[Clipart] name + concept for packaging + meeting notes

[Jon Phillips]

Hello All,

I've been swamped this week, but wanted to make sure I followed up with
everyone about the meeting, plans, and so forth and so on. I apologize
for having my attention divided between a PhD seminar and the meeting,
but I have some notes, comments, and propositions below.


1.) PROJECT NAME: The more I thought about it, I think that the project
name needs to be more substantial than just the openclipart.org we
discussed in the meeting. I was writing some text with that name and it
doesn't stand out compared to other projects. I was discussing with
MRDOCS and BRYCE that the name should be something that conveys our
responsibility to be more of librarians rather than directing/devising
content. Plus, the appropriation of the term Clip Art will be
interesting to take over in google, as a current search is pretty
shoddy. Also, the pun on library, as it normally would imply in the
software community, is admirable (+10 art points). We came up with:

    Open Clip Art Library :: www.openclipart.org

2.) General Concept for Versioning and Releases for the Project: I was
discussing with RWORTH after the meeting how our roles in the project
should be more about making sure the system of how content is dealt with
should be the focus of our releases. Thus, each announced release would
be an improved version of the interface to get to the content that
people submit. RWORTH is working up a proposal (hopefully just as good
as his one about metadata) for the interface to the current library.
After coming up with the new name, I realized that our role should be
very much like a LIBRARIAN'S approach to data--making sure to keep it
accesible, open, free, etc. This means that our focus would not be on
making packages of clipart, but rather push for a successful interface
for users to access artists works and help them to develop their own
profiles for the type of work they like and or want to use. The
microsoft clipart site is an inspiration for a new way to deal with
instant packages of clipart that user's of the site can build while
browsing the site.

3.) Roadmap, or Road to the 1st Release: I think we need to seriously
focus on a good solid release here for the system, which would involve
the first real promotion of the project, in order to get more support
and propel the project forth. This should only come after we get our
first implementation of the plan for our web interface into place, and
plan out our general roadmap.

4.) FUTURE: I see that if our focus shifts to tailoring the website to
helping interface with the graphics content, then our activity shift to 
development of software interfaces to the repository. Thus, this new 
software tool could be used in applications like SCRIBUS, INKSCAPE,
GIMP, etc. to pull up clipart into a document on the fly. This could
make our site, potentially, a web service that apps could interface
with, and our eventual software tool, a plug-in of sorts, could be
included in distributions. Thus, a user would only need to download the
exactly what they want. Really, it is quite obvious that these massive
CD/DVD distributions are going to go away in favor of services like
red-carpet. We should follow this foreshadowing. However, I do like the
idea of a 6th disc that could accompany distros as a media disk that
contains open content in addition to software, but we should also look
to the future...

More later...

Jon



-- 

Jon Phillips
Graduate Researcher
Visual Arts Department

PO BOX 948667
LA JOLLA, CA 
92037
USA

cell.858.361.2811
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org