wwp@yahoogroups.com:
re: Future of the World Wide Panorama
Ken Stuart 2004-Jul-27 19:22:00
Don, et al.:
Your list of themes looks good overall. Lots of variety, and lots of
potential topics within each, so that people can choose a literal approach
or a metaphorical one, as you mention.
It seems to me that the person(s) in charge should choose a theme for each
WWP shoot and announce it widely far ahead of time, with reminders. As long
as enough notice is given for the date / time that the panos are to be
shot, potential participants can make arrangements for scheduling or site
permission if they want to be included. Any given panographer might not
want to shoot for a given topic, but with plenty of notices ahead of time,
those who do will have the best chance.
Personally, I would have liked more notice of the recent equinox WWP
effort; I know you announced it about a month ahead of time, but more is
better. Now that I know the WWPs are likely to be four times a year at set
times, shooting will be easier to schedule; knowing the theme months ahead
of time will allow me to scout out potential subjects and locations as
well. I'd suggest that you make a separate web page with the schedule set
for a year ahead of time -- we seem to have enough interest for at least
that long.
With your many themes perhaps you want to set up an on-line voting
mechanism (or just an informal poll) to set the first half-dozen or so as a
way to get panographers to have a stake in the WWP days, so that the people
interested in shooting can have a say in what the themes will be for a while.
Overall, you certainly should get the submission system automated (and I'm
volunteering to help if you want web pages to do this via perl or PHP and
MySQL). You should also have a global look-up system so that as the WWP
site grows, a visitor who sees a pano made by X. can easily find all the
other panos made by the same person, or can enter some keywords to find
panos about particular subjects, etc.
As for other themes, it might be interesting to focus one shoot on the QTVR
technology itself, say, by having the theme be "Sound" where people shoot
panoramas in noisy spots, record the (directional) sounds and embed them
within their panoramas. It might also be of interest to have a theme
related to some kind of multiple, such as "Triplets," where the goal is to
have one QTVR file that has at least three panoramas linked to each other
inside with hotspots. Perhaps these types of themes require more software
or expertise than simple one-shot visual panoramas, but perhaps enough
people can do this that it's worth considering.
I agree with others that loose scheduling around a given point in time is
good, because many people need a few days on either side (especially a
weekend) to get to a site; but it's also best sometimes to "force" people
to shoot despite circumstances, such as weather -- it all depends on the
theme, really. If the theme, such as "Bridges," does not depend on time
then be lax about requirements so that people can get an optimal image. If
the theme is "Midnight" then people must shoot at the time required and
hope for the best. There does not seem to be a strong need to shoot
"Bridges at Midnight," :-) so the requirements of timing can vary from one
WWP event to the next.
Likewise, I believe that too much lag time for posting results spoils the
effect if the timing matters. If the equinox WWP isn't announced publicly
for weeks after the actual equinox, it loses effect. Based on email to this
list, it looks like most people had their posts ready to go within a couple
days of the equinox and did not need more than a week. I'd therefore urge
more advance (automated) preparation of the site and faster public
announcement. Anyone who has technical troubles can still submit later, but
things should be planned to be put together faster than in the past. No
blame for your efforts so far, by the way, but you asked!
Accordingly, if a WWP theme is "Bridges" and the timing is for the Sept.
solstice then why not have people submitting their panos for a month
beforehand? To some extent, then organizer needs to prioritize theme vs.
timing, as there seems to be no reason to always tie them together. Just
because WWP may schedule public releases four times a year doesn't
necessarily mean that those releases have to be publicly tied to celestial
events. Indeed, some themes don't work well with such tie-ins, but WWP can
still use the same four dates each year for convenient shoot scheduling.
Actually, one other theme that might work is "Holidays" or "Panographers'
Birthdays" but those would be completely non-synchronized. Perhaps that
could be an open-submission area on the WWP site that changes frequently,
rather than being a locked-down one as the others are, so that visitors
don't have to wait three months between each set theme.
In any case, posting the themes and schedule ahead of time on the main WWP
page would encourage visitors to come back on their own, and might even
encourage people who've never shot panos before to get ready for the event
and become active participants.
-Ken