I just wanted to summarize some parts of our discussion last night and open up a space for us to continue it. Please comment on this post or create new posts in the General Discussion category to contribute your thoughts and ideas or to link to examples.
Our seminar, like Seminar 2s before ours, will produce some kind of “public-facing project.”
There seemed to be a consensus that our project should make use of storytelling. Several students mentioned the excellent Humans of New York site (and book) as an example of a site that uses storytelling in an effective manner.
As a thematic focus, there seemed to be support for the idea of “making it in New York.” This idea of “making it” could refer to jobs, or to navigating unfamiliar environments, or to fashioning one’s identity, or to discovering one’s sexuality, and more.
(Incidentally, one of the rules of storytelling according to Pixar is that “You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.”)
In addition to content, we also have to decide on form, that is, the aesthetic and organizing principles through which we present the stories we record to an outside audience. Humans of New York works well because it uses high-quality photographs in addition to the written word. Content is just organized in a grid in reverse-chronological order (newest first). Would that make sense for our project? Or should there be more of a thematic order?
We also briefly discussed whether it would make sense to use timelines, maps, or audio recordings (podcasts). Thoughts?
John, can you post a link to the Hunter site re making it in NY that was praised?
Sure! It’s this one (direct link).
I really like the concept that Humans of New York uses, and I think it’ll work out very well for us. In terms of organization, I don’t think it makes too much of a difference in order; the reason being that each individual will have a unique story that describes their own way of ‘making it’ to New York. So newest first would be perfectly fine.
Thanks for your input. In our case, we won’t be posting on a rolling basis like HoNY, but all at once. So do you think stories could just be in a more or less random order?
I think that maybe it would be best to organize the stories somehow, rather than having them randomly jumbled together. Chronology probably won’t be the best way to organize them. Instead, maybe we could group the stories into categories by theme? A theme would be a sub-category, or aspect of “Making it in NYC,” and the themes will become clearer as we collect our stories: for example, sexuality, or homelessness, or finding a job. Maybe we could tag each story with a number of themes, much like we tag posts on this website–since it is likely that one story relates to “Making it in NYC” in a number of different ways. Maybe we could sort these stories by their tags.
Those are just some ideas. What does everyone else think?