I thought you might like to know that the <ambit> network completed its second year of existence on 10th October.
So how has <ambit> changed since 10.10.01 ?
First, the membership has shifted quite considerably. We started out with 77 people, including myself and Beverley Hood. A fair number of these 'early adopters' (just less than half) have, for one reason or another, disappeared from the list. But they've been replaced by others over the last two years, so the current membership hovers around 208 in total. I should stress that the list is dynamic: people join or leave depending on their interests, other commitments, and so on. The membership does not include people who regularly receive selected <ambit> mailings as forwarded e-mails from existing members. I have anecdotal evidence that this happens quite a lot: <ambit> being a node amongst other, more informal networks.
Second, since we started <ambit> there have been various attempts to organise 'social networking' activities, ie. face to face meetings between members. The first <ambit> get-together was appropriately during the 'New Media Networks' conference at CCA in November 2001. There have been a few informal gatherings since, and recently New Media Scotland organised the slightly more formal '<ambit> in conversation with Geert Lovink' and the opportunity to meet <ambit> visiting curator Steve Dietz. We will continue to put together 'formal' meetings, (next up is Tamas Banovich from Postmasters, NYC - more details soon) I hope the more informal gatherings can continue to happen too.
Lastly, our monthly suggested discussion topics for <ambit> have gone missing during 2003, leaving the list's existence mainly as a network for announcements. Partly this came about because of the war in Iraq (similarly the <ambit> list was launched later than planned because of the September 2001 attacks), partly because of a sometimes heated discussion over the summer about who should 'moderate' <ambit>, and why. So, in an attempt to start up debate and discourse on the list again, we'll be trying an 'open source' approach to discussion topics and their moderation. <ambit> wouldn't be the same without a few rules, so there's a few new ones that will be introduced to set parameters for this 'open source' approach. We'll announce more details in the near future...
Chris
-- -------------------------------------------------------- Chris Byrne [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------------- New Media Scotland tel: +44 131 477 3774 P.O. Box 23434, Edinburgh EH7 5SZ fax: +44 131 477 3775 Scotland, UK http://www.mediascot.org -------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] archive: http://www.mediascot.org/ambit info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
