Creating our own "inspirational" website

[tunetown]

techaudio That'll piss 'em off
audiotics

both .com.au available. I hate obscure names.

[Manning]

Ah, there's the rub. I (unfortuantely) adore obscure names - I think "Trust Me I'm A Scientist" is brilliant.

However earlier comments have already cast aspersions on my extreme hipness, so I'll abide by the majority.

Audiotic is VERY cool though.

[AnthonyMF]

Woah I wish I'd noticed that the discussion had moved over here earlier! Not that I've much to add at this point other than agreement. It looks like all these ideas are really coming along nicely! I really like the idea of no compensated reviews as a permanent rule.

I have to give my +1 for Pro Audio Fight Club. It seems to suggest no nonsense, honesty and a bit of good humour It just needs to more clearly convey what it actually IS, perhaps in a tag line or some such. LIke "Pro Audio Fight Club - An Online Audio Tech Publication free from corporate tyranny! " but that needs more thought too. Or just a more obvious name to begin with.

The question I have at this point is will there be an editor? Quality control? Will anyone ever deem a topic or article inappropriate for the publication?

[Alistair]

Sorry I haven't been involved in this guys- currently on holidays in SE Asia and I've got better things to do than be on the computer!

All looks like it's going great- I think Pro Audio Fight Club is fun and silly, but something more esoteric could be cool as well. I'll be home next week and try and get a bit more involved then.

[Manning]

Anthony, I've volunteered to copyedit as it is something I've been doing for years, plus I have little else of value to contribute. Of course anyone else is free to volunteer.

As far as topics being off-limits, as long as it is demonstrably audio related, then no.

Actually even then I'm not certain - my favourite column ever in Guitar Player magazine during the 80s was written by a juggler named Freff.

[audioio]

Also been away, so I missed a bit of this.

All content will permanently remain the intellectual property of the authors.

Creative Commons Share-Alike or similar?

proaudiofightclub... hmm. Given the generally affable nature of the discussions here, and the kind of content you might offer, I can't imagine this name fitting. But it's to be your site, not a democracy, so do whatever you want!

[Lucas]

What about www.patchbay.com.au

[SteveL]

OK, I'll suggest a name since I have contributed nothing to the discussion so far! How about AudioBBQ .... bunch of folks hanging around in a good-natured way with the occasional 'grilling'....(badly rendered logo below) and it's typically ozzy/aussie (oy, oy,oy), god what am I still doing up at this time of night.

Untitled-1.jpg

Steve

[Gian]

I am 10 hours behind you so it is only 6:58pm here on a monday night or as the italians like to say 18:58.

I like that name.

[Manning]

AudioBBQ... cool. It's very Australian which is also good. The logo could include the outlines of recording mics as well.

Patchbay... a bit dull for my tastes, sorry Lucas.

I've got a very busy week ahead of me, but by the weekend I'll be sitting down to thrash out a complete plan for the website. I'll be consolidating/summarising all of the ideas we have raised so far and putting them into a document for collective review.

I'd like to have the site registered and in existence before the end of Jan, so we'll need to achieve consensus on a name by Australia Day or so.

[Lucas]

It was meant to be a play on ebay..... Oh well. Might work well for the classifieds section.

[Manning]

Any advances on Audio BBQ?

I've got the cashola organised and am ready to get this thing off the ground. We just need a name (and a collective willingness to proceed.)

Once the domain is in place I'll give Dave (Text Edifice) the car keys and he can set up his Wordpress environment. We'll keep the site entirely private for a few months, and see how we go coming up with content.

I'll be posting the aforementioned summary of operational ideas shortly. This will be a basis for discussion, definitely not a dictum. It will be largely similar to ideas already discussed in this thread.

[Text_Edifice]

Hey Manning,

don't want to be a stick in the mud but do we have enough contributors? I still don't count 12 (or even 10) and I think that this is a pretty important threshold in terms of ensuring enough content can be generated.

I liked pro audio fight club too.

[mylesgm]

Well I'll attempt to be a contributor. Can't say I like Audio BBQ though, it doesn't have the ring of much about it. Pro audio fight club though fun is also not a great name for a community enterprise. We need something connected or something entirely unconnected (gearslutz vs turtlerock) though I've always thought gearslutz was an awful name it kind of does depict the majority of content there. "Trust me I'm a scientist" is great, funny, engaging, poking fun at the variety of content as well as pointing to real quality. I'd like to be a part of something australian but also international and not ocker.

[HA_DA_JA]

Is there a classified section?
Is there "the grass is greener section" i.e. a look at other peoples studio's.
I liked Brad Watts section looking at other people's studio.
I also just got some hire gear back form a nice chap who just did 3 weeks of recording a fresh young band out in the country on how they went on making there first album. He had some great stories to tell. Stories like this I find interesting.
I like pictures.
I like tips n tricks.
I like things for free but I dont expect things for free.
I think if someone or some people are going to invest time and effort into something there should be some sort of return of this investment. It doesn't always have to be money, but it usually is.
I dont mind paying a subscription price if I find value in it.
Look at all the people who use to buy AT and now look at book people whop have seen less value in AT over the years and have not bought it.

[Manning]

Well it just occurred to me, we could have another option if we want more time to figure out a name.

I've got a person domain (with webhosting) 'manningbartlett.net' which is sitting completely unused. It's got Wordpress support, but not the bandwidth capacity that the site will ultimately need.

Dave can install his Wordpress template there, and we can start building using a temporary home.

Meanwhile we can try and figure out a proper name. Once we do, it's not overly challenging to migrate the content to a new site.

As always, just an idea.

[Manning]

All content will permanently remain the intellectual property of the authors.

Creative Commons Share-Alike or similar?

At the option of the author. I think it's only fair that the default position be traditional copyright, on the understanding that we have the right of publication without payment. This means that the author retains the option of selling their work elsewhere.

If any author wants to employ a CC licence, that's fine, but it shouldn't be the default position.

(Here's a link to CC licences for those who may not be familiar with them -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses)

[Manning]

Is there a classified section?

Probably not.

As always, I'm not setting the rules here, just trying to summarize them. But as there probably won't be a forum, setting up a classifieds would be a challenge. Having a forum dilutes the objective - we're not trying to create a breakaway forum from Trock, but to create an online publication.

[Chris Wright]

I'm a young live sound guy based in Perth with little to contribute in the way of written content, but I would like to volunteer my efforts as a creative contributor in the design, construction and ongoing maintenance of this website. I have the enthusiasm and willingness to see this project grow and will happily donate my time and effort. I think I have a good eye for visual design and a strong understanding of online platforms and social networks. I can be reached at chriswrightaudio [at] gmail [dot] com.

We need something connected or something entirely unconnected (gearslutz vs turtlerock)

For what it's worth I agree with Myles' comment that a name should be something wholly related to the concept or otherwise completely removed from it. I think the name shouldn't limit the project in any way so something unqualified would be nice, whether related to sound or not.

As a side note, could I make a suggestion to use a .org or .info TLD bearing in mind the catalyst for this whole project? My contribution would be Audio Focus / audiofocus.org

[Manning]

Chris - sorry for not replying sooner and welcome to Trock

Re web design and such - Dave (Text Edifice) is the defacto CIO of our multinational community project. I strongly doubt any offers of assistance will get rejected.

Re .org or .org.au - yeah I support that. However I'll be buying the .com and .com.au's just in case. Our earlier discussions basically converged on the notion that "we want to keep our options open".

(irrelevant sidenote - Wikipedia originally started as a .com with a view to paid subscriptions once enough content existed. It was nearly 2 years old before that changed.)

We'll add audiofocus to the pile of candidate names. I think the mentality around these parts largely leans to a slightly absurdist bent (with a few exceptions), but we're still open to any and all ideas. Judging by how hard it has been to get any consensus on the name, I'm seriously thinking we'll have to get started in stealth-mode using a "working title" domain.

[Chris Wright]

Manning,

Thanks for taking my comments on board, it's great that you guys are so open to suggestions even from the inexperience next generation! I've been a member here for a short while but although this was my first post this forum has been a great resource to me in that time.

Regards,

[Chris H]

Here are few names to add to the pile
sonicobservatory.org

thevumeter.org

[AnthonyMF]

The VU meter instantly sticks out to me as a catchy and memorable name.

Plus you can pronounce it voo.

I'm going to try to get round to writing a few articles now that this year is off to a running start for me. I've had a couple of topics I've been wanting to write about for a while.

[Manning]

I quite like thevumeter.org as well.

[graemeh]

Still on holiday here, just logged on briefly - wow lotta stuff happened since xmas! Great ideas all over the place! My holiday brain is hugely unfocused but this just popped into my nut - seems to be appropriate if not downright offensive!... KnobHeads (headz if you want to be a bit derivative)

[Julian Nichols]

thevumeter is the pick of the bunch so far for me. I would go with a .com as opposed to a .org which may severely limit expansion down the track. You never know...

[mylesgm]

vumeter wins for me too. knobheadz is precisely the kind of thing I want to avoid, sounds too much like a gearslutz derivative.

[Text_Edifice]

I'm sure it's taken but what about just thevu?

[audioio]

I'm sure it's taken but what about just thevu?

According to whois.com, all of .org, .net and .com are available for thevumeter.

I had a weird thing with Firefox where I'd get a 200 response after typing this in. Figured out in was the proxy server sending a response at my workplace, but before that I checked peakhold and peakreading. Some of those .net and .org are available as well.

Just continuing the metering theme.

[Gillian Lee]

I like Myles' direction with the blog name- we need something engaging, and something clever would be great.
I'm happy to run with a working title until we find something that works. My fave so far has been thevumeter.
In the meantime, here's the result of my brainstorming;
'Feedback'
'A dingo stole my mix bus'
I was going to also suggest 'Laying Cable' (kidding!)