Posts made by Richard Schwier

There's nothing like an audience to ignite an interest in writing more, right?  :-)  I've had the same experience.  I'm running Google Analytics behind my download page for my latest book and it is soooo much fun seeing how many people are downloading it and seeing where they come from.  That's way better than a small royalty cheque arriving 18 months after a book is published.  Really.  It is.

Okay, here's something I'd love to get your take on.  I'm betting everyone dropping into this SCoPE seminar is a writer. We write papers, articles, poems, letters to Aunt Carol, proposals, reports ... you get the idea.

What is the most enjoyable writing project you ever completed?  Would that work translate well to doing an e-pub?  And when you do large writing projects, how do you organize yourself?  Do you have any rituals, superstitions or approaches you’re willing to share?

Here's a little superstition of mine:  I almost always start a new writing project by going to an office supply store (and a superstore is even better). In Saskatoon, I'll go to the nearest Staples and wander up and down the aisles, fondling pencil sharpeners, picking out some new gel pens, finiding just the right kind of binder and notebook. I consider it an act of writing, not brash consumerism.  As I walk around I'm thinking constantly about my writing project.  I consider what I want to do with it and what it might look like when I'm done. I fuss over what things might help me build my writing nest. When I'm finished, I have fresh energy for starting a new project and a few new shiny objects to play with during the process. 

That's exciting. I think that idea of "exchanging ideas" is at the heart of everything we do.  And whether it is social media or hypercard, we're in the business of sharing.  Isn't that at the heart of it, and it sounds like it is exactly what you're doing.

Ambron and Hooper... that's so cool.  I have a copy too!  I agree that there is a novelty issue at work here.I love novelty!  I'm not sure in the long run if we ever left hypermedia.  In fact I wonder if the current affordances of ePubs offer new ways to express hypermedia and also add in a lot of other possibilities.  Isn't it interesting that we can actually remember (fondly) software we used to struggle with some of the same things we're struggling with now?  I think our designs have matured, and our appreciation for informal and social learning has grown. I wonder if this medium will allow us to take another big step forward?  I used hypercard to present stuff. Do e-pubs encourage us to do more?

I love the idea of e-reader loaners. For me, this is another example of how we are really lucky in Canada and some other countries to have the kind of access to public libraries we do. I'm a pretty heavy user of public libraries wherever I go, and it came as a big shock to me when I was living in New Zealand that I had to pay to borrow resources.  It was still a good deal, but it did remind me that public support of libraries isn't universal.