[PD] Thoughts in conclusion of the 4th Pure Data Convention

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

It would be great if someone took on making the website nicer.  The framework that's there is pretty solid, it just needs someone to come and give it the finishing touches.  Some of this can be broken down into many little tasks.  In the past year or two, I've been working on trying to make the website more like a wiki, and a bit easier to navigate, and that does seem to have gotten people to use it more, and contribute.  Here are some things i can see that anyone could take on:

- pick a page you know something about (you don't have to be the expert), and clean it up

- add projects to the exhibition!  http://puredata.info/exhibition  Marco, you could add Jaime's project, for example.  The only rule we made for the exhibition is no self-promotion, you should only post things that you had nothing to do with.  Here is how anyone can add to the exhibition: http://puredata.info/docs/sitedocs/AddingToTheExhibition

- CSS/Plone template work for the exhibition, make the exhibition look nice wit things like showing inline images, more interested layout, etc.

- CSS/Plone template work to make the whole site look cleaner

.hc

On Feb 9, 2012, at 6:59 AM, Marco Donnarumma wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> it's a pity nobody is taking on the important issues advanced by Max.
> 
> I see this actually fitting in a general refrain (and I include myself here) to discuss topics like: our Pd "flagship" website gives people a unnecessary hardship, or the social network culture has since long time now changed drastically the way we share on the web, and it does affect the way we promote and talk about Pd. Even if we don't want to care about it.
> 
> Is is surely a long and perhaps painful discussion to draw upon, but I think it is needed at this point.
> We can also leave things take their drifts, which is ok, but why can't we be pro-active also at this level?
> 
> I'm not sure about the demographic issue Max reported, as I see my and other's courses always very well participated, along with a fairly good dynamics taking place on the various collective platform on the web.
> However, it is a fact that we are inflicting ourself and our community a gratuitous pain in terms of sharing, distribution and self-teaching infrastructure.
> 
> I'm the first who's always too busy to really take on this issues when somebody else points them out, but sometimes I wonder what would happen if we could be able to gather a 10% of the energies we spend developing stuff, and use it to improve once for all the way Pd appears on the web (meaning here, the way loooots of cool documentation material is overly underused because it can't be easily reached, the way how the plone website literally scare newbies, and also the fact of avoiding constructive comparisons with other open communities out there, like the processing one which does an amazing work in this sense).
> 
> Pd is used by many developers, artists and so on. There are incredible works out there who earned prestigious prizes (see for instance Jaime's at FILE and Guthman Instrument Competition), new frontiers for interactive, mobile, and biosensing techs are being open only thanks to Pd, and you know what?
> The 80% of the people I talk to (also practitioners) don't even know about it.
> 
> Imho, this is very wrong, and most importantly, dangerous for the good sake of our community.
> 
> I'm aware this has been discussed far too many times, but we all could benefit a lot from a new and useful web appearance and all things related.
> 
> So the question now becomes, how can we elaborate a collaborative strategy to build a proper web platform, which would emphasise the work of our developers and creators rather than hiding it? and how can we think of a communal approach to make easily available all the knowledge that sits in scattered instances all around the web?
> I'm sure Pd will live far longer than me, but why don't we make a little effort to gather more devs, creators and thinkers around us y simply getting all our efforts clearly visible?
> 
> hope somebody else feel the same as me and Max and would feel like further the conversation.
> 
> cheers and thanks,
> Marco
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When I find artist like Lukas Buschfeld presenting his prints printed by a custom large scale dot matrix printer which is programmed in and run by Pd entirely (plus a little Arduino) I'm stunned. Look at the prints: http://lucasbuschfeld.com/index.php?cat=graphic
> 
> In an attempt to improve the first impression you get when checking out Pd I've been experimenting with vimeo gathering Pd based works in a group:
> http://vimeo.com/groups/puredata/
> 
> When you look at a few other OSS Audio related softwares i find their websites to be very clear and well structured
> http://musescore.org/
> http://www.iannix.org/
> http://ardour.org/
> 
> Now compare. It's a great ressource but plone can certainly look nerdy and cluttered:
> http://puredata.info/
> 
> I'll leave it at this hoping to spark a little discussion on the list now for example about how Pd can become more attractive in our very own interest not to loose a future user base not only for the next convention. Also I'd be interested to hear where the next convention will take place ;)
> 
> MN 
>  
> 
> -- 
> Marco Donnarumma
> New Media + Sonic Arts Practitioner, Performer, Teacher, Director.
> ACE, Sound Design MSc by Research (ongoing)
> The University of Edinburgh, UK
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Portfolio: http://marcodonnarumma.com
> Research: http://res.marcodonnarumma.com | http://www.thesaddj.com | http://www.flxer.net
> Director: http://www.liveperformersmeeting.net
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