my writing about the Patagonian dam systems and pointed out choice words that were too strong, that carried too much of an agenda, and he helped me hear how words like beautiful and intricate carried two different implications. Honestly, I learned a lot in just this first meeting which gives me hope for those that will follow. I've started what I'm calling a "survival guide" to editing, and trying to update it each day when I learn something from this experience. Today I found E.B.White through the mouth of Zinsser to be most encouraging " You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And be willing to defend what you've written " (On Writing Well 298). 

Let the obsession begin. 

A Root Movement to a ‘Green’ Interweb

For years now we have been actively using the Internet, steadily learning to incorporate emerging technologies to ascertain levels of multimodality in our daily lives. In many ways, the Internet has redefined our landscape as writers... but it's important not to forget from where we draw our inspiration-- our real, tangible landscape, our environment. The organic world is a source of wonder, a space of natural phenomena, and almost always cognitively separate from the seeming sterility of the technological world. But with the evolution of our resources, technology has grown and is impacting the environment. As writers, we are faced now with more than the world, with cyberspace and multimodality. If the Internet is a space of intertextuallity, then why is the environment not yet a text? Our knowledge base has potential to become infinte and as our modern western society grows increasingly more digital, there are decisions that need to be made about the way in which we utilize these new tools in direct inter-relation to the living world around us.

Kevin Slavin said quite eloquently in his TED talk on 'How Algorithms Shape Our World' that "there's an uneasy collaboration between nature and man, and now, there's this third corroboratory force". Slavin claims it's algorithms, but in a way it very much can be seen as technology as a whole. The Internet, multimodal education, new tools, and technologies are constantly shaping the way we view the space we live in. Not only do they shape how we see and interact with the world,but often silently, they change it.

Since the digital economy is already using a tenth of the world's energy, to avoid industrial scale damage to the environment we must ask questions now that will set media use on a sustainable path. How can we expect to see the Internet, and the companies that work within it, grow more renewable? We must ask what we are doing to head down a path of environmental consciousness, and what we will continue to do in the future as our world becomes more dependent on technology? 

Like any growing industry, profit will weigh in significantly for businesses and the scale will be tipped toward more development, leaving the environment to assume a heavy debt in the name of progress. That is, unless we become informed consumers, users and most of all, writers so we can use this connectivity to find voices to speak for marginalized entities. The use of multimedia is now an undeniable part of our lives, with the Americans not only watching an average of 5 hours of television per night, but 50 percent of them using another form of media while they watch (Marketing Land). 

Figure 1: Graph of multimedia use, 2014

With all of this multi-tasking (figure 1), consumption of media is at an all-time high. We, as a people, have more access to online tools and resources, and we, as writers, are not doing enough to use these resources to advocate for more environmental practices. The click of a mouse is no longer needed- phones have become just as powerful sources for information. But, what's in an iPhone? Apple released an environmental mission statement saying on their site, "We have a big responsibility to leave a smaller footprint". So far, the company has made (relative) good on this, and looking to figure 2 we can see that the amount of energy needed to run a mac today is 97 percent less than their first release in 1998-- a step in the right direction. On their website they go on to claim that they understand the scale of which their global product emits greenhouse gases contributing to climate change-- but as consumers, are we willing to let this be enough? At what point do we stop holding companies responsible for their products? And what about the mass amount of energy it takes to run something like the Internet in the first place?

Figure 2, Apple energy consumption 1998-today (apple.com)

Internet and media use is growing at such an exponential rate-- unlike any other industry we have seen-- that it is now critical that we demand companies and consumers to be actively liable for the unseen degradation,before action becomes virally overdue. We cannot separate our ability to be multimodal and the environmental consequences. 

To understand this paradigm, we first must ask what, exactly, is multimodality? How did this term come to be used, and why was there a vernacular need? According to the glossary of multimedia terms, it can be defined as:

Look very literally here at the use of the phrase 'spatial aspects of interaction and environments, and the relationship between these'. The glossary opens up multimodality broadly, including elements like environment that are often forgotten when considering implications of new ideas or methodologies. This is key to understanding the whole picture-- like any cultural shift, certain aspects become marginalized and in human history this has meant that the environment becomes nothing more than a commodity. Though there are recent efforts to reconcile this type of thinking on a small level, not enough is being done to prevent it from perpetuating. One of the largest contributors is a hidden one-- the Internet. No one 'owns' it, so who can we hold accountable? How about the networks?

The Internet, despite the way it often feels, is still ‘new’ in broad considerations. As Anil Dash explains in his talk at the Good Experience Live (GEL) conference, the Internet is a 'new' tool, and it connects us to widely better networks than we could ever manage without the World Wide Web. Dash is compelling, almost pleading with the audience, in an attempt to open the eyes of a world that has opportunity hooked, yet seems uninterested in reeling it in. It's with these new tools that we have the absolute privilege and opportunity to be informed, to know what is happening in the world around us. But what's really important here is that these tools also give us the chance and the platform as writers to demand more accountability, more responsibility for actions that may contribute to the destruction of the environment. To do this though, it is imperative that we fully understand the level of gross proliferation that our tools, namely the Internet as a whole, have already experienced, so we can prepare ourselves for the level of growth that is still on the horizon. If we can trace the roots of its past and fully grasp how much has changed at such a rapid pace we will be able to situate ourselves more accurately in the future, and partake in fundamental changes for the use and creation of multimedia. If we look to Figure 1, a timeline of notable contributors to the rise of the Internet, we can see how quickly multimodality emerged and locate the places where this technology has shifted shape over the infinitely small span of its existence. 

Figure 3: The Internet- A Timeline. 
Be sure to roll your mouse over each event, click individually and to scroll completely through the interactive features. Utilize hyperlinks by opening them in a new window or tab. 

(You can access this timeline externally here-- check out the list option on the bottom right to see the timeline displayed as an indexed record) 

Image sources actively linked. Stat. sources: Infoplease, UNCP
WC: 1081, created by  LBrayton

All these changes, all this growth, what does it mean for the environment? The unfortunate reality is expressed in the video below from Greenpeace, "How Dirty is Your Data?", and it's a shocking truth. Right now, as we participate in media culture, we are degrading our environment. As we write and post and blog and tweet, we are a part of the problem. Watch the video to hear to what extent.

On the timeline, take note of the entry in December of 1996, a mere 18 years ago was the now mega-mogul Google's inception. We see this same sort of 'boom' with popular sites like Facebook or YouTube in the timeline. But in less than 20 years, Google has expanded from a base of 10,000 queries per day to almost 47,000 searches a second today. The changes in the company have been immense, and the shifts in energy consumption had no choice but to grow with the brand. Within the last ten years, Google has made it a clear initiative (and business venture) to run their data centers off of sustainable energy. They claim "data centers are designed to use as little energy as possible" using temperature controls, recycling water for cooling, and renewable energy to help power their facilities (google.com/green/efficiency). In fact, the company has invested over $1.5 billion in renewable projects, like wind and solar energies. One of the most impacting projects that Google has taken on is their SunPower energy investment which helps install solar panels in residential homes so that the average American is more apt to act on green energy by making cost is less of a factor in decision making. Despite a long list on Google's website of their green efforts, only 35% of Google's total electricity is renewable (google.com).

Figure 4: Google Energy Distribution (Google.com)

With all the money and resources that Google is investing in other companies, why do they not operate at 100% renewable energy? They note that they offset or "neutralize" the remainder of their carbon footprint through some of the projects they fund, but is this trade-off fair to the environment? Can we shrug off responsibility through displacement?

It's easy to assume that technology is a relatively 'clean', after all there's no direct environmental harm, right? No, we're just using the Internet. We're just sending a text message, just googling images of David Beckham (Google even has a chart of global interest him over time...). But when four billion users are simultaneously browsing the web, the energy consumption is multiplied by that same 4 billion. If the video above didn't put it in perspective, the difference in energy globally between something as small as those who use Yahoo email and those who use Gmail is equivalent to the entire annual electricity consumption of the country Barbados (inhabitat.com)-- no small feat.

The type of scale we are considering here is so large, it's virtually unfathomable. Though these companies are keeping sustainability in the back of their codes of conduct, the truth of the matter is, as we can see from the recent past, the Internet and media as a whole is growing too rapidly for this to be sufficient; for these efforts to be enough. In order to be truly sustainable, leading companies like Apple, who supply the technology we use to connect, and Google, which dominates the form through which we share and receive information, have to be held accountable at the same pace that their field is expanding. This means no carbon footprint, 100% renewable operating systems, effort and innovation. And, as much as we don't want to realize it, we have to be accountable, too as consumers and participants. That means writers need to produce text that ask the kinds of questions we have been asking, and compose projects like Greenpeace's video that will get people, and companies, thinking. We need an environmental call to action. If we fail, and it's arguable that we already are, the environment yet again will suffer the consequences of human oversight. Surely, since we have the knowledge and the tools, and now thanks to the vast Internet, the networks, this will not remain an unresolved problem.

Ted Nelson once said "The four walls of paper are like a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others". If are rooted in conventional thinking and boxed in by paper prisons, we have been handed the tools that can sever these restraints and immerse us in a wider world than we could have possibly imaged 20 years ago. But in this revelation and progression, we mustn't  forget our role as writers to speak for those who cannot- to give voice to environmental concerns and to rise up to ask for change when it is undoubtedly needed. Everything is connected: this Earth, this virtual space, this text: they are the words, they are 'the thing itself' (Woolf).  

Infographic Reflection

   As you can tell, the infographic assignment was close to my heart. I had jokingly responded to Cicily's comment about making hers on her English Bull dog with a quip about  my pitbull... but in the end I couldn't get the idea out of my head and the more I thought about it the more perfect it seemed. I incuded a pre-infrographic collage of my puppy, Badger, just to show that the ad was true! I really love the breed of dog so I felt compelled to speak for them in this case. 

   I was conflicted at first on whether or not to make it an Adopt-a-Pit spiel or something that just proved wrong the many myths surrounding the breed, or something simply educational. In the end, I tried to make a mix of all three, which I think sort of convoluted the graphic in a small way. I made a list of some of the things I really wanted people to know-- like the different kinds of pitbulls that make up the breed, but I also wanted people to be able to relate to the ad if they still didn't care for pits. The most common anti-pitbull argument is that pitbulls are violent and aggressive animals, which could not be more false (they are the most cuddly breed too but no one bothers to acknowledge that. They have up to thirteen different dogs categorized as a Pits which make them statistically easy to blame), so I wanted to go about proving this 'wrong' and that's why I included the sidebar on ridiculous things that would kill you first before a Pitbull became a threat to your life. I thought the formatting on this section was understandable, but Doug mentioned that it seemed broken up for the readers eye and after this was pointed out I can understand how that would be the case. 

  I'd never made an infographic before, and there are so many online resources that really made it a breeze, though formatting the actual aesthetics and making decisions on where to put text and how much, when to choose between image and text, how to balance the overall result, were all decisions that are very similar to those made in the writing process-- or even more complex! I really enjoyed this assignment and am happy overall with the work I did. 

Anderson, McGonigal, Priebatsch, and Dash- Video Networking

I've grown up to be technologically challenged, for this generation at least. My boyfriend frequently plays Grand Theft Auto (GTA) where you literally run around with an armory of weapons, killing civilians and stealing their wheels to outrun the police. I've been 'game' enough to attempt a few rounds, and just recently I was able to use my left and right hands independently from one another to successfully choose an grenade launcher, blow up and murder a woman on the sidewalk, step over her bloody body and steal her Ubermacht Oracle. What an accomplishment. I am NOT by any means 'a gamer' or someone who is drawn to spending my time in that manner-- but I don't attribute this to the concept of video games, instead, to the genre they've constructed.

It seemed to me that video games tended to fall into a few categories-- violent 'war' games like World of Warcraft and League of Legends, 'Epic Quest' games like the popular Skyrim and time-passers like Nintendo's Mario Brothers. But, before you jump down my throat, I'll admit games are evolving, and apparently evolving us right along with them. While I was constructing this blog post, I came across a wikipedia article that you can read HERE  that took me on an enlightening journey through all the incredibly detailed genres of video games (seriously, from Beat 'em-Up-Hack-and-Slash to Christian games). This got me thinking, what is it that I missed about the video game craze? Where does my aversion to gaming come from? Have I been conditioned to view it as a time waster? Is it because I'm a female? Is it because of the kind of learner I am? Because I just wasn't exposed to them in my childhood? Because I'm not good at them now and feel discouraged?

I really don't have the answers, but when thinking more critically about it I think the popularity has something to do with the same reason we love movies and books, the stories they tell-- only in the online game, you have the ability to manipulate those stories and essentially, create them. Huffington Post has an interesting article on the benefits of gaming, which has been popping up more and more in all social contexts lately. This article  is really, really worth the time reading through: there are some shocking benefits that line up very closely with what McGonigal had to say in her TEDx talk. She mentioned that gaming could be the "future survival of humankind" and sited a really interesting mythology of Herotitus and what games were potentially able to do for his community so long ago. McGonigal was engaging and worked well with the other talks we were to watch and learn from. I particularly liked Anderson, who claimed the opportunities we have gained from Dash's 'better tools, and better networks' have allowed for massive spread of ideas through the flexibility of medium on the web. He says, "that primal medium that your brain is exquisitely wired for has gone global", imagine that! From the 'evolution of dance' via the internet, to scientists on Jove spreading experimental details, to the other thousands of people spreading data and responding online, that internet has opened (and that's his key word) a full cycle of learning framed by the presence of our ever growing population.

In an attempt to better understand the potential for gaming and the influence gamers could have on our global community, I thought I should prode a gamer myself and see what I could discover and learn from their experience. I talked to Montana State University student Dillon Bauernfeind, a junion in Sustainable Bioenergy systems, and a 'former' gamer.

An Interview With a Gamer: Dillon Bauernfeind, MSU student

1. What do you like best about gaming? What's your favorite game?
D: It [gaming] helps me to pass the time and it's amusing. It can be really interactive, too. I really like the motion games like 'Connect' on Xbox360 that lets your body be the controller. It lets you be active and gets you up and burning calories. I like both types equally, but Call of Duty is my favorite. Shooting and killing is fun in the game because it's sort of outside the normal realm-- that sounds sociopathic- but it let's you do things in another reality.

2. At what age did you begin playing video games or online games?
D: I got a original Nintendo when I was 8, that had fun games that required movement like Duck Hunter where you shoot ducks that fly across the screen with a plastic gun. It was pretty cool but I didn't play it a lot, I was outside a lot as a kid skiing and what not. I wasn't huge on gaming then but then I got a PS2 for Christmas when I was 11 or 12, which had racing games like car racing and dirt bike racing and a James Bond series of shooter games. Those were my fucking favorite. It was first person shooter so you got to pretend to be 007.
L: What is 'first person shooter'? 
D: First person is the perception of you being the person, the character, the guy with the gun. Third person shooter games like Halo are third person shooter where you control the character but you watch from a removed aspect.
L: When did you get more into gaming? Did you collaborate?
D: When I was 15 or 16 in high school I used some money I made over the summer to get an Xbox360 console with Call of Duty 1-6. I played with friends that I would see at school and we'd set something up after [school] to play together. Most of the time we would be problem solving because we would have to come up with solutions to tactical scenarios like if the enemy is coming one way, we needed to decide if it was worth it to walk around and flank them from a different side. It's pretty social. I was less into it after high school though, played a little in college but not as frequently because I didn't have a lot of money to buy new games and there was a sort of fading of interest too.

3. How do you feel when playing your favorite game? When you are winning? Losing?
D: Games for me are pretty mindless, I don't really get emotional. There's a small bit of gratitude and disappointment when I'm playing but I don't notice it too much.  I actually think I'm emotional watching movies. I'm not super invested in the game, but enough invested that I think it's worthwhile to play. Like, if you're going to watch TV anyway you might as well play a video game and be more engaged than just observing.

4. Do you ever think about other things you could be doing while gaming? Does it help you relieve stress, organize your thoughts, ect.? Do you ever experience the opposite (more stressed, more chaotic)?
D: I can definitely see how some people are but I'm not invested enough in the game to feel that emotional pull. It does chill me out sometimes though. Some people take it really seriously, probably because they really like it and it's a good escape, an alternate reality.

5. Is the plot of the game an important aspect to you? Does the story-line matter to you as a gamer?
D: Call of Duty has a really complex story. It helps give me reason to be playing, keeps it addictive because you're working toward a goal and you want to reach it. Only trouble is, like with Skyrim, that game is too long, too complex maybe, and I get burnt out and it's not really fun anymore.

6. Have you ever been in a situation where gaming has helped your everyday life? 
D: Games are nice because you can be isolated in your room but still sort of be socializing. The ultimate laziness- you can be kicking it with your friends in your boxers without having them see. I haven't ever really felt like games have really helped me, but I've never thought about it before. I think they do help you socialize though because you're interacting with people in an intimately removed way... talking and using a simulated character to portray your actions. Kinda cool.

7. Will you encourage your children to play the kinds of video games you play?
D: Ehh, no. They games I play are violent. I won't encourage it but I won't restrict it. I'll definitely stick to the guidelines, the rating system of ages on the games. I didn't start playing "kill games" until I was 12 or 13 which are rated T for thirteen and up. I would let my kids play those when they're old enough.

8. The company Leap Frog makes "educational" video games for kids ages 3+. Do you think there is an age where it's 'too early' for a child to play a video game? -->  ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pov3VnPk_BY )
D: No, I think they are really an educational tool. The educational games I've played like the school sponsored ones we would play in class were pretty entertaining and helped me focus with my ADHD. I think the games that are meant for these kids are great, but they need to be intermixed. Like if you're helping teach your kid to read, it shouldn't be all of one or the other.

9. If you could give one reason to encourage others to play video games, what would it be? Any negative reason you can think of? 
D: Video games can be addicting. Play in moderation. Too much is too much, and just right is optimal- when you're not thinking about the game outside of playing it.



Notes on the videos:

McGonigal-

3 billion hours a week of gameplay for the future survival of humankind
Idea of constant feedback- collaborative online environments (satisfaction of virtual world)
Evolving to be a more collaborative and hearty species (10,000 hours 'theory of success' virtuoso)
What exactly are gamer's getting good at? -- McGonigal argues Urgent Optimism (desire to act immediately combined with the hope that you can be sucessful)
Social relationships (playing games with others makes us like them better)
Blistful Productivity (happier working hard, optimized as human beings)
Epic Meaning (awe-inspiring missions)
Trying to make the real world work more like a game -- Herotitus (famine in the kingdom of Lydia)-- trying to escape real world
gamer's as a real world resource

Priebatsch-
"This world is social, the next world is gaming"

Thompson 6-10

There's so much to talk about in these chapters from Clive Thompson's book, Smarter Than You Think. Thompson moves sequentially from examples of progressive collaboration to the benefits of incorporating multimedia and technology in schools, an effect called 'ambient awareness', to the collective unification of the world via the internet. Thompson very clearly is advocating heavily for the incorporation of multi-media and cites many examples of positive change due to technological interaction. Though I agree, mostly, with his points I can't help but desire a concession to the 'other side'. Plenty of groups advocate heavily against advancements in technology and there is a particularly large movement to dissuade the incorporation of technology in school environments. Not to mention the significant implications that technology as a whole has for the environment and both human social and physical health. ( check some opinions on that out here: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26295-is-modern-technology-killing-us ) I think by choosing to not encompass the entirety of the situation, I think Thompson weakened his argument. How would he dispute these arguments? Since technology is fairly 'new' and ever-changing, is it safe/fair to say the benefits out way the negative effects when we aren't fully sure of what those may be, 100%, yet?

I pulled out a lot of quotes while reading, but I wanted to share a few and the questions that they sparked me to ask: 

"When you gaze with wild surmise upon the Pacific of strangeness online, you confront the astonishing diversity of human passion"(153). 

- Thompson talks here about how the online community allows us to foster "strangeness" in the sense that we have more freedom to express obscurity and find acceptance. In a way, the internet allows us to have a world without boarders and an environment that is malleable. With increased connectivity and collaboration, our sense of place is infinitely larger. What sort of environmental implications does this disconnection with our tangible place create?

"But a strongly worded opinion-- the core of an op-ed-- is not subject to consensus. This is why collective thinking online also tends to fail when it attempts an aesthetic creation"(159). 

- How interesting to think that creativity tends to be opinion-based and therefore nearly impossible to collaborate for efficiency.   

"They assign videos to be watched at home, then have the students do the homework in class, flipping their instruction inside out"(177). 

- I'm struck by how much sense this system makes. Though, I see the same sort of loop holes that we see with our current system: kids would still go home, and blow off the videos, then come to class unprepared and need to play catch-up. I see the connection to multi-media here with the flexibility of the video assignments, but I'm not sure this holds enough weight-- what if the children don't have computer access? Some of these solutions seem to really play into a certain demographic... rich, anglo-saxon suburban families... 

"How much should you credit someone else if you use a bit of their code? Or a 'sprite' from their game? What constitutes a contribution so creative that you can put your name on a remix" (194)?

- Brings me back to the conversation in class about plagiarism, and Johnson-Eilola's astonishment at the editors request that he cite even a single word used. The lines are finite, and becoming more and more blurred as we continue into untouched territory and collaborative words. I don't even know how to begin thinking about code and how the citation or ownership would work for something that appears systematic in my mind. 

"His hypothesis is that language, one of our signal intellectual gifts, evolved precisely to allow us to socially 'groom' one another, in the way that primates groom one another physically"(222). 

"Actually, one of the best ways to grasp how political change happens is to study how it doesn't"(251). 

Johnson-Eilola and Kohl et. al.

Johnson-Eilola in the text The Database and The Essay; Understanding Composition as Articulation ( a misleading and rather dry title, if you ask me) lay out what, I think, is the very purpose of our course in digital rhetoric: "I'm not arguing that this postmodern shift erases traditional texts or narratives. Instead, I'm trying to make clear that our traditional texts are changing, whether we like this our [or?] not. We must work to understand the transformations and fragmentations taking place so that we can work within them"(207). This change that J-Eilola is attempting to make clear is not a new one, nor one that shocks me as a reader. I'm less interested in the aspect of the essay where he segments and differentiates between kinds of writing, which to me, seemed to function as a weak attempt to strengthen his argument, and more interested in the implications of these shifts.

As a class, we've been able to look at various forms of 'text', and have gravitated around a similar conceptual pondering of "originality" in both creative idea and writing that J-E's Intellectual Property questions. He looks at this further, prodding into WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization)  , a new type of organized legislation that would "permit firms to 'own' facts they gather, and to restrict and control the re-dissemination of those facts. The new property right would lie outside (and on top) of the copyright laws, and create an entirely new and untested form of regulation that would radically change the public's current rights to use and disseminate facts and statistics (n. pag.)"(210). As an aspiring author, I see the implications of such law reaching far beyond 'facts and statistics'. One day, if WIPO were to come into effect, anything published online-- like the work on these blogs, or essays published in an online composition, even Facebook walls-- could, essentially, need to be patented. And this process is a business of profit like any other. There is a cost (of 1,330 swiss francs plus the filling fee of up to 2,300 francs- a sum equivalent to almost 4000 U.S dollars), naturally, to patent an IP with WIPO. Though, for now, Intelectual Property seems to be relatively restricted to larger scale, corporate business but that is by now means a guarantee.

While browsing to better understand the work of IP, I read from the Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology and Research that "IPR (rights) is a strong tool, to protect investments, time, money, effort invested by the inventor/creator of an IP, since it grants the inventor/creator an exclusive right for a certain period of time for use of his invention/creation"(Saha: Introduction). I wonder, what happens at the end of this period of time? Will we end up seeing Owell's 1984 republished under another name? Will all of language need to be locked down to a single 'owner'? Now that this claim game has begun, like everything else wrapped up under our umbrella of modernity, it will not stop. 

You can actually visit Johndon Johnson- Eilola's 'workspace' here where I found this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU to John Oliver discussing some further implications of the HyperWorld we are now undeniably immersed in. This video is so worth the time, and really, a quite witty compliment to his text.

I've sort of ignored Kohl et. al.'s History Now; Media Development and Textual Genesis of Wikipedia and their commentary on collective, or collaborative, writing. The collaborative element of, to borrow Kohl's example, Wikipedia is interesting when thought of in terms of IP. Wikipedia functions as a site with no true ownership since the authorship is anonymous and constantly shifting (though the form and media PPR is attributed to Ward Cunningham) so it offers a unique opposition to the very core of IP. Reading History Now and discovering a bit of the foundations of Wikipedia made me smile. Key elements are 'openness' and essentially, simplicity of use. How often in a day do I "wikipedia" something (yes it's a verb-- much like 'googling') and thank my stars that in the first paragraph I can extract a meaningful understanding of a concept. In essence, what Kohl et. al. seem to be wanting us to understand, is that Wikipedia, and maybe even all collaborative texts, are the ultimate Hypertext. There are some kinks-- like contribution and scientific authority-- but those will work themselves out eventually.

Sometimes it scares me to remember we've only been at this for 14 years. What will happen in another 14? The post-modernity that Eilola talks of really needs to be redefined as we slip and slid through the Hypermodern world.
It's here. It's now.