User:Tash/Special Issue 04
Our first Special Issue is a publication about the Poortgebouw, inspired by the collective's own Autonomous Archive.
Extract from our Special Issue 04 website: A Bed, A Chair and a Table is a publication about a former squat and vibrant living community in the South of Rotterdam. In this book, oral histories from inside and outside the Poortgebouw are interlaced with material from various institutional and personal archives. By bringing together tales of resilience, political struggle, frustration and friendship with historical documents, we bring forward new perspectives about the Poortgebouw's history and its importance in the contemporary city.
On organization
We organized ourselves into two main groups; the first focussed on content and the second on design & production. Considering this was our first publication; and that it concerned print (the medium I'm most experienced in), I decided to join the content team. This is the field that I know I want to specialise in, and I saw this project as a great opportunity to learn more about the publishing process, from start to finish. I'd never worked in such a large and diverse team before and I found the process to be incredibly rewarding.
Some things I did / learned:
- Managing tasks & schedules on our wiki: https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Autonomous_Archive/hand-curated
- Importance of setting up clear expectations between our groups. Channels of communication and conflict resolution methods should be agreed on in advance.
- Aggregative democracy is not always the most effective model! We learnt to try different methods of decision-making, like making priority lists, asking a third party for opinions.
- The traditional print publishing workflow (including budgeting, licensing & distribution)
On the editorial process
Conducting interviews, transcripts, storytelling, editing, proofreading.
On archiving
Lessons learned on the practice of archiving.
On publishing & free culture
Lessons learned on open source culture, licenses etc.
Going forward
Overall findings, what I want to do next.