Technicalities
Technical Logistics: The Basics
Wordpress, Calendar, Templates and Data Aggregation
Ideology: Technology Gets Cheaper Over Time
Moore’s Law in technology is (basically) that every 18 months, technology halves its price. Now, that has not turned out to be true across the board, but overall, it’s easier and cheaper to do things than before.
I also came upon a related statistic that I have found to be more accurate: Every 5 years, it takes 1/3 of the development staff to do a project in 1/3 of the time. This may explain why larger institutions have given up on some of these projects, i.e., they looked into them 3-5 years ago, found them cost- prohibitive, and never re-visited them.
But the larger issue that I tackle in philosophy (link coming), is that many publishers are still of the mindset that online publishing is simply posting on a screen rather than on paper, and not utilizing the tools and capabilities of the internet. This unrealized potential is a crying shame.
The Magazine Site
ChicagoArtMap is a WordPress template from Solosoft (see generic version here, look familiar?), costing $70. No customization to date. We googled “WordPress Magazine Templates” and shopped around, comparing dozens of templates in the same price range. Someday we’ll need to customize, but it’s a huge expense that we’d prefer to postpone for as long as possible. Tech support is also pretty minimal, slow and DIY. The site is hosted on Godaddy.com for $4.99 a month.
Print Calendar vs. Database of Events
Let’s examine the calendar as an electronic database vs. a print listing. Communicating bounties of information on paper is expensive, and print publishing must be selective due to constraints about physical size. But the larger problem is that the information also has to be re-aggregated every week: the sisyphean labor of configuring gallery openings and removing closed shows is a boulder that has to be pushed up the hill again each week. A database, however, sorts itself. Obsolete information can be sorted out, units of information can be categorized, results can be filtered and units of data (like venues) can be tagged geographically.
Still, maintaining data is no mean feat. It’s expensive because it’s time-consuming, and unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. Entire systems (which we’ll disclose once we have them in place) are needed to keep the data-gathering process organized, for it’s not just the data that needs to be kept in order—it’s the data collection process itself. The organization of the process of data collection is especially necessary once it becomes a multi-person endeavor.
Map Data
The map has been a huge amount of work: just ask Stephanie Burke about that. But the fact that it was SO HARD to gather that data only fueled our belief that it needed to be done so badly. Before our map was launched, no one knew how many galleries were in Chicago, let alone get a rough count of commercial galleries vs. alternative spaces vs. apartment galleries, performance art or non-art venues, etc. We had seen the failure of systems based on galleries uploading their own information (link about why we don’t ask galleries to upload). So, in business, you look for gaps—for needs unmet by current products and services—and we found that gap…and confirmed our capability to fill it. Due to my husband’s and my own backgrounds in technology, I had been following Google Map API, which is a set of programming tools for building applications around Google Maps. Before the advent of Google Map API, the project would have been impossible on our level. However, with the capabilities afforded us through Google Map API, our project became quite promising.
Developer(s)
Again, my background is technology: and I’ve spent years in consumer electronics, and I’ve sold a lot of software in my day, along with the services of consultants/developers who build custom applications. In other words, I know what to look for in a developer. After a bit of research, we found Thor, our Google Map Guru on Elance.com (a website to find overseas developers). (The following is tech lingo) I created the specs and the basic design, and my husband did the user interface, usable interface. We presented the wireframes and flow already designed, which helps keep the cost down. Stephanie Burke also helped with the design and specs.
The initial cost was $700, but extra work brought it up to $900. Version 1.5, which has a handful of enhancements, is an additional $400 and should be ready in a week or two (as of 10/26).
Copyediting provided by http://thefinerpoint.org
