wiki reflections

Mantras 2017-present
NOW = VOID
Embrace the Now
New Way = No One Way
Always in process

It seems appropriate that, at middle age and mid-career, we should be extolling the virtues of janky technology. There is something about the cultural sidelining of middle aged women, of parents, that resonates with the marginal position of the open-source thing: functional and plain, post-ironic, incubating under the radar, relaying stories in tribal languages. Janky technologies of all types (wikis, Google Docs, Mozilla anything) are functional and unfussy by design. They resist commodification and branding because they are inefficient, unglamorous, unyielding and as a result, they never become anything…they remain spaces of pure process. They allow space and time for becoming without an intended purpose or application. As such, they are as subversive as they are conventional. They are free.

When we began building Workshop Project (WP) in 2016, we lacked the language to describe our endeavor as a fugitive practice. The pedagogical design practice that is WP and the FREE Design Educators workshop were [carved out of] the time, space and capital occupied by our day jobs and families. [more on fugitive practice] We wrote the practice and the workshop into existence using the tools and platforms for remote collaboration that were available to us. Open-source and a-formal, these tools were not only expedient, they aligned with and expressed the core values of our practice. [describe core values: remaining in process, no one way, interest in why things look the way the do, inquiry, etc]

In planning the first FREE workshop, we found kindred spirits in younglings Anja Groten and Andre Fincato of Hackers & Designers, who contributed the powerful tool of the Wiki. The Wiki changed how we understood in-person collaboration. It played a critical role in holding workshop participants in process by {…}

Wiki: Allowed FREE participants to work not only collaboratively, but simultaneously (analogy of the poster as pedagogical tool) Became an archive and place of processing ideas, but never a finished, public-facing thing
Values:
Remaining in process
Privileges inquiry over outcome
Will not yield to formal fussiness or style
Does not prioritize stickiness or ease of public access