Participation Camp is a get together of a variety of theorists, practitioners, and tinkerers of various stripes involved in the “tech + politics = ?” movement. SpankTheMachine sits among the vanguard of groups and organizations involved in some of the biggest and most promising questions of our time. Indeed, the frame underpinning the entire event is
“Democracy is a game in which we all make the rules. How do we make this serious game more inclusive, more fair, and more fun?”
Here’s the banner I submitted for the event. Boy I have a big mouth.
If I could fire myself, I would. Man, hating deadlines is awesome and all, but it’s also a bit of a handicap when you are your own boss 
Mea culpa for not posting here for so long and filling in those courageous mortals who want to know the latest with SpankTheMachine. Here’s a breakdown of what’s been happening over the last few weeks…
1) Our workshop has been set up! We’ve got a slammin’ space in East Williamsburg. Over the next ten days I’ll be building worktables on wheels and acquiring several dozen frames to be burnt with our new catalog. I’ll post pictures of the space soon, promise.
2) After much dilly-dallying with a variety of webspaces (a wiki at pbworks.com, a Google Group, and Google Docs) I finally decided to set up the channel to discuss the implementation of the site and catalog right here. There’s a mix of public and private stuff, and that’s what took time to sort out. I like the idea of keeping it all in one space, and the only thing I don’t yet want to disclose is the slogan list, so that’s not hard to get around. It was my first instinct to publish a meta channel here anyway, and WordPress has enough plugins to set up the collaborative features I was looking for as far as suggestions/designs etc. So here we are! The answer lay within all along…
3) I finally got enough money set aside to buy our first round of blanks, restock on inks and supplies, and generally get the wheels turning. We will be looking to do a photoshoot over the next 3-4 weeks, so if you are interested, shoot us an email (info@guess-the-domain-it-ends-in-machine.com). All body types & coolness levels are welcome (bonus if we can get someone in a 3-piece suit & necktie with a t-shirt over their getup).
4) Working on jailbreaking a semi-busted gen 1 iphone, which means I’ll be able to do a better job documenting the day to day stuff of building & printing. If anyone has an extra iphone with an AT&T contract that they want to give away because they love unicorns, we’ll take that off your hands. Just sayin’.
SpankTheMachine,
SpankTheMachine
