Supercharged "Journalizing"
Supercharged: Having powerful emotional overtones or associations
Journalizing: To keep a personal or financial journal.
There is no word Journaling but Journalizing, TIL. But here is the kicker, this domain is huge. Though Journalizing is used heavily in the Accounting world it is still used everywhere else. There is Photo journalizing, News Journalizing, Personal Journalizing, Software Journalizing (RFCs), etc. but there does not exist an unified way to communicate these details with one other.
We also believe social media are failing, at least in the scope of providing a platform for such collaborations. So lets start with what we have in mind for an alternative platform to help our users Zineralize their adventures - wherever, whatever they maybe.
Motivation
We go through these social media timelines, more often than not we find people ranting about the principles, morals, cracking division and a whole lot of ads. It's just frustrating that our thoughts cannot organically connect with somebody else in this virtual space.
There is just too much distraction in various different directions. Apparently the solution by this industry was personalization to show what you like based on your preferences. A novel approach but its consequences were not known at the time. They are collecting the data points that help their advertising business and what they don't really consider as variable is the fluidity of human emotions. What the algorithm thinks is the right feed for the user based on a matrix of data points isn't necessarily valid at that exact point in time.
And that is why there needs to be balance between snacks and full course meal. The snacks taste good, but they aren't healthy all the time. They are good what they are meant for, post an update, share a quick thought, fast news. But where is the soup for our personal growth.
Most people realize these gaps are able afford certain luxuries to pursue their goals, but for many people that isn't possible. The amount of effort it takes to get a magazine to print has made hard for a lot of people to enter this media space. Probably, a major reason why the print media hasn't been able keep up with faster delivery methods for advertisements.
Goal
Lets connect humans with themselves and build that foundation.
- Zine - small quips of peoples creativity, easier to package and produce? If modeled properly, it could provide this space for people to come and really connect.
- Define in depth model for how Journalizing is supposed to work in the Zinespace.
Journalizing
Personally learning to talk to computers and be able to understand that software engineering is an engineering profession mostly to improve communication between other peers of similar or different profession has given me a lot of insights. Can those principles be applied to people in their general life?
Software engineers are just problem solvers and translators for computers.
The concept that we feel models this process efficiently is breaking problems into smaller and smaller chunks and placing them into a Kanban board. But in software the problems/tasks are clearly defined in categories such as bugs, feature requests, feedback, etc. There is no one generalization algorithm that can be applied for Zine since our goal is to connect with the general population between whom these categories may not apply. To allow this we are using a variation of this ideology.
To understand the this variation, understanding from the focus of Zines and Magazines would be helpful. Especially, the lifecycle for both these can be summarized in these steps:
- Ideation of General Category - What the Zine is about?
- Issue - Iterable production & release process, particularly the final product
- Collection - What material/content is the current issue comprised of?
- Layout - How are these content going to be laid out?
- Certification - What demographic is content suitable for?
- Publication - Print & Distribution?
- Issue - Iterable production & release process, particularly the final product
Journalizing is going focus on Initial Ideation [1] and Collection [1.i.a] of the lifecycle.
Trying to adapt this lifecycle for the virtual space means that publication can happen at any point. We will try to deal with that domain later. For, the purpose of this RFC we will assume it is handled appropriately.
Initial Ideation
We are now trying to explore a little deeper. We will start putting the Ziner(User) in the protagonist light. The Goal is to form an initial crude model by answering questions from the perspective of a Ziner.
How does a Ziner ideate?
This is a hard question, to simplify the problem what are the data points we would need for optimal operations? How can a Ziner define their creative idea in a descriptive way?
A sample space of ideas could be something like:
- I have an idea for mini movie and I want to document the process!
- The process gives me an idea about supplementing the lore through short stories!
- I can explore the antagonist back story!
- I want to collage dressed dinosaurs!
- The new hip dinosaurs crash the wedding!
- Old west gets a new Sheriff!
- I want my club mates to collaborate on a monthly digest!
- The fun times exploring the stars through a telescope!
- I want my friends to write monthly book reviews for literature class!
- I want to explore my road trips and log it!
- The road trip mayan ruins!
- The hike across the Great Wall of China!
- I want to journal my experiences of dressing up as a robot and playing drums in front of an audience!
- This is one crazy private journey! I'll let this guy tell his story!
{ // TBD more
name: string; // Empathetic Dinosaurs, ElectricPop, Library Review
logo: unknown;
description: string;
author: User;
collaborators: User[];
genre: unknown; // TBD
category: unknown[]; // TBD
certification: unknown; // TBD
// other metadata yet to be discovered
}
After the ideation, the Ziner would focus on the details of iterable release of Issue.
{ // TBD more
zine: Zine; // the zine it belongs to
tagline: string; // this issues tag line, something like that gives a guiding
tags: string[];
additional: {
category: unknown[];
certification: unknown;
genre: unknown;
}
// other metadata yet to be discovered
}
App Guided Collection
We will explore various tools and schemas that can guide Ziner effectively to help collect their source material. Also, help in breaking down tasks into more manageable pieces and further help retrospect using the rubber ducky method, quick use case. It's crucial we model the rubber ducky method in a fun way so Ziners can enjoy reflecting back to themselves for some personal exploration.
Rubber Ducky Debugging in Software Engineering
The rubber duck debugging method is as follows:
- Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck (bathtub variety).
- Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that’s all right.
- Explain to the duck what your code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain your code line by line.
- At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.
Original Credit: ~Andy from lists.ethernal.org
In a pinch a coworker might be able to substitute for the duck, however, it is often preferred to confide mistakes to the duck instead of your coworker.
We are introducing this here get to some perspective. This tool has a powerful effect because talking to an inanimate object helps breaks many blockers that people of different professions might have. The following models are designed in some variation of being able to talk to themselves for similar effect.
Personally, I have had people complain I talk to myself a lot, but hey it has helped me write and think clearly. I believe in the hands people it will do even more than I have the used for.
After Ideation
The Ziner has now an idea, adventure, hobby, feeling, expression, art ... something that excites them. They have somewhat ideated their first issues in one or two sentences. We will consider this to be the Golden Goal.
Golden Goal
When content has been collected, revised, laid out and ready for certification this goal has been achieved. However Golden Goals can still take a long time to depending on the sub goals/tasks that need to be done to achieve them. Question is how can Zine help Ziners into breaking these into smaller achievable goals and refine it through rubber ducking with themselves?