freeFormed.org is already a formal organization, LLC actually. We were fortunate enough to get free legal services from someone that one of our members knew, which definitely facilitated and expedited the process. I actually just redesigned the company website, which is located at http://www.freeformed.org/company, with a slight hack of a wordpress install. I decided to use wordpress because, during these busy times, it would allow us to update our site and information frequently with little effort. It is by no means finished, but it is definitely a start.
None of the members of freeformed have really thought extensively about what we are going to do after graduation. We are all committed to advancing the freeformed.net site and the company as a whole but, especially since two of our members are international students, it is difficult to predict whether or not we will be able to sustain ourselves with freelance and consulting jobs that we are seeking to receive through marketing the site.
In the short term, we plan to apply for various awards and grants to sustain the site’s various expenses. We have already applied for Ars Electronica, Rhizome.org Digital Communities Grant and a monetary prize from NetSquared. We will not hear whether we have won any of these competitions until late April or May. We also plan to continue working with the New York to New Orleans project and have been offered the possibility to have the New Orleans number funded through a grant secured by ITP. We also plan to begin searching for freelance jobs as soon as thesis week is over, although we all are aware that we may have to work separately to sustain ourselves. Information about grants, freelance possibilities and how web start ups sustain themselves without selling out to larger corporations would definitely be helpful.

Posted by Cat at 02:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since returning from New Orleans, programming has gone into high gear, with me staying up most nights until 6am (the programming hour really begins for me at midnight...not sure why that is). Jadie and I are slightly off our production schedule due to some problems with video uploading that we are meeting with Shawn Van Every to fix tomorrow. Thus, we have already begun implementation of Ajax all across the site and, despite a few minor problems, we have been pretty successful so far. The major hurdle involving the media navigation div has still not been touched, but we are pretty sure that we will be able to figure it out. Most of the programming I have done this week has been involving the ajax and some php behind the scenes. I have also gotten several of my friends to sign up for the site and we received some additional new users thanks to a presentation we conducted at the Electronic Social Mixer at Hunter College.

I am disappointed that we have not been able to officially release to a broader user population due to the issues we have been having with video. (shawn to the rescue hopefully). This next week I hope to get a lot of the behind the scenes php completed, start on the media navigation and of course fix the video and release the site to the ITP student list. I also plan to talk with my sister this weekend in order to implement the circle I am creating for her and her friends.

The Voices of New Orleans circle has also not really taken off. Many of us who went down there have found that communication with the people we met has been slow, probably partially due to lack of reliable internet connectivity and partially due to busy schedules on both parts. I plan to talk to Ashley this weekend and see if there is a way we can push the circle forward. I am not sure how much she has promoted it so far, I'll have to ask her this weekend.

Posted by Cat at 02:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)