1) Project Title
Brave New Maine

2) Group Members
Thomas Dollof, Sean O’Neil, William McEnery, James LeVasseur

3) Describe the main goal or outcome desired for your project

Create an online presence which allows and promotes user generated content in regards to future energy scenarios. This collaborative network will offer some sort of incentive to both content creators and content viewers, the idea being that interacting with the system will be intrinsically rewarding but also teach people about the futures through community interactions. With any luck the system will take up a life of its own.

4) Describe the project and how it will achieve the goal you state

Brave New Maine will allow for collaborative story-telling and nontraditional, nonlinear story forms through the possible use of video, music, performance and text based media. Group members will generate “seed” content and world-build potential futures to act as a mutable foundations for user development. Once a framework as been established it will allow users to build on them in a collaborative network. A physical presence will help to generate localized interest and buzz via a mix of traditional and alternate reality campaigns e.g. by physically creating some form of distributed media which would exist in a given energy future.

5) List research questions and sources

A) Greater Detail into Energy Futures (look at other sources than just Holmgren, possibly explore competing or dissenting scenarios?)
B) Explore alternate reality advertising campaigns (As a means to generate some sort of interest.)
C) Find Maine people who might decide to generate some of the “seed” content for the system.

5) List tools you would like to learn, use, explore to achieve your goal

A) Alternate reality campaign strategies
B) Photo manipulation
C) Digital Graphics
D) Web Design (HTML, MySQL, PHP)

6) Do person skills inventory of your group members–listing any skills they know that will help project, [then in brackets, list any skills they would like to learn]

James is interested in exploring advertising methods to attract our audience. He is planning to integrate his QR-code proposal.

Thomas- I am good with making music, directing films, and I am okay at graphic design. I am not so good with HTML. I can do a little coding as well, but it is not my strong suit. I think I would be best suited to work on sample material rather than the space itself.

William McEnery- I’m good with HTML from a design standpoint and coding though I’m not particularly well versed in PHP and MySQL which would most likely be what we would be using to create the system. I’m decent at graphic design but less interested in video production and I have absolutely no musical talent. I’d probably work best as the person who builds the system rather than creates the content though I’m somewhat interested in how to generate interest for the website through some sort of alternative advertising campaign.

Sean O’Neil – As my post in the “What are you good at?” thread states, my strength in this project will lie with helping to create the foundation of the story through writing the narrative and using my drawing skills to contribute visual content. I am comfortable with HTML, and I am capable of researching new methods to accomplish problems. [I would like to improve on using digital art.]

7) Finally, create a timeline of 4-5 major milestones points in the project that you will need to achieve to move forward

I) Create basic domain for hosting and displaying content.
II) Develop founding “seed” story.
III) Develop advertising campaign online and offline.
IV) Refine web page aesthetics and final functions.
V) Execute advertising campaign for finished site.