Guidelines

     Included is a set of general guidelines for choosing project inspiration; participate in projects that interest you, or contribute to project guidelines as they take shape... better yet, start your own project; here's how!

General Description: How It Works...

     Participants will start a thread by initiating a post with the tag "Project," and respondents interested in participating in the project will contribute to its structure by commenting on the post. Project proposals should be broad, for example "Multiple Exposures." During the commenting process, the final project will take shape and detail, for example, under the "Multiple Exposures" project proposal, comments may lead the discussion to some narrowing details; "Quick & Dirty: In Camera Multiple Exposures."
     At some point in the comment threads a theme will emerge, and a one word tag should be decided upon; this will be the tag for all the images/media contributed to the project. Someone in the discussion will create a Page (static blog post) by the same name, and include the decided upon guidelines for contributing to the project, and tagging the submissions.

     When this is all done, by clicking on "Projects" one should be able to see a rambling list of projects (complete with rich directional discussions in the comments). A number of Pages will grow, stating projects and project guidelines, and lists of one word tags for projects will grow as well. Clicking on any of the created Pages will take one to the decided upon project description, and clicking on the tag of the same name will take one to the Posts within that project.

Specific Guide: What To Do...

1. Create a Post, with a descriptive title, and general introduction. Make it RICH. Rich content will make your Post attractive and insight discussion, and rich comments in return. Include images, inspiration imagery if possible.
2. Tag the Post "Project" (on the right side of the posting screen, when posting from a computer)
3. Join the discussion, browse other "Project" Posts and contribute, and others will browse yours and do the same.
4. Make a decision, especially if you started the Post. Generally, if you initiated a post, because of a desire to learn/try something new, or to get help or advice on a project, you should be receiving it from the comments at this point. Decide on a Tag word to represent the project.
5. Create a Page with the same title as the Tag word. Your page should contain:
1. General project guidelines (based on the Project proposal discussions)
2. The tag word should be clearly stated
3. Example imagery, historical, inspiration imagery etc (if available/possible)
4. Why. Give some reasons why this project is important, and what you and others (from the Project proposal discussions) hope to learn/collaborate/create together in the project
6. Post to the Project. It's as easy as writing a blog post. Tag the post with the Tag word mentioned in the Page; that's it! Clicking on the Tag will bring up everyone's posts with the same tag, allowing you to browse a dynamic gallery of submissions that were created under the project.
7. Comment on, and participate in discussions/criticism of project posts.
8. Post to more Projects, and Post/propose more projects! Projects NEVER die. See an interesting project from a year ago... wanna try it out? Read, learn what worked and didn't work, do the project and Post it; don't be shy.

General Do's and Don'ts; and why...

Don't: Submit old photos or past works to projects just because they fit within the decided-upon guidelines of that project...
Do: Share your old work or photo in your comments to participants in projects who are seeking advice, guidance, or criticism on their work...
Why: A central idea of Coetaneous is to motivate new work and build new skills; rather than showing off the results of skills you've built, share your knowledge and experience!

Do: Lighten the hell up. Especially if you're on the receiving end of some criticism. "Thank you may I have another." is the right response.
Don't: Be mean to newbies. Be mean to your friends, as long as it's all in jest; we do want to have fun even while being critical.
Why: Do you know how much graduate school students pay to hear their peers tell them that their work is shit? You're getting that for FREE.

Don't: Hijack other's projects. In other words, don't Page and Tag a project if it's not your project.
Do: Offer suggestions as to tags and project guidelines. If a project seems stalled and you're super jazzed about actually doing it, suggest a tag, then ask for permission, and if there's still little or no response, then what the hell, go ahead and hijack it; they'll get over it. Eventually.
Why: Respect other's creative process, but don't respect laziness. Everyone's excited about their idea, not everyone's excited about doing the work it takes to bring it to fruition. If someone had a great or inspirational idea, and failed to act on it, there's no reason YOU can't...

Do: Do it all on your own; if you have to. If you've given your Project Post some time, and no one is getting "into" it, just pick a tag, make a Page and general guideline, and DO IT. Perhaps you'll get good feedback on the results of your project
Don't: Go it alone very often though...
Why: Were you unable to inspire folks to your project? Why not? Was your suggestion unclear, or your post not rich enough to be interesting? Figure out why, and try some thing different. Growth and learning are the goals.

Parting Advice:

     Remember, the end in sight is not creating compelling imagery/artwork, but building real-world skills and perhaps more importantly, building bridges to those skills through relationships and communication. If however, compelling imagery arises from the process (and I suspect it will) then GREAT!