A lot of people have been asking what's going on with this site and the project behind it. Well, here's the skinny.
TheMuncieScene.com was chugging along pretty well from around 2003 to
2006ish and did a pretty good job staying current, well-trafficked,
and useful for anybody that wanted to stay up-to-date on Muncie arts, music,
and community development and network with likeminded folks. Then I did what's typical of me and
I got all tangled up in my own overreaching ambition and let the
thing die out. I was going to rebuild the site to be all modern and extra-useful,
but once I started rearranging things, I never really finished, which left
us all with a largely useless shell of a site that I never even bothered to promote to begin with.
But since Munce obviously needs something like the old Muncie Scene site again,
I'm making another honest effort to get one set up. Except this time, it's going
to have all the bells and whistles that a community-run community website should
have, and I'm going to pull in as much outside help as I can so the project
doesn't just fizzle out again because of my lack of free time.
Here's what would help me:
- Designers
Especially banner ad designers and web designers that are familiar with CakePHP or similar frameworks.
- Web Developers
We'll be using PHP (probably CakePHP), MySQL, and Prototype/Scriptaculous for all the Javascript voodoo.
- Advertising / Marketing Folks
To head up the promotional campaign for the project.
- Reporters / Event Hunters
To find events going on in the city and write about them.
- Moderators
To filter through user submitions and approve posts.
- Salespeople
To sell advertising and solicit donations for our awesome monthly givaways.
- Miscellaneous volunteers
To give feedback, test the site for bugs, pass out flyers, and spread the word.
What will you get out of it? Well, primarily an awesome community website.
Also, if you're a Ball State Student, you can get independent study or
internship credit for your work. Also, if you're writing grants or selling
ads to help defray the cost of hosting the website, you will keep a
percentage of those sales. And everybody that donates their time to helping
develop this project will get fun perks like free admission into fundraiser
concerts. And everyone who donates anything else will get a tax deduction,
as the project is operating under a local 501(c)(3) not-for-profit group called the
Full Circle Arts Co-op.
What exactly are all the crazy ambitious plans for this website? Well, there are lots of
ideas, all of which can be accomplished with a little bit of effort, but moreover this
project is quite open-ended and I'm willing to integrate any new ideas that utilize
the Internet to help promote and develop great things in Muncie.
Anyhow, here's a quick rundown of some of the initial goals of this project.
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Basic principles of the site
- Everything happening in Muncie should be promoted in a format that's easily to access, navigate, and archive.
- All genres of expression and demographics should be represented and assisted equally.
- Community development and political activism should be supported through the site.
- Since controversial ideas, events, and material may
be promoted through the website, and because censorship of such
things is against the spirit of the project, the website
should stay strictly independent of any organization
whose reputation or business may be harmed by such controversy.
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Community news
News will be broken down into broad categories and specific tags, enabling
users to pick out what kind of news they want highlighted in the news feed
and what they'd like to be left off of the feed.
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Print magazine
Muncie zines have come and gone, and there seems to be a perennial interest
in having one going for the art and music scene. My thought
has always been that a zine would have a lot more luck surviving
if it were an offshoot of a website that already had a good system in place
for collecting news articles and other writings about the city.
In short, event promoters, journalists, and everyone else would
pool all of their writing and media into the website, then the zine crew
would pull whatever material they wanted off of it.
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Event calendar
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Ideally, the event calendar will be compatible with Google Calendar so that
listed events can be added to people's personal calendars.
-
I'd like to write up a webpage scraper to automatically pull events off of other community
calendars, such as those maintained by Ball State, the Star Press, MuncieDowntown.com,
and Muncie Free Press.
-
A reminder service will let people elect to receive emails a
specified number of days in advance of events.
-
Webmasters will be able to include a snippet of Javascript on
their respective sites to display an event feed from this calendar.
- Online flyer kiosk
- Webcam portal
A roundup of all of the public webcams in Muncie.
- Muncie Scene Radio
A streaming radio station with a mix of Muncie music.
- Community database
An interconnected listing of the city's...
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People: Artists, performers, musicians, promoters, volunteers, venue managers, patrons, etc.
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Groups: Bands, performing groups, community organizations, etc.
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Places: Performance venues, galleries, offices, stores, landmarks, etc.
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Events: Concerts, gallery receptions, film screenings, community meetings, festivals, etc.
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Things: Projects, ideas, traditions, folklore, etc.
- Progressive advertising/donation schema
- Advertising can be purchased through cash, material donations, and volunteering for community causes
- Material donations are given out via random drawing to volunteers that post news articles or event information
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Scene Support Fund
Extra money made through selling ads and merchandise and holding fundraiser events will be used
to give out interest-free loans for art projects, album releases, and community projects. Back in TheMuncieScene.com's
heyday, this was called "The Muncie Scene Philanthropy Fund" and was used to help poor bands
get CDs printed up once they finished new albums. The bands sold the CDs and paid back the loans
as soon as they could, with whatever voluntary interest they wanted to pay.
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Message Board
Back in the day it was pretty lively. Lively meaning the source of
community organizing, sensational drama, and outrageous controversy.
And massive trolling. Let's avoid that this time around.
If you'd like to help, or if you want to know more about what's planned,
you can get in touch with me by
emailing me or attending
Full Circle's twice-monthly meetings.
P.S.: Congratulations for reading all the way to the end of that. Your bonus prize is my shameless plugging! Come down to Doc's Music Hall on Sundays at 9pm to catch me hosting Doc's Trivia Night. Free to play, $50 bar tab to the winning team, ages 21+ only (sorry, kids!). Also, tune in to MAX 93.5 / 96.7 FM to catch me cohosting the Doc's Music Hall radio show on Mondays from 10pm to 12am.
- Graham "Phantom" Watson
