pool

About and Contact

last updated: 08.01.10

What is Pool?
Media about Pool
Pool press kit
About the Pool team

What is Pool?

ABC is building an online ‘town square’ for all Australians. Pool is a collaborative space where audiences become 'co-creators'.  It’s a place to share and talk about creative work - music, photos, videos, documentaries, interviews, animations and more.

Pool brings together ABC professionals and audiences in an open-ended process of participation, co-creation and collaboration.  In this way Pool is a predictive project.  We’re conducting research in action at the intersection of broadcast and participatory media. The project is using open rights frameworks to explore this new territory with our research, community and education partners.

The Pool story began in early 2003. That seed has grown into the public beta site you see today,  launched in August 2008.

The new version of Pool is being designed right now. See it unfolding and comment on it here: http://pool.acid.net.au

What can I do at Pool?

Create a profile
Make your own profile page so others can learn more about your interests and see what you are creating.

Upload/Download
You can upload your own work whether it’s text, audio, image or video and download other people’s work to build upon or remix.

Remix & reuse the ABC archive
Little bit by little bit we're releasing ABC archives back to the public for use and reuse under an open licence. Look here to see what's already been released.

Collaborate with Radio National producers
We're constantly running projects where we invite you to contribute. It's a new approach for us in making our media collaborative and conversational. See all the projects here.

Search
Search content by genre & licence, search contributors by skills, and search by tags and “tag-clouds”.

Licence
Select a licensing agreement; declare a relationship between your content and other content. 

Contact
Get in touch with the Pool team via email or follow us on Twitter. We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas.


Media about Pool
Media coverage of the Pool project. You can see all items tagged Pool media here. If you see Pool mentioned somewhere let us know. If you would like to interview the Pool team, just drop us a line.  Pool press kit Pool press releases and graphics for use by bloggers and other media. You can see all items tagged Pool press here.

About the Pool team Pool editorial team:

Executive producer: Sherre DeLys

Social media designer: John Jacobs

Social media producer: Andrew Davies

Social media producer: Jonathon Hutchinson

Social media producer: Pip Shea

Pool intern: Lauren Whybrow

Pool is currently working with the ACID, the Australasian Centre for Interaction Design, on a new Interaction Design to create Pool Version 2. Project leader is Marius Foley, working with Jeremy Yuille, Chris Marmo, and Reuben Stanton.

Thanks to Tim Mansfield for facilitating Pool's prototype design.  And to Ross Gibson and UTS for invaluable support in realising the prototype.

Pool beta version web development team: Technical lead and theme development: James Gollan. Developers: Rimian Perkins, Mark Simpson and Owen Townend. HTML developers: Greg Turner, Alistair Weakley. Designer: Amber Heyward. Information architecture: Meena Tharmarajah, Kerry Lotzof, Briony Williamson. Production manager: Peter Jackson. Usability testing coordinator: Carolyn Harris

Thanks also to Ben Byrne, Ali Edwards, David Harwood, Creative Commons Australia. And to Kyla Brettle for U.X. and education sector consultation.

And to past interns: Anna Yanatchkova, Julienne Chan, Nicolas Apave, Don Cameron, Dan McHugh, Tim Dodds, Emily Naismith, Amelia Schmidt and Bridget Spinks.

Pool is built using Drupal, a free and open-source software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish and manage a wide variety of content. Drupal is a flexible, community focused way of creatively collaborating. 

More about the Pool Team

Sherre DeLys - Executive producer 

Sherre DeLys has worked with some of her favourite writers and musicians to create radio art which displays an intense regard for listeners' own imaginative involvement. She has collaborated with sculptor Joan Grounds for more than a decade– their sound sculptures enter into a call-and-response with the botanical environments they inhabit. Her work has been commissioned by national broadcasters and artist-run internet stations, and presented at major museums and cultural centres in Europe, America and Australasia. She’s enjoyed team-work as producer for The Listening Room at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and The Next Big Thing, WNYC. Sherre has also performed with improvising music groups, created sound designs for Sydney Theatre Company, hosted conversations with musicians for ABC TV, taught and published on sound art and documentary.

John Jacobs

John joined the ABC in 1985. Since then he has engineered, produced and created many radio programs, winning international awards and establishing leading ABC innovations such as The Night Air and pool.org.au Always looking ahead for fresh ways to present ideas and entertainment, John co-produced the popular Triple Jay news theme and helped start podcasting at the ABC. He has a background in community media and was part of the team that laid the foundations for the indymedia citizen journalism movement. His other passions are an ongoing experimental arts practice and teaching media production at Australian universities and overseas institutions. His current research is in new co-creative media forms and he sees a bright future for the ABC in the open public media space.

Andrew Davies - Social media producer

When he’s not working with the Pool team Andrew is the co-producer of the ‘Future Tense’ program on ABC Radio National. Before that he helped to produce such diverse Radio National programs as the Media Report, the Sports Factor and Australia Talks Back. Together with Antony Funnell he won the best radio prize – for a program about media in Zimbabwe - at the 2007 United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Awards.

Prior to joining the ABC, Andrew worked in community media – firstly as volunteer and then as a paid employee. After initially studying European politics, he decided that the media might be more interesting. Andrew also has a degree in journalism and did his honours thesis on the commercial radio ‘cash for comment’ controversy.

Andrew takes a keen interest in many of the new and emerging online trends and ideas. He also has a passion for social media and loves the ability to make new connections, collaborate, share ideas and simply talk to people! Luckily for him being part of the Pool community means he gets to indulge all his interests at once.

Jonathon Hutchinson – Social media producer

Recently, Jonathon has had his work broadcast on ABC Radio National’s The Night Air Program on two occasions during 2008. This helped enforce his presence as a remix artist which has since seen some of his work exhibited in several arts festivals within Melbourne. Having a background as a producer and presenter in community radio during the 90s, he has a passion for broadcast media, and has nurtured this love into one for networked communications and social media over the past six years. This has led to the completion of his Bachelor of Communication in Media at RMIT University and seen him continue with his Honours research year. Within this research he focussed on the Pool community and has worked closely with many of the users.

When he is not at the ABC, buried deep in a book, or ALT Tabbing between a fury of Firefox tabs, he likes to edit digital stories together at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image. He also likes to do documentary work on stories that quite possibly will never be told. All in all, he just likes to communicate with people. This communication thing recently led him to a new passion for the custard filled dragon balls from the hole in the wall in China town, Sydney.

Pip Shea - Social Media Producer

Pip is a media artist/designer/producer/researcher/educator. She has spent the last few years making participatory art projects that explore the power of sharing within networks. She has participated in artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), Electrofringe Festival, and the Next Wave Festival; and has been a participating artist at the International Symposium of Electronic Art (Belfast), the Light In Winter Festival, the Melbourne Festival and was a speaker at the 2008 Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures. She dreams of free wifi and its potential for community building.

Lauren Whybrow- Intern

Lauren's a big fan of the Internet. She just completed her media degree at the University of Sydney, with a final essay on the future of Internet regulation in Australia. Her conclusion- be very scared. When she's not at Pool, Lauren is a freelance writer, and also blogs for other Internet sites. Before commencing Honours next year, Lauren plans to spend far too much time on Facebook. For research, of course.

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