Pick me Up, Put me Down
by Charlie Tims
Pick me up, Put me down aspires to "kick start a new British youth culture" by constructing an entirely open source magazine, co-editored and authored by readers. Their weekly email is as incoherent as it is entertaining. I'm probably the last to pick up on stuff like this but it seems to combine the randomness of blog commentary, but the managed coherence of a published magazine's letters page. Having spoken to the man behind it this morning (an exciled writer from The (now defunct)Face)I was struck by the similarity between open source policy making and open source magazine making. Both seem to rely on being adaptable in the long-run and responsive to their community of interest, while both also require developing the community's ability to make the magazine/construct the policy - an activity that can be fulfilled by an agency such as Demos. I think that's probably the definition of "public interest consultancy", but you can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm also interested in how online media like this can ultimately help the creation of open source policy making. The third entry down on the newsletter suggests a potential opening for using such a portal for research purposes;
"Martin is starting a club night in NY, where the profits go
to homeless people. To fly them to Hawaii for a luxury
holiday. He's worried the shock might kill them when they
get back, though. He's serious. Does anyone know anyone who
works with homeless people that Martin can call for advice?"
I'm going to experiment.