The Silent Writing Collective

TL;DR version: I want you to come and write for an hour with me every Sunday night. Go hereat 8pm UK time (currently 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 9pm CET) on Sunday:http://piratepad.net/silentwritingcollective

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Introduction

Recently, I joined the Mentor Team at Mozilla. Each team has their own, slightly different way of working – even if we all tend to use the same tools. Something I really enjoyed during my inaugural Mentor Team call was the period of ‘silent etherpadding’ that it began with.

For the uninitiated:

Etherpad… is a web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants’ edits in real-time, with the ability to display each author’s text in their own color. There is also a chat box in the sidebar to allow meta communication. (Wikipedia)

At Mozilla we usually use an etherpad as an agenda for our calls. We use one for the Web Literacy Standard community calls, for example. I’ve found using etherpads usually makes for collaborative, democratic experiences.

The idea

I like writing. I like writing and commenting in real time even more. But I only ever do it for work-related things. So I had this idea last night:

How it works:

• Every week there’s a new main etherpad where people sign in (being anonymous/pseudoanonymous is fine)
• Each person creates a new etherpad and adds the link next to their name on the main weekly etherpad.
• Everyone writes for an hour. Or more. Or less.
• During that hour people can stop by other people’s pads and comment, chat, etc.(anonymously/pseudoanonymously if you want)
• Only one rule: NO DELETING (of your own or other people’s stuff)

This is what it looks like:

While Stephen Lockyer kindly pointed me towards #SundayPost at attending.io (which looksamazing) it’s not quite what I had in mind for the Silent Writing Collective.

Conclusion

Perhaps you need to start blogging again. Maybe you want to be inspired by what other people are writing. It might be that you just need an excuse to write about something that’s on your mind.

Whatever it is, I hope you’ll join us this Sunday. If it works, then it’ll continue. If it doesn’t I’ll just have to go back to 750words!

Join us here: http://piratepad.net/silentwritingcollective at 8pm UK time on Sunday(currently 12pm PT / 3pm ET / 9pm CET)