Dulwich OnView

My colleague Angie and I have been working with the Friends of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London on pro-bono basis to develop a multi-media online arts magazine, Dulwich OnView, which is launching this week. The process and objectives make a useful case study for anyone looking to set up an online community project on a limited budget.

Beginnings

The Friends is a volunteer group that supports the work of the Dulwich Picture Gallery by raising funds through events like summer parties, talks, films and other charitable fund-raising activities. Ingrid Beazley, their energetic and dynamic Chair, has been keen to use social media to promote the Friends and engage more with the local South East London community for some time now. We first talked about developing an interactive online presence in mid-2006 but what was needed was a strong volunteer team to help us run the project and for awhile, this key ingredient seemed elusive.

A great volunteer team

Then during last year, along came Catherine Fraher, who has a background in marketing and has worked with eBay. Taking time out following her new baby, Catherine has been thrown into the Friends e-world, first setting up a Friends photo group on Flickr and now taking on the role of co-editor for the new online magazine. At around the same time, a number of very talented and lively people began to offer help and suddenly, we had a great volunteer team - writers Anna Sayburn, Angela Corrias, Sally-Ann Johnson and Patrick Fraher; IT specialist Stephen Hendon and photographer Rebecca Portsmouth as well as my colleague at ZenGuide, web-content writer Angie Macdonald. The volunteer team is the real key to the magazine’s success - we have to work together well, approach the project in a professional way even though it’s just something we are doing for fun in our spare time, deliver our contributions on time and give each other the help and back-up that is needed in such a big project. And we really are doing all that with such ease and enthusiasm - it’s really fantastic!

A blog-based central hub

Given that this is a community project, my brief was to use free or low-cost applications that are freely available on the web. As the central hub of the multimedia magazine, we needed a platform that would fit well aesthetically with a world class art museum. I chose Wordpress.com for its ease of use and wide range of functions. Also the platform’s own branding is minimised - unlike Blogger which makes it clear you are on a blogspot.com site with its masthead across each blog. A survey has also reported that a large proportion of Blogger sites are spam blogs.

Blogging technology is easy to use and just the right platform for an online magazine. The free service does not allow you to re-design the layout in any sophisticated way but for our purposes the basic reverse date order presentation works well enough so that the latest articles appear at the top of the front page. The volunteer team will be able to upload their own articles with some basic training. Easy intergration with the photosharing site on Flickr.com means that the magazine can be quickly brightened with a lot of great images.

Other free / low-cost applications

For audio podcasting, I chose Gabcast.com which gives you a local UK telephone number to dial into from an ordinary phone. You record your podcast by leaving a voicemail message and press 1 to publish it. It automatically uploads the mp3 file and publishes a post on the magazine. It is free up to 200 MB and then there is a small monthly fee. There’s no messing around with sound editing equipment and FTP transfer software. But you can’t edit or add music tracks/ sound effects and you have to record your podcast in one continuous take - which can be a bit nerve-wracking!

We will be adding videos via our on Dulwich OnView YouTube channel in due course, which is a free application. In the meantime, we have collected videos about or filmed at Dulwich Picture Gallery using VodPod.com, which is another freebie - you can see the collection in the sidebar on the magazine site.

The Flickr pool is free - it collects together photos submitted to the pool by any user. However, Catherine has set up a Pro account for the photos that the team themselves want to upload for the magazine and that is a premium account at around £12 a year (US $25).

Some caution

Before you rush out and sign up to any old free application for your community project, a word of caution. You need to check out each applications functions and design options. The old adage is true that you get what you pay for. There are numerous free applications but some are easier to use than others - or have more suitable functionality to your project, or have fewer ads, or have a better look for your brand, or integrate better with other applications etc etc.

Also if you are likely to be particular about look, layout and the details of design, going for something free may not be the right way forward. And if you have high demands for functionality and specific things you want your multi-media to do, the free stuff is bound to limit and restrict your vision.

Knowing how to work around some of the limitations and restrictions of free applications can help. There is obviously only so much you can do with clever work-arounds but it can contribute to a quality user experience for your visitors.

Please do come and check out the magazine at www.dulwichonview.org.uk.