Lend a Hand to the #DS106 Daily Create

The DS106 Daily Create has done it’s thing non-stop, every day since January 8, 2012 thanks to a dedicated crew of open and class participants in DS106 plus people who work behind the scenes to keep it populated.

How many other web things have had a continuous 6+ year run? With no budget? While tech products rise and crash on the hype curve, free services grow on the backs of individuals, get bought and scuttled, but to me, it’s the community run places managed by groups individuals, not just DS106, but also CLMOOC and Virtually Connecting, that have the long staying power on the web.

So now…

reply w/ tag #tdc2306 We Want You… https://t.co/WO55k9Qzyh pic.twitter.com/vfyYWH6J3e

— ds106 Daily Create (@ds106dc) May 3, 2018

Tim Owens built the first iteration of the Daily Create and ran it, then I took the helm for many years, Mariana Funes did a few long runs with the hand on the WordPress tiller. Most recently, Martha Burtis kept the daily going for her DS106 The End class.

The daily practice of doing something new, to me, is good pedagogy. And research indicates its good for the well being.

If you get the #4life wink/nod of DS106, you know “end” is not in the cards.

For those who have run a Daily ______ site (and it’s a SPLOT theme meaning you can make your own daily site), you know it’s both draining but also rather exhilarating to keep the machine going.

I end up introducing it to almost every project, like the UDG Agora Daily Try, the Mural UDG Daily Opener, the NetNarr Daily Digital Alchemy.

Doing the Daily Create is fun, but what’s really fun is concocting new ones (or recycling old ones).

After winding down the NetNarr Daily Digital Alchemy, for the summer I will be running the Ontario Extend Daily Extend. And Martha is tired too. We’ve had some talk of having some of her Digital Knowledge Center students take over the management, maybe in the Fall.

It’s a WordPress site, and there is room for multiple people running the show, so we are looking for volunteers who might want to get behind the curtain to press the buttons and pull the levers. The training is rigorous, it might take 10 minutes.

One of the things that comes up is forgetting to fill the queue, and unless you have @dogtrax barking when they run out, you have to keep an eye on it. I tend to try and schedule 1-2 weeks out. I hope soon to put a feature in the theme than can notify managers by email when the supply gets below a threshold.

And if managing the Daily Create is not your cup of whatever, please chip in when you can with new ideas. See TDC2306 for more details.

This is how DS106 rolls along…

Featured Image: Modified text from a classic INF3-105 Food Production Lend a hand on the land at a Volunteer Agricultural Camp Artist Nunney a Wikimedia Commons image shared into the public domain as a UK Government work. This kind of remix is core to what DS106 has done for years and years more.