I didn’t have any good ideas on what to do for the ds106 radio show project. As an open online participant, I also have almost no connections to the others. I saw a posting on Twitter from a team looking for extras, so I offered my assistance, not knowing anything about their project plans. A later posting mentioned that they were looking into the allegation that ds106 is a cult.
I had no idea how they were planning on approaching the issue, but I liked the idea of exposing it as a cult. Early on, I tried to get a friend of mine involved in the Daily Create because I thought it was the kind of thing she would enjoy. Jim Groom called her out on Twitter, so I let her know through Facebook, and in our discussion that followed she asked, “What is this thing? Is it a cult?” Later on I emailed another friend, who I found was working at UMW, that I had joined the course. He said that all the students he talked to who had taken ds106 say its more of a lifestyle than a traditional course. In light of all that, I started thinking about the cult-like aspects: the Reverend, the way his face is all over so many assignments, the tags #4life and #cantstopwontstop, the propaganda, …
So when the team and I made contact, I was pleased to find that they were working in the same direction. Our ideas meshed well, and I had some audio things I had done earlier that could fit in with the project. I brought up some ideas for online collaboration, since I won’t be interacting with anyone f2f, and they seem to be working. Editing everything together will be a challenge. It is pretty amazing the amount of work that goes into media productions behind the scenes.
