Update: 3 things

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capecod-shoe

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!

About

Joshua Glenn is an editor, publisher, and a freelance writer and semiologist. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC. He's cofounder of the websites HiLobrow, Significant Objects, and Semionaut; and cofounder of HiLoBooks, which will reissue six Radium Age sci fi novels in 2012. In 2011, he produced and co-designed the iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He's coauthored and co-edited Taking Things Seriously, The Idler's Glossary, The Wage Slave's Glossary, the story collection Significant Objects (forthcoming from Fantagraphics), and Unbored, a kids' field guide to life forthcoming from Bloomsbury. In the '00s, Glenn was an associate editor and columnist at the Boston Globe's IDEAS section; he also started the IDEAS blog Brainiac. He has written for Slate, n+1, Cabinet, io9, The Baffler, Feed, and The Idler. In the '90s, Glenn published the seminal intellectual zine Hermenaut; served as editorial director and co-producer of the pioneering DIY and online social networking website Tripod.com; and was an editor at the magazine Utne Reader. Glenn manages the Hermenautic Circle, a secretive online community. He was born and raised in Boston, where he lives with his wife and sons. Click here for more info.

4 thoughts on “Update: 3 things

  1. 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.

  2. 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?

  3. 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/

  4. 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.

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