Yulzine returns: Duality

It’s almost a year ago that I initially posted about starting up some king of collaborative zine based on blog writers; edited blog post like articles.

We had a couple of meetings, various email discussions, I bought the domain*, did a design, some people started writing, there was a couple of near starts but in the end there just wasn’t enough energy into it (starting with me) and it didn’t lift.

I still have the domain though and have been vaguely wondering how to change the formula so we can do something collaborative but that doesn’t require as much work.

Seeing this project I started brainstorming and got this idea going:

Although there are a lot of other communities, Montreal is mostly known for it’s two sided personality, les francophones and the anglophones. That’s where the “duality” comes from in the title and that would be the basis for how we’d post.

There would be two aspects, photos and written posts, volunteers comment here to show interest in one or both categories, I put all the names in two “hats”. Every 4 days I pull out 2 names out of the photo hat and two out of the post hat. I email each of them.

1. The photographers are totally free, they simply pic a picture out of their archive or take one that day and email it to me.
2. I create an overlayed image with both pictures and post it to the site as the header for that “iteration” of the project. The full image is also viewable of course.
3. I pick a very loose subject out of the air or, even better, out of suggestions made here or even through a form on the future site. Exemples: St-Lawrence, Holy-Jo’s, Tamtam, Chinatown, The Habs, The main, Shwartz’s….
4. I email that subject to the two writers and they produce a blog post and email it to me for posting. It’s a “real” blog post meaning it can be any length, completely or vary vaguely related to the subject, in any language and treated in a personal angle, news, historical or any other type of view.
5. Each person is of course linked from their post and they can repost it on their own site although I wouldn’t mind a delay of 24 or 48 hours. That would have to be decided.

1. Every time you also tell me if you want back in. Once the hats are empty I throw everyone back in for another go.

   The delay is 4 days. I post what I get, draw four more and email them. Each time we have two side by side posts on the same subject and a composite image by two photographers. And round and round.

   Whaddayathink?

   *It’s also going to be one year in 3 weeks that I have the Yulblog domain, the renewal just went through so if you want to do your part you might want to pay me a beer or something at next week’s meeting ;).