The Assembly Rolls Forward!

On Saturday we had our first of the weekly meets we’ll be coordinating for The Assembly. At the start of each leg of this arty relay, Tessa and I decided it would be a good idea to meet with whoever wanted to come out, talk through any and all questions they might have and sort out any bugs that come up. Saturday was the first one and a total of about 8 people crowded ’round a small table in a cozy spot on Duluth to eye ball each other and us. There was a good mix of filmmakers, musicians, and writers and it was wicked fun to see them… this is the thing I love the most about doing Indyish events- there are all these people out there who we don’t get to see or interact with really on the web, but they’re there. Maybe checking out the articles every once in a while, maybe doing a leetle St. Valentine’s day splurging; but when they come out to make some non-competitive art with us just because, and we finally get to see ‘em and shake hands, it’s pretty glowy and great.

We tried to meet at a free Ile Sans Fils Wifi hotspot - based on this list from their website of the spots - Tessa picked the sweet Soupsoup so we all piled in there, but it turned out the wireless wasn’t working and no one at the resto knew why. Fortunately some folk had already downloaded Celtx so we could take a look in the most basic way but erg! Anyway- I am well into my state of zen-like event calm at this point, where I can acknowledge that seemingly disastrous things will probably happen daily and they can all be calmly overcome if you don’t give them too much panicked energy. Of course I gotta admit this admirable state is way easier to attain when someone else is the project manager. Heh. Go Tessa! She’s had some frenzied emailing and the like to deal with so far, but has been walking people through the program and surrounding ideas like a supa champ.

Good thing Celtx has pretty great support documentation and is not a tough program to use, once you get used to the process of downloading everything that’s there when you start and saving and uploading when you’re done. And this is not hard to wrap your head around - there’s all kinds of stuff in your project that someone has put there for you- you need to take it and give it back with your changes. This makes sense, and I think the only people stumbling over any of it, funnily enough, are folks who are used to writing for Indyish, where everything is server based and we never need to do the download part- we author directly to the server. So it’s a bit different, but once you break it down the elements are the same and you just adjust your habits and all’swell and off you go. There are some things we’re finding a bit confusing - like the question Celtx asks when you’re uploading: “force overwrite if server version is newer?” which is doesn’t seem to make clear which version will be forcefully over written- though you gotta assume it’s the older one I guess. Still, grammar is slippery and when you’re stressing nothing seems clear. Breathe. Yes. Then I suggest you turn to the Celtx forums with your questions - dealing with bugs in a public place means everyone wins: this is at the centre of open source.

So far it looks like about half the scriptwriters have logged in, and just about all the musicians, which is great. Only one or two have gotten tripped up, and now things seem to be trundling along just fine. The rest of the writers, we assume, are either working outside the program; unwilling, as yet, to share their process with our curious eyes and grubby bloggy fingers. Fair enough. Or else they’re like some other artists we know, and intend to begin late at night, with a few drinks in ‘em maybe, scant hours before the due date. Though the thought of this does damage to the poor butterflies in our bellies, we gotta admit: some good work inevitably gets done this way, and the different independent processes of creation, even the stressful ones, really are part of the fun.

Speaking of the fun- Tessa and I had a good lunch and note-swapping session yesterday at the cozy Mile End coffee roaster and apparent parent hot spot, Toi, Moi et Cafe. We ran into Sylvia (a writer participating in the project) and her Dad; and Bobby (a filmmaker from Kidnapper who we would have harassed into joining us if he hadn’t mentioned he’d be heading back to LA for another 2 weeks) who was there with his Mum. I had no idea it was such a ‘rental hotspot, but I dig it. I love to see people out with their folks, especially people I knew in high school… back when I was introduced to South Park, which I still love, crowded between one or two best girls friends and a whole pack of boys I didn’t really know with their big hats and skateboards on Bobby’s Mum’s couch. Turns out, these days, she sells her music through her website and is interested in talking SEO! Wonders never cease.

At lunch yesterday, after officially saying our good byes, Tessa and I actually stood out in the freakin frigid cold for another 15 minutes, talking with our usual geekette excitement about how interesting the experiment is so far, and how encountering questions and challenges with the software is kind of a great part of it even if it might make for a few sleepless nights this first time around. Maybe by the end we’ll find we have some perspective to contribute to the development of this Canadian open source project. We get pretty excited by the idea of stitching together these kind of relationships between open source code and indie artists because this is part of what Indyish has been into from the beginning, and all the more so since recent studies have shown that the amount of female participants in open source is even lower then the dramatic stats for programming in general. As girls, this interests and bugs us (I posted on it here) but also, it’s kind of challenging and inspiring. It reminds me of the gentleman who came to our Launch Weekend and spoke with me for a bit about how programming and acting workshops should overlap more.

An experienced project director in the world of crafting code, he told me about coordinating programmers and feeling like they could use some of the improvisational shake up that actors have to learn to weather. He thought more creative cross fertilization between programmers and artists would help them see and anticipate more of the potential paths users might make through their software. Though Indyish hasn’t yet been able to pursue the big ideas ideas he and I threw around during that conversation, I keep then carefully tucked away, watching out for opportunities to bring some of these worlds we traverse closer together.

As Tessa says, these complex happenings we attempt might be naive, (and some people do seem to feel the need to tell us that our big schemes are too big, as I suppose they always will) but success for us is in the fact of the attempt and everything else that ensues is golden. And hey, knowing that Celtx has our back with some cash and fun swag on it’s way here from Newfoundland makes us all the more willing to celebrate the chaos and try and make it extra good to make ‘em proud. And good it’s gonna be! I’ll let Tessa tell you officially, but sounds like an opera group will be performing the original rock opera from the start of the project at the screening, and other surprises are in the works.
More hot hints on all that fun to come… watchout, and keep on keepin on kids.
Give Tessa a high five if you see her.
Risa