wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Future of the World Wide Panorama - Part One
G. Donald Bain 2004-Jul-26 23:09:00
This is the first of four planned discussion documents about the future
of the World Wide Panorama. Please respond (to the YahooGroups wwp
list) with your thoughts.
Timing and Hosting
There has been a lot of enthusiasm for continuing the WWP with future
events, and questions about whether this will be possible.
Landis and I are agreed it is worth keeping it going for the
foreseeable future. I can see at least two more events (September and
December of this year), and probably continuing into 2005.
How Long?
The biggest factor is whether there will be continuing support from
participants. If the number of people contributing panoramas drops off,
that may be a sign that it is time to stop. We had 180 the first time,
120 the second. If we continue to have over a hundred participants per
event I will consider it viable.
A second factor is if the world in general continues to be interested.
I see no problem here -- most people out there still have never seen a
VR panorama (except maybe a tiny real estate tour). If we continue with
the same high quality and varied subject matter of the first two
events, we are guaranteed of public interest.
An aspect of this is publicity. So far we have done very well, and have
hardly been trying. I have purposely not publicized this second event
too vigorously, until I am able to resolve some issues of bandwidth.
The third major factor is whether we will be able to get staffing to
run future events. Landis and I are committed to at least a couple
more. And there have been numerous volunteers offering to help.
We deliberately kept this project as simple as possible from the very
beginning, to minimize the demands on the producers. We will gradually
add features in future events, but cautiously. A greater degree of
automation (on-line forms for submission, and automatic generation of
html pages from that data) will hopefully reduce the amount of labor
necessary.
Fourth: issues of disk space and bandwidth. Luckily we have major
institutional support here - the University of California. Despite a
state budget crisis, I foresee no problems.
I was able to purchase a new server specifically for this project,
which should be able to handle very heavy traffic. The first event had
such a peak of popularity that I was obliged to take the site off-line
for several hours because it was impacting work in my department. But
this was a local problem only, the amount of bandwidth we use is a drop
in the ocean for this huge campus. In the next few weeks I will be
working to obtain a more direct connection to the internet backbone, so
external WWP traffic doesn't impact local service.
There have been suggestions that we use a url that is less cumbersome
than geoimages.berkeley.edu/wwp. As long as we are depending on the
university for support, we cannot use a commercial url. It's a matter
of quid pro quo -- Geo-Images supports the WWP, and in return gets some
credit for it.
But to forestall possible problems, I personally registered
worldwidepanorama.com, wwpano.com, and wwpano.org, all of which point
to the Geo-Images site. We may want to start using one of these in
publicizing the site -- it's much easier to remember a short url you
have heard on the radio or read in a newspaper. Using the domain
dot-org (for non-profit organization) is more appropriate than dot-com,
which implies a commercial venture. But many people assume every url
ends in dot-com, and browsers auto-complete urls that way.
For an object lesson in why it might be necessary to register
wwpano.com when we would prefer wwpano.org, try going to
http://iqtvra.com -- but be sure nobody is looking over your shoulder
at the time!
Fifth, and finally, this project needs to remain hassle-free. Keeping
it non-commercial will help a lot. The way we have all contributors
maintain sole copyright to their work also avoids complications.
Having only a small group in charge (so far just Landis and me) is
important. Limiting content to one media technology (QuickTime) will
avoid many problems. To put it bluntly, if it begins to take too much
of my time, generates controversy, or stops being fun, I will have to
withdraw my support. As I remember, that was what killed off the
Wrinkle in Time series.
How Often?
Personally, I think the world NEEDS a periodic reminder of how great VR
photography is. Hans Nyberg provides one great example per week. The
WWP can't do that, but I think a showcase of a hundred or more images
every three months is reasonable.
The media always want something new, and you don't get much publicity
for a new edition of an existing work. So we need to make each event
unique. I will be giving my ideas about future themes tomorrow (please
hold discussion on this topic until then).
Though each event is unique, there is great strength in a continuing
project. Each event generates a large number of links and search engine
entries. Each of these lead back to the overall project, where people
discover the other events. People will remember "the world wide
panorama" and go back to it, even if they have not heard of the most
recent event.
Will the participants find quarterly events to be too often? I hope
not, but only time will tell. Challenging and intriguing themes will be
important in motivating ourselves. Positive feedback, in the form of
public and peer recognition, will be another factor.
It is not necessary for everyone to participate every time. If we
have, for example, a pool of 200 potential participants, and each
chooses to participate only twice a year, we still have 100 for each
event.
When?
When Rabbett invented the "Wrinkle in Time" he chose the date, December
21, more or less impulsively. I pointed out that it was the Winter
Solstice, and he subsequently tied the "wrinkles" to the solstices and
equinoxes. We have followed this plan in the World Wide Panoramas.
I like the idea of following the solar calendar this way. It is
universal and cross-cultural. Many cultures recognize the significance
of these dates, but none can claim them as their exclusive own.
A solstice/equinox is not actually a day, it is a moment in time
(technically, a position in space). This will occur at different times
and even on different days for different longitudes (time zones) around
the earth.
The first WWP was held on a single day. This caused some problems, with
religious observance, and above all with uncooperative weather. No
doubt we missed a few potential participants because of business and
family obligations on that day.
The second WWP was more lenient. The Solstice occurred on a Monday (for
some), but the event included the entire adjacent weekend. This gave
more flexibility with the weather, and time for many of us to travel to
an official world heritage site.
I think all future WWP events should be for a weekend or more. How much
more is open to discussion. The next Equinox falls in the middle of a
week (Wednesday, September 22) - should we designate the entire week,
and one weekend, maybe both weekends?
At one time I proposed to Landis that the September theme be "all
summer long", and accept panoramas taken anytime since the last event
(i.e. June 19 to September 21). He pointed out that this would weaken
the "event" nature of the project, which is important for publicity.
Your thoughts?
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These are my thoughts for today. Please post your ideas on timing and
hosting to the YahooGroups-wwp list.
Tomorrow I will introduce the topic of "themes", which should be a lot
of fun (hold discussion of themes until then, please).
Don