Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute New Frontiers Atlanta, GA March 21-23, 2013

Skinner

Skinner 2013

 Has the sky fallen before?  Many, many times  What can we learn from those examples?  Significant cultural events, including activism, often allow specifically for the emergence of new fields  Innovations don’t come from the center, they come from unexpected locations  Cultural processes of production, distribution, and reception depend upon networks of people Skinner 2013

 Once prevalent thought:  Business logics and models exert dangerously stable control over production, distribution, and reception of cultural products (Adorno, Bagdikian, Hall, Hebdige)  Now, more common understanding:  Fields/genres are social constructions with organizing principles that are always in flux and that depend upon networks of people (DiMaggio, Leblebici, Peterson, Negus ) Skinner 2013

 Big question: What can we do with/in networks and communities to support new forms of scholarship AND to help the academy transition in ways that ultimately supports the spread of knowledge? Skinner 2013

 Build a lightweight “center”  Use it to help communities learn & build & innovate & respond to rapid change  Embed knowledge and infrastructure within the communities, not at the “center”  Educopia as point of resource coordination and focus Skinner 2013

 As a "publication," Slavevoyages needs:  Well-defined relationships and commitments that can survive administrative changes  A credit mechanism that identifies the broad international community that has created/maintained the resource over time  Ways of establishing and gathering metrics that can demonstrate the use-value of the resource in an ongoing manner  An outreach mechanism that continues to attract and involve new communities of users  A set of revenue/funding streams that can support the cost of its upkeep  Entities committed to updating and upkeeping the resource Skinner 2013

 Multi-institutional partnership  Neutral center  Multiple revenue streams  Distribution of work  Concentrated effort toward unified goal Skinner 2013 Source: Mike Randolph, booooooom.comMike Randolph

 Scholars in control  Legal relationships clear  Prevent any single failure point (technical, administrative)  Foster new energy, innovation, investment by multiple communities  scholars, librarians, technologists, administrators, teachers, independent researchers, etc. Skinner 2013