1. Although we might not approve of every use to which their new owners have put our ex-insignificant objects [that’s the Cape Cod Shoe, above], we encourage them to send us photos of the objects in their new contexts. Or post them to this Flickr group pool. (Worth checking out if you haven’t — some great stuff there.)
2. We’re on track to announce the winner of the Significant Objects fiction contest hosted by Slate.com today. As previously announced, there were over 600 entrants, so it took us longer than expected to read all the stories, select 12 favorites, then settle on one those favorites as our winner. We’ll also announce the 11 runners-up today. Also today the winning story will be published on Slate.com and here on this website. And at long last the BBQ Sauce Jar — now officially one of our most significant-ized objects — will be put up for auction on eBay.
3. Although we’ll publish our 100th story in just a couple of weeks, thus wrapping up Phase 1 of the Significant Objects experiment (there may be more phases; we’re discussing options now — post any ideas you have to the comments section of this post!), we’ve decided to squeeze in one more FICTION CONTEST before Phase 1 is over. The Slate.com contest was so successful, and so much fun for the judges, that we’ve approached another top-notch online magazine that has agreed to host a new one. That’s right: two of the 100 stories in our experiment will be written by fiction contest winners. We’ll announce details of that contest soon. Stay tuned!
What about a wiki-style open market spin-off? Loosely moderated, each object open to as many story submissions as we writers can imagine in a given time frame, and story with the most votes (?) gets to send the object to the ebay market? Maybe the authors remain anonymous until the voting ends?
I also think there are so many great ways this project could enable collaboration – cross-object stories, or cross-genre collaborations.
It’s an interesting idea, Nicki. I don’t know enough about such things to quite know how it would work — especially the voting part. Is there an example you (or anybody) would point to?
Atlas Obscura (http://www.atlasobscura.com/) is a good example of a site with dynamic, wiki-style collaboration … when a user joins, (s)he can submit edits and additions to the Atlas entries, which are simply reviewed/approved by an editor before going live … There isn’t really a voting equivalent on Atlas Obscura, but I have to think there’s some simple way to incorporate it into a platform like theirs … A possibly helpful example (not too sexy or streamlined, but still) of online voting is here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/greengov/ideas/
Thanks again Nicki, and we are still thinking this through. I’m not sure if either of these models is quite right for a fiction project, but … still thinking.