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gFam Web Monetized Photo Networking Platform – a Sustainable Funding Case Study

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With the growing ecosystem of creatives, educators and technologists building sustainability into their projects in part with the Web Monetization Standard, we have begun a series within our Sustainable Funding Series for Creatives, Educators, and Technologists exploring projects that are utilizing the Web Monetization Standard as a part of their plan. In this first interview in the series, we speak with Adam, the founder of gFam – a Web Monetized Photo Networking Platform.

Founder: Adam

Country: Australia

Interview Date: March 5, 2021

Link to the Project: https://gfam.live

Funding Method: Ingenuity, Blood-Sweat-and-Tears, Grant, Web Monetization Standard 

Interview with gFam Founder, Adam

The Project : gFam Photo Networking Platform

Recognizing that there is a problem with equity in revenue models on the web, in that tech giants are receiving the majority of revenues from the time spent on content creators’ work, through advertising dollars, while the content creators themselves see little to none of these revenues, Adam set out to change this. His Goal? To help his friends that he saw had large networks of fans, but were struggling financially. From this desire to help content creators, Adam founded gFam – the global family app, which is a Web Monetized Photo Networking Platform.

Like with Instagram, gFam is a social media platform designed for the sharing of images with the ability to add text descriptions to accompany the images. The BIG difference for creators on gFam is that creators can begin earning revenue from their images starting with the first image that they share on the first day that they join the platform. Creators can earn in two different ways. Firstly gFam is Web Monetized, meaning that creators can earn using Coil by adding a payment pointer to their digital wallet. Secondly, creators can earn tips in XRP by setting up a XUMM account, linked to their gFam account. Tipping has also allowed for creators to gate specific content of theirs if they wish, only allowing access to it at a cost. If all this sounds like a foreign language to you, not to worry I elaborate on what these things are and how they work, below.

Other features of gFam include a home profile with your bio and photo stream. A lovely advantage to gFam‘s profiles over Instagram profiles, is that they allow you to add other social networking sites, as well as more than one website link. gFam’s linking abilities within post descriptions is also an advantage that gFam has over Instagram, as links that are shared in gFam post descriptions are clickable. Finally as with other social networking sites, you can follow people of interest and comment on their posts. You cannot like their posts, however. Instead the heart button is reserved for tipping. A few features that are currently missing on gFam, that I hope to see in the future, are notifications within the platform (I don’t need to be buzzed elsewhere) that let you know when someone has commented on a post of yours or replied to a comment of yours, and the ability to switch your scrolling of other people’s images between a home feed of people you are following and a global feed with everyone’s posts. I’d also like to see the image thumbnails larger, so as to better attract the eye.

What is the Web Monetization Standard?

Technically, the Web Monetization Standard is a newly proposed browser API standard that allows for the generation of a payment stream from the user directly to the website being viewed.

Basically, the Web Monetization Standard is a newer, more equitable way for creators to earn micropayments from the time that people spend on their content in the digital space.

How Does Web Monetization Work?

At present the only Web Monetization Provider utilizing the Web Monetization Standard is Coil. This means to receive micropayments via the Web Monetization Standard for time spent on your content, you need to sign up for a Coil Creator Account and set up a payment pointer with a digital wallet. I explain how to do that in this post on the Coil Web Monetization Plugin for WordPress – Set Up and Troubleshooting Issues. You might also want to consider signing up for a $5 US / month subscription with Coil to give back to the Web Monetization Community, as it is through those $5 US / month subscriptions that creators get paid. Whenever someone with a subscription spends time on your content each month, micropayments flow from the subscription to the content creator. This happens thanks to Interledger.

What is the Role of Blockchain Technology and XRP in Making Micropayments with XUMM?

As Adam explains in the video above, the advantage in the micropayments being distributed as tips via XUMM is that they utilize blockchain technology, meaning that these transactions are decentralized, fast, and don’t cost anything, so no money is lost to transaction fees. Due to there being a number of servers in the blockchain, this makes it difficult for hackers to intercept payments. Essential the framework of the blockchain prevents people from copying and pasting digital files.

XRP, which is a cryptocurrency, is used with XUMM, as it is super quick (because the blockchain is smaller and has less servers that have to agree on the transaction) and has no fees (as the servers are hosted by volunteers).

Meet Adam : the Founder of gFam

As Adam, the Founder of gFam, says he’s just a guy – a guy that saw a problem and wants to create a solution to help others, a guy who is creative and determined, a guy that sees the importance of education in growing the Web Monetization Community, and a guy that has done a lot to create a warm and supportive atmosphere in the Web Monetization space. Aside from that, Adam has been building gFam and been one of the chief cheerleaders in the Web Monetization Community, while working a day job in IT Security, being Dad to a flock of sheep, and carrying on with his passions, like Aussie Ninja Warrior.

While Adam is the Founder and Main Human at gFam, he is not the engineer of the platform, rather he has a team of technologists that he is working with on that, while he focuses on building and engaging the community.

Road to Funding Sustainably

When Adam first set out to create gFam, he was envisioning a funding model tied to banner ads, in which the content creator received 80% of the revenue from the ads and gFam received 20% of the revenue. His direction with this changed when he discovered Web Monetization as it better fits his goals, and means the platform does not become overwrought with annoying ads. With the goal of turning gFam into a Web Monetized Photo Networking Platform, Adam applied to Grant for the Web for start-up funding for the platform. He was successful in this bid, giving him the initial funds he needed to hire a team to build the platform, as well as to build and engage the community on gFam. He has openly shared his first year journey, including earnings via the Web Monetization Community Forum.

In talking to Adam about sustainability in March 2021, he at the time thought that he did not need to worry about sustainability due to the grant. Upon pushing him on this, he did concede that he would need ongoing sustainable earnings for the platform to cover server costs and ongoing work of the tech team. His thoughts were that the money earned from Web Monetization and tips would cover these costs. gFam’s Web Monetization earnings come from people scrolling through the home feed, and from time spent on creators’ content that have not enabled their own Web Monetization on their feed, and their tips come from people who tip Adam’s own posts. With the current grant having just ended, the reality has recently hit gFam that at least for the time being, other sustainable funding measures are needed to cover ongoing platform costs, beyond Web Monetization and tips. I further elaborate on this under ‘Current Challenges’ below.

Current Challenges

gFam’s biggest challenge to date have revolved around a number of challenges that the Web Monetization Community has been facing as a whole. These include:

  • The fear that this is too good to be true, along with the notion that this therefore must be a scam.
  • Distrust in cryptocurrency, even though you can get the digital wallet to transfer your earning into whichever currency you choose.
  • Fear over opening a digital wallet.
  • Feeling overwhelmed by the newer technology required to earn on gFam.

All of the above have made community building on gFam a challenge. Adam is a lovely, supportive fellow that once you get to know, you trust, but most people shy away from fear before they get to know him, and you can’t really community build around trust building from one guy, who also has many other jobs.

gFam’s other challenge at the moment is sustainable funding. With the Grant for the Web just being completed, they no longer have their main source of funding. As a result, gFam has decided to place the community on pause while they are sourcing out new funds.

This worries me for them, as:

  • Communities are hard to build, and in building on a platform, they are ultimately investing their time and creativity into the platform. My fear here is putting the community on pause, stands to lose their trust, as well as their habit of visiting and utilizing the platform regularly.
  • I worry that this could potentially send the wrong message to potential funders.

gFam’s reasoning in hitting pause was the server and tip costs, fear that people would stop using the platform if they were not receiving as many tips from the platform, and having the space to build in some new elements and strategize over their next steps. There was also fear over Twitter’s addition of a tip jar being competition.

Personally, I think if people leave if they are not receiving tips from you, then thats not your true community. And I think gFam is different enough from Twitter, that Twitter’s tip jar should not pose a threat.

My hope is that my fears here are unwarranted, as I want to see gFam a success. One big positive in this regard is that the Web Monetization Community is actively invested in Adam, and Adam is actively invested in the Web Monetization Community. Given this and given that we are still in the early days of fostering this community, my hope is that the community will return and gFam will continue to grow as soon as they click unpause.

Future Building

Adam’s June 2021 post, A Whole Year for gFam, speaks to what he, his team, and the gFam Community have accomplished in the past year, as well as to the current work being done while the platform is on pause to community members. This has included “creating blog posts directly on gFam.live, making gFam posts editable and deletable, cleaning up code, documenting absolutely everything, moving older images off an old cloud, creating tags so posts can be nicely shared on other social media and adding more Profile page options.

Another idea of Adam’s for the future with gFam is to work with brands on micro-motivator projects with creators, where for example a brand like Nike, gives everyone a tip who has their clothing within their content. In this model, the idea is 10,000 people could get $1 each, rather 1 influencer getting $10,000.

Looking forward to seeing both these future goals and the platform evolve, as knowing Adam, they both will.

Have a question for Adam? Ask it in the comments below, and we shall see if we can get you an answer.

An enormous thank you to Grant for the Web for funding this case study, to BCIT and Grant for the Web for funding the broader Sustainable Funding Series, to UBC MET for sparking this work through my ETEC 580, and to David Porter for acting as an advisor to me in this work.

Animals in the Great War eBook – a Sustainable Funding Case Study

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In March of 2019 we were fortunate enough to interview Maria Grazia Suriano, the researcher and writer of the eBook ‘Animals in the Great War’ for our Sustainable Funding Series for Media, Educators, Technologists, and Creators. Animals in the Great War is an open educational eBook designed to investigate the World War I and study its history from the standpoint of the animals that took part in it. In addition to the eBook, due to both necessity in crowdfunding this project and in observing what students responded, a number of digital photo and video storytelling pieces have been developed to compliment the eBook and engage students in this history in a manner that mirrors their storytelling preferences and that they respond with interest to. The target audience for the Animals in the Great War eBook are educators, history teachers, and students of history (high school aged and older). Below, we share that interview with insights into the Sustainable Funding Model that Maria and her team at Associazione Culturale Se utilized in funding the Animals in the Great War eBook, what Maria learned about crowdfunding, and how she will apply what she’s learned to future projects. Maria and I also discuss digital storytelling, teaching empathy, othering, breaking down borders, open education, and the Animals in the Great War eBook itself. Some of what we discuss here, Maria and her team at Associazione Culturale Se have gone on to apply to other projects, including her eBook ‘Percorrere la nonviolenza‘.

I’d like to be part of this different economy, this social economy. …. This is important. I don’t know how this could work in this all very capitalist world, but maybe this social economy could save us.

~ Maria Grazia Suriano, Writer of Animals in the Great War

Creators: Maria Grazia Suriano and Associazione Culturale Se

Country: Italy

Interview Date: March 28, 2019

Link to the Project: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323612634_Animals_in_the_Great_War

Funding Method: Crowdfunding, Matching Funds Grant, Blood-Sweat-&-Tears

Interview with Animals in the Great War eBook Writer Maria Grazia Suriano

The Project : Animals in the Great War eBook

Animals in the Great War is a free eBook designed to explore the history of the Great War (World War I) through the stories of the animals from many different countries that partook in World War I – challenging the concept of borders, exploring othering, and instilling empathy.

This project, aimed at secondary school students and teachers, is designed to get young adults interested in learning about the history of the Great War (World War I) through the stories of animals. Stories like those of the pigeons in espionage, that cannot help but intrigue.

By learning about the war through the stories and perspectives of animals, it is hoped that it will encourage students to think critically about history, the construct of borders and othering, as well as instil empathy.

In the research, crowdfunding, and speaking on this project, it was recognized that it was not only the stories of animals in the war that were engaging students in this history education project, but the photo and video storytelling pieces shared in talks on and in the crowdfunding campaign. As such, stories within the eBook have been modified into smaller, more easily accessible storytelling pieces and shared via the Associazione Culturale Se’s blog:

Case Studies from Animals in the Great War

The Creators : Storytellers behind the Animals in the Great War eBook

The eBook ‘Animals in the Great War’ was researched and written by Maria Grazia Suriano, the co-founder of Associazione Culturale Se. Her colleague at Associazione Culturale Se helped with sourcing the images in the book and editing the book. A translator also worked with them to translate the book into English from Italian.

Maria Grazia Suriano is an independent historian, specialized on European history with a focus on identities, cultures, borders and ways to cross them.

In 2016 Maria cofounded Associazione Culturale Se, a non-profit organization with the aim of spreading inclusive knowledge and enhancing the subordinate subjectivities often excluded from institutional narratives. The Associazione Culturale Se’s focus with this is on promoting history education from the twentieth century, revolving around themes of desire,  empathy,  possibilities, responsibility, affectivity, differences, diversity, and solidarity. In doing this they offer courses and workshops in history education, and create educational history resources for use in the classroom, like the eBook Animals in the Great War and the accompanying Case Studies on their website. The organization’s funding plan is based on public financing, but as this is scarce the organization offsets its financing by offering editorial services, and Maria offsets her income as a copyeditor, yoga teacher, and translator.

Road to Funding Sustainably

As mentioned above, the Associazione Culturale Se in the past has looked to public funding to finance their projects. In the case of the Animals in the Great War eBook, however, they embarked on a new funding journey by entering their eBook into a funding competition with the Europeana Foundation. The competition, Strike a Match for Education was a Matching Fund, designed to encourage co-investment between public and private institutions and the crowd. In this case, for each 1 EUR donated by the crowd, Europeana contributed 1 EUR up to a maximum of 100 EUR per donation and no more than 3,500 EUR per project, once the campaign achieved its minimum crowdfunding goals. To apply, the project had to be digital, use Europeana openly licensed content as a central element and be relevant to a secondary education audience (students 11-18 years and teachers).  Europeana was also looking for scalable and present ideas that would work across multiple countries and/or languages.

Three projects, including the Animals in the Great War eBook were approved for matching funds, and then entered into a crowdfunding campaign to raise the public portion of the funding on Goteo.

What is Goteo?

Goteo is a crowdfunding platform based in Spain which focuses on projects that generate a collective return through promoting the commons, open source code and / or free knowledge, creating as they call it, a social economy. They’ve coined themselves as the open source crowdfunding platform.

Some of the distinctive features of Goteo are:

  • its requirements of openness for the projects, which need to contribute to free culture or the commons in some manner;
  • enabling participants to contribute as volunteers for the projects, in addition to with money;
  • it is run solely by a non-profit foundation, the Spanish Goteo Foundation, enabling tax deductions for donations;
  • its code is free/open source and it has an open API; and
  • it enables other sources of income for projects by partnering with public and private institutions to run match funding competition and allowing successful projects to carry out a second campaign round to raise more funds.

Lessons in Crowdfunding

For Maria and her team at the Associazione Culturale Se this was their first crowdfunding experience, and they realized they were wholly unprepared for it.

It’s naive to approach crowdfunding without a network and digital strategist / strategy. You need to be prepared. A good idea is important, but it’s not enough to be successful in this social economy.

~ Maria Grazia Suriano, Writer of Animals in the Great War

With hard work and creativity, the Associazione Culturale Se were able to meet their minimum goal of 3,000 Euros with the matching funds from Europeana, which covered the cost of the eBook being translated into English from Italian. To help in reaching this goal, they utilized creative commons photographs from World War I and created video shorts with those images on the service of various animals in the war.

Maria and her team learned a lot about crowdfunding in the process, including:

  • that their project needed someone with experience in digital strategy, storytelling, and crowdfunding;
  • that (at the time of their campaign at least) crowdfunding is better suited to an international project and team, as the concept of crowdfunding was all very new to the Italian public; and
  • you need to be prepared and have a plan, as a good idea is not enough.

This also broadened their horizons on the potential of digital storytelling in education, in recognizing how their youth audience was drawn to the photo and video storytelling pieces they created as a part of the crowdfunding campaign. These digital storytelling pieces drew the young people into wanting to discover more about history, and ultimately got them questioning borders and thinking empathetically about those impacted by war.

Other Funding Streams

The Associazione Culturale Se had hoped to gain the support of an animal organization in the campaign, but unfortunately were not able to garner this. Maria suspects this was because they were too small as they had not begun to build an audience before the start of the campaign.

Future Building

While not as successful with funding the Animals in the Great War as they would have liked, Maria and the Associazione Culturale Se did learn a lot, and found that the idea of becoming a part of a social economy really resonated with their sensibilities. This is something they wish to explore more on future projects and even crowdfund again. Just next time they will be better prepared by approaching crowdfunding with an international project, with an international partner, a plan in place, and someone with digital strategy, storytelling, and crowdfunding experience to take the lead on that aspect of the project. They also learned that a book is not enough, and want to delve into other mediums and forms of storytelling to engage the students in history.

As they further grow a social economy around their project, they’d love to see companies with similar values to theirs be a part of making their work sustainable through sponsorship.

Culture Has to be Free

One of the fundamental believes of Maria’s and the Associazione Culturale Se’s is that culture needs to be free to make information accessible. One of biggest problems that teachers face is that they don’t have the money to buy the resources that they need. This problem does not solely sit with educators though, but also with learners. Many people don’t have the possibility to continue with their formal education after public schooling, making it important that they have something to think on, something different than a school book.

It’s important. Culture has to be free … at all levels, because many people have no possibility to continue after school. It’s important that they have something to think on … something different than a school book.

~ Maria Grazia Suriano, Writer of Animals in the Great War
Have a question for Maria? Ask it in the comments below, and we shall see if we can get you an answer.

A enormous thank you to BCIT for sponsoring this case study, to Grant for the Web for funding the broader Sustainable Funding Series, to UBC MET for sparking it through my ETEC 580, and to David Porter for acting as an advisor to me in this work.

Elementari – a Sustainable Funding Case Study

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In March of 2019 we were fortunate enough to interview Nicole Kang, one of the founders of Elementari for our Sustainable Funding Series for Media, Educators, Technologists, and Creators. Elementari is a platform for creating interactive stories, targeted to schools, teachers, and kids. Below, we share that interview, insights into the Sustainable Funding Model that Elementari is building towards, as well as other conversations that Nicole and I had around diversity and inclusion in storytelling, open education, marketing, and Elementari itself. This was just the beginning of a journey that myself and our team at StoryToGo are taking with Elementari and Nicole Kang, as we have begun to use Elementari ourselves, creating our own interactive stories, and have taught kids and adults alike how to bring their stories to life with Elementari.

Elementari has a huge component that is based around computational thinking and trying to introduce coding concepts in a way that is not code to students who might not want to learn how to code.

~ Nicole Kang, Cofounder of Elementari

Creators: Nicole Kang & David Li

Country: France

Interview Date: March 24th, 2019

Link to the Project: https://www.elementari.io/

Funding Method: Blood-Sweat-&-Tears, Freemium Model, Workshops & Speaking Engagements

Interview with Elementari’s Nicole Kang

The Project : What Is Elementari?

Elementari is an online platform for building interactive stories, designed based on a culture of remixing. Users are able to add their own imagery and sound, but the platform is ultimately designed to remix the professional illustrations and sounds of artists. These artists are automatically credited when an Elementari user publishes a story using the artist’s work.

While Elementari can be used by adults, and holds a lot of potential for creators such as ourselves, the platform was ultimately designed for Kindergarten to Grade 12 schools, teachers, and youth, as a tool to facilitate reading, writing, coding, game design, and building an understanding of crediting artists and of remix culture. In the interview teaser below (starting at time marker 01:59), Nicole talks about her sensibilities behind Elementari …

The Creators : Who Are Behind Elementari?

Elementari was co-founded by Nicole Kang and David Li.

Nicole Kang is a bit of a world traveller, born in the US and now living in France. She studied Management Science at MIT, but most of her work experience has been in education, particularly around scientific inquiry and STEM. Included in this was working in the Educational Arcade at MIT. Nicole’s interest education took her to Taiwan to pursue a Masters, where she ran into issues in conducting experiments in scientific inquiry, as she doesn’t write in Chinese. This created a shift to ESL and ultimately to developing the concept for Elementari, sparked on by a course in digital ebooks. Nicole recognized the need for Elementari in the course as they were using InDesign which at that time she found unnecessarily complicated, frustrating, and impossible to share. All things that Nicole believes are counterintuitive to what education should. Rather she believes education should be open to everyone, allowing everyone to be able to learn, catalyzing her to leave her Masters to begin to build Elementari. In building Elementari, Nicole primarily focuses on the packaging, the marketing and the backend website development.

  • Nicole Kang

Meanwhile, David Li has focused on building the authoring tool. David’s background before starting Elementari with Nicole was in engineering, management, and linguistics.

I believe education should be open to everyone, allowing everyone to be able to learn.

~ Nicole Kang, Cofounder of Elementari

Road to Funding Sustainably

Early Days, Solving the Initial Challenges

Two of Nicole and David’s early realizations in developing Elementari and a sustainable funding model behind it were:

  • that they needed to have something built to show, in order to attract funding to the project; and
  • that they needed assets in the forms of illustrations and sounds for Elementari users to build their stories with.

After some initial unsuccessful pitching of Elementari in Taiwan and France, Nicole and David realized from comments like, “What’s the point of creating stories? Who reads stories? Who wants to write stories?” and “If you only need $100,000, then since you went to MIT, why don’t you just ask your friends and family to pitch in and pay for it?”, that they were going to need to build and demonstrate what Elementari was capable of, before continuing to invest their time in marketing the platforms to potential funders. Despite never having undertaken a digital development prior to Elementari, David and Nicole were determined that they could solve the first problem by teaching themselves and building Elementari on their own to present to potential investors. Impressively, they have done just that.

Not being artists, the need for assets needed a different approach to solve. For this, they recognized that many illustrators were sharing their assets on social media for likes, but that was the limit to the engagement they were creating around their illustrations. So they decided to invite artists to share their images on Elementari for users to build stories with. This enabled the artist to build upon their portfolio for marketing purposes, by giving them stats as to how Elementari’s user base are utilizing their images, and which images are the most popular. This has worked for them, attracting in artists like Len Smith, who illustrated Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Richard Walsh, who illustrated the Math Blaster Reading Series. Surprisingly Elementari’s team discovered that it wasn’t the young art students who were interesting in contributing images, but rather the older professional artists. They think this is because the professional artists like the idea of kids being able to use their artwork to create stories, they enjoy this different avenue to promote themselves, and as they see the future potential in profit sharing with the platform.

Funding Structure for Elementari Users

Currently Elementari is free for everyone to use to create stories with a limited library of images and sounds. A paid Premium version of Elementari gives users access to the entire library of images and sounds.

Similarly there is a free teacher tier for educators that allows for one class of up to 35 students, and then Premium versions for more capabilities, unlimited classes, more students, and for schools and school districts. You can see an example of Elementari’s plans for January 2021 below.

It is the Premium Educational Plans that the Elementari team sees as their sustainable funding model for the future.

We don’t want to put a barrier in the way for anyone to create. We want the disadvantaged kids to still be able to make their dino stories into reality. That’s one of our main goals.

~ Nicole Kang, Elementari Co-Founder

All the educational support materials that are being built to teach lessons with Elementari are public, and teachers are encouraged to adapt and remix to suit their individual classroom needs. Those can be found by clicking here.

Other Funding Streams

Other ways that Nicole and David are helping to fund the early days of Elementari, include:

  • writing workshops, and
  • pitching the Premium Model.

As part of pitching the Premium Model, they have been taking on educational partners to run case studies and develop curriculum. During the case study and curriculum development, the partner gets free use of Elementari, and then after the case study and curriculum development, the partner has the option to sign up for Elementari at a reduced rate provided they wish to continue using Elementari.

Future Building

In the future, some of Elementari’s goals include:

  • profit sharing with their artists (aiming for up to 70%),
  • working with the schools to create examples of what a good classroom library would look like to help convince the school gatekeepers that Elementari is a good investment for their school,
  • the option of non-remixable stories for sensitive content and for professional writers,
  • ability for readers to choose their own characters for a story.

Ultimately, creating a bottom up, product creation approach to marketing is what Nicole believes will work for Elementari. Basically working with educators and kids to demonstrate what is possible, in order to get Principles, School Districts, and Parents to buy in. It is with that in mind that Elementari has approached the COVID-19 pandemic, giving teachers and parents access to a free classroom account on a trial basis, offering a free virtual coding club, hosting free webinars for educators, and offering virtual field trips for Hour of Code.

Other strategies that help to market Elementari are:

  • that the stories are embeddable on other sites, and
  • an Elementari Ambassador Program with percentage sharing on sales.

Final Thoughts on Being an EdTech Entrepreneur

Some final reflections and advice from Nicole on being an EdTech Entrepreneur …

Have a question for Nicole? Ask it in the comments below, and we shall see if we can get you an answer.

A enormous thank you to BCIT for sponsoring this case study, to Grant for the Web for funding the broader Sustainable Funding Series, to UBC MET for sparking it through my ETEC 580, and to David Porter for acting as an advisor to me in this work.

Canadian Artist Denis Nokony Invites Those Who Wish to Celebrate the 46th American Inauguration to Use his Artwork ‘Peace Arch’ Online for Free

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In tribute to the 46th American Inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, our friend and Canadian artist Denis Nokony invites anyone who wishes to celebrate the unity and friendship between Canada and the United States of America to utilize his artwork entitled ‘Peace Arch’ for free online, provided they credit him as the artist, are not making money from sharing the piece, and do not alter the image.

‘Peace Arch’ by Denis Nokony

‘Peace Arch’ – About the Artwork

‘Peace Arch’ is a 38”x 40” acrylic painting on canvas that was first created in 2004, representing our shared border between British Columbia and Washington at Peace Arch Park in White Rock, BC and Blaine, Washington. It’s day has come to be shared on the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Denis Nokony – Meet the Artist

Denis looking like the badass artist in his pandemic mask.

As written by Robert Enright of Denis Nokony’s 1981 exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery entitled, ‘Figure in Landscape: Drawings’, “The drawings present a synthetic relationship between the figure and the landscape, between being and space, and between quotidian observation and dramatic realism. Mr. Nokony is involved in a process that is both a retrieval and a reinterpretation of prairie space through its human dimensions.”

Landscape and sky feature prominently in much of Denis’ artwork, perhaps as a result of his upbringing in the Canadian Prairies, having been born in Oxbow, Saskatchewan. He became interested in drawing and caricature at an early age. Having, however, only ever taken one drawing course from Canadian painter Reta Cowley, as a young university student at the University of Saskatchewan where he studied political science, he considers himself to be a self-taught artist.

Pre-Covid photo from the Burnaby Blues and Roots Festival with this writer, Matt Andersen, and Denis Nokony.

Over the years, Denis has had a number of careers, in which art has played a prominent role from commercial artist and freelance illustrator to art teacher to arts development officer to Assistant Director for Cultural Services for the City of Burnaby today. Throughout all of this, Denis has continued to create and exhibit his art. While his medium of choice has predominantly been drawings and paintings, it has also include a National Film Board short animated film entitled ‘The Giant‘.

To touch base with Denis or inquire about his art, he can be reached at denis[at]storytogo.ca.

Representation in Digital Gaming, Media Arts and Tech – Lived Stories

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aka the Elephant in the Room that people may dress up and be sickly sweet to, while they stab behind their back and behind closed doors.

Photo care of Ragn27.

Sorry that might sound harsh, but the fact that some people choose to put others down, be aggressive towards them, treat them of lesser value, and / or abuse them because of the colour of their skin, their ethnicity, their gender, their disabilities, their sexuality … etc really makes my blood boil, and leaves me generally feeling sick. Having said that, Representation and Representational Problems is a conversation we need to have to instigate change, and part of doing that is sharing our stories, despite how uncomfortable that might be. Admittedly, that was not something I realized until I became an adult. I grew up in a blissful world where that equality existed, having grown up in a family that was a mix of the arts and science with people from around the world sharing our holiday dinner table and where my parents saw each other as equals (which of course they were). It never occurred to me that that was not the norm (at least in Canada – I had seen racism and sexism in my travels), and that some people would think themselves better than another because of their skin colour, religion, gender, sexuality, or able-body. Or at least it didn’t until I began working in the media arts and technolgy.

As I set off on a walk with my 17-year-old neighbour this past weekend to talk about her aspirations in the media arts, these were all things we talked about as we explored the challenges along with the rewards of the industry she is setting forth into.

Sharing a picture of Ella here, who joined us on our walk, for a bit of grounding in a heavier post.

Importance of Characters Whom Young People Can Relate to

My neighbour is a visible minority in Canada, and so while we talked about the importance of crafting stories that you are passionate about, we also talked about the importance of increasing representation within those stories.

I told her how when I pitched my first kid’s TV series, a Canadian broadcaster told me we couldn’t do a co-production with another country as Canadian kids would not relate with children that looked and sounded different from them. Having grown up on stories from around the world and loving learning about different cultures through stories, I was at a complete loss that this was a Canadian broadcaster’s believe in a country that is made up of people from around the world. My young neighbour then told me that she’d grown up in Canada never having seen Filipino culture (her ethnic heritage) represented within the stories she consumed.

That’s a problem, as while it is great to learn about different people and cultures through your stories, if you never encounter someone like you, you feel at odds with others and a bit alone. As mentioned in Kateryna Barnes’ article on the game Kisima Innitchuna (Never Alone), stories are also an important way of connecting with your cultural roots and sharing that culture with future generations.

While not a visible minority, I do get that sense of feeling alone and at odds with others from a disability perspective. I am dyslexic, and I can’t help but wonder if I’d met a dyslexic kid in my stories growing up, if that might have helped me with my confidence in embracing how my mind works differently at an earlier age, rather than feeling I was not as academically capable as my peers. Instead, when I was younger and I encountered people with a disability in a story, they were usually negatively depicted, teaching me at the time that this was something I should hide, as media treated disability as though it was something to be embarrassed of.

For all these reasons, I am glad to have conversations like this with my young neighbour, and look forward to seeing how she addresses this in her career. I am also glad to see people like Nicole Kang addressing it on Elementari, an animated storytelling and game development platform targeted to kids and schools. If kids can put characters that they relate to in their stories and games, then they can help to start to demonstrate for others the storyworlds they wish to see.

The Dark and Unwelcoming Alley Out in the Open in the Media Arts, Tech & Game Studios

While lack of representation or representation only as evil, weak, and broken characters is destructive to the psyche and identity, what really makes my blood run cold and what I needed to forewarn my young neighbour about is the very real culture of misogyny and sexual harassment. I did not want to terrify her, but I did want her to be aware of the dangers in the media arts (and particularly game design) in order to keep herself safe.

Illustrated by Naomi Ushiyama; Indypendent / Creative Commons

Trigger Warning

I have been very lucky in that I have never been raped, but I have found myself in dangerous situations and I have found myself in psychologically abusive situations by people I thought were my friends. While I didn’t go into all of this with my young neighbour, before you read on, I should warn you that this will not be a pleasant read and may trigger things, so stop here if you need to.

As much as I hate to term it this way, I was ‘eased’ into this culture of misogyny and sexual harassment by the film industry. In that world as a young writer and actor, I learned never to trust that a business meeting was a business meeting and that a man wanting to partner with me wasn’t just them trying to sleep with me. I’m not saying that egotistically, it was just a reality, and not one that helped build my confidence in myself as a young creative. As an example, a talented director chased me for months for a meeting and when I agree and then accept an invitation to a screening party at his house with his friends, I arrived at the screening party to discover no friends and no screening. That was the night a director tried the ‘casting couch line’ on me. He was a documentary director, so I am not sure what I was to be cast as – a victim? Then there was my producer friend, who I discovered on more than one occasion using me as a lure for unstable, stalker men (I am not embellishing here – these men stalked me for months) he wanted to do business with. One of those men, I made the mistake of working for in a remote ferry-in ferry-out community as a writer and a host, before realizing that he was very unhealthily and dangerously obsessed with me. I will be forever grateful to my friend Tristan for insisting on accompanying me when the producer announced he’d only pay me if I came to pick up my pay cheque. I should add that there are some amazing men in the industry, like Tristan, Cam, and Richard who have always looked out for my safety and well-being, and there are some women that contribute to the problem of the misogyny and sexual harassment. With the latter, I am remembering one film festival when a powerful married man in the film industry was rather inappropriately and boisterously hitting on, which I dealt with by falling on my safety net of turning that into a joke. Meanwhile I learned a number of the women in the room thought I was to blame. A tip of my hat at Richard, Cam, Joanne, and Katrina for standing up for me and telling them otherwise, as well as for helping to safely extract me from the situation.

A younger me with my buddy Paul (a wonderful fellow) in our first TV Show.

All of that though was just a warm up act to what I encountered in the tech and peripherally gaming industry in 2007. There I found myself in a world in which the few of us women that were there were treated like sexual play things to use and abuse both for our minds and our bodies. On the surface the parties were fantastic with free food and booze flowing, but then you’d see how the young women were being treated as toys and someone would turn to you and ask you (in all seriousness) for a lap dance. In those early days, the same individual that asked for that lap dance, publicly claimed mine and Megan’s ideas as his own and that Megan and I were ‘working for him’ on an idea of ours that we’d entered into a partnership with his business partner. On one of my calls to their office to try and get some tech answers for that project, after getting nowhere with the lap dance requester, I asked for his business partner’s cell number so I could talk to him, and I was then put on speaker phone to their entire office and told who was I kidding, I had the partner’s number, as I was sleeping with him. I was not sleeping with him, but I am sure there are many in the tech community who still think thats how I got started there. That then lead to an uncomfortable conversation with the business partner, in which he confirmed with those that had been in the office that day that I had indeed been put on speaker phone to the entire office. Despite that, I still had to deal with the lap dance requester on the upcoming project, and when he started aggressively bullying me, the business partner did nothing when I asked him to step in. That was the first time I’ve ever asked for help in such a situation, and as someone who only asks for help when I really need it, I could not believe that no help was given. Another disturbing memory from this time was when a certain large tech company hosted a retreat that began with a drunken and bound to be trouble series of images all hashtagged on the bus ride up, including all the men lined up and peeing at the side of the highway. It was when they reached the camp that things went disturbingly badly. There were only a few women there, and after they reached the camp, one of the men shared one of the woman’s bare breasts on instagram with the trip hashtag. I commented and said that was not cool. The response was something to the effect of “Lighten up, I didn’t share her face.” That didn’t matter, as aside from other reasons, there were so few women there that it didn’t take too much figuring out as to who was in the photo. Thankfully the one female leads at the company stepped in a few minutes later and shut things down, but I still shudder to think what the situation might have been at that retreat for the few women that were there. There was good that came out of all this though, and thanks to few strong women leaders in the industry – I think of Maura Rodgers, Megan Cole, Rebecca Bollwitt, Monica Hamburg, and others, we said enough is enough and began to catalyze change. It wasn’t easy though, and I am sure it still has a long way to go.

Just a few of the strong women who stood up to the misogyny in Vancouver’s social tech industry back in 2007, as photographed by Phillip Jeffrey.
Image care of Alec Perkins, via the Wikimedia.

Just because the misogyny and sexual harassment may be less visible, especially since #MeToo, don’t kid yourselves – the problem is still there. I got a very disturbing reminder of this in the summer of 2018, when I stayed too long at a party of a guy that I trusted and thought was a friend. While that night a married man tried something inappropriate and unasked for with me, it was the friend that disturbed me – attempting to remove my top and that of another woman’s and starting to ask me ‘would I rather’ questions that involved gang rape. The glimmer of hope here was that a young kid, who worked for the two older men stood up for me, and told the aggressor that wasn’t cool.

I extracted myself from the situation in the way I always do, with humour. However, that night has disturbed me ever since, and I’ve found myself avoiding events in that world. Mainly I think, because that was someone I thought was a friend, and the night clued me into just how insidious the aggressor had been for years, doing a number of things to constantly put me down to myself and others. In thinking back, I realize this started with me standing up to him and offering an alternate viewpoint on a panel at a film festival. A disturbing element of realization that I’d been in an insidious and emotionally abusive relationship for years was that he’d been actively putting me down to others through the entirety of my attempting to put my life and career back together following my two accidents that left me learning to live with chronic pain and many new realities. I share this last bit, as the last seven years since the first car accident has opened my eyes up to those that prey on those with disabilities and other vulnerabilities, including this man who I thought was my friend and should have been there to help me back up, rather than further push me down and work to keep me there.

Creating Change

Now, while I didn’t share all of that with my young neighbour, I did share some of it, including the recent story, as I feel if change is going to happen, we need to talk about these things, and for her, I need her to be forewarned and forearmed so that she can stay safe.

Towards the end of our walk we did touch on the fact that she needed to be particularly careful in the game industry. I know for myself, I’d be very wary of entering a mainstream game studio for the reasons shared here and how unhealthy and misogynistic an environment that might be for me. That is part of the problem though, is that if women don’t feel safe in these spaces it makes it difficult to change those ecosystems.

What the face of hope and change look like to me – working with awesome creatives, like Kelly Conlin, who get excited about creating projects with me that share stories of cultural understanding and share the voices of those who should be represented equally.

I think for myself, that is why I finally started building my own teams and finding new ways of creating and producing what is in my imagination, as oppose to waiting for the permission of another to do so. I am not sure whether games will be in that mix for me (although there are a few that have been dancing through my imagination), but certainly there will be more immersive media, in which I hope to continue work with talented and supportive individuals (whether women, men, or those who identify in a different way). I hope that my young neighbour is able to do the same, and who knows, maybe at some point that will involve us creating together.

References

Barnes, K. (2019, July 24). Agniq Suannaktuq and Kisima Innitchuna (Never Alone). First Person Scholar. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/agniq-suannaktuq-and-kisima-innitchuna-never-alone/

British Dyslexia Association. (2018, February 11). See Dyslexia Differently [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11r7CFlK2sc

Jenson, J. & de Castell, S. (2016) Gamer-Hate and the “Problem” of Women: Feminism in Games. In Kafai, Tynes, & Richard (Eds.) Diversifying Barbie & Mortal Kombat: Intersectional Perspectives and Inclusive Designs in Gaming. Pittsburgh PA: ETC Press.

Innocenceii. (2020, June 8). Why YOU Would 𝑺𝒖𝒄𝒌 at Being a Main Character [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wOEnUtxO7Q

Never Alone – Kisima Ingitchuna. (2014, August 14). Never Alone – Iñupiaq Perspectives – Joseph Sagviyuaq Sage [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK1IsVEjZKE

One Down. (2020, October 1). Filipinos in Entertainment | Breaking The Tabo | Episode 1 | One Down [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jusUSUTfm4

StoryToGo. (2020, March 15). Creating Diversity in Story Characters – a Chat with Elementari’s Nicole Kang [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmLNc2Q934

Gaming Learning from the Perspective of a Science Educator

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Reflecting on Learning through Games and Constructivism

Image care of Rafael Javier.

Recently, as I read Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke’s article Constructionist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning and Kelly Tran’s article “Her story was complex”: A Twine workshop for ten- to twelve-year-old girls, it has had me reflecting on learning through games, constructivism, how I teach, and my own learning styles. With science and science education being central to my development as an individual, storyteller, and teacher, this naturally had me thinking on my years as a science educator, as well as what got me excited about science as a young person, and how that shaped my teaching in other subjects, including media arts. Through these reflections, I recognize that I’ve missed valuable learning experiences to not only create game based learning experiences for my students, but to get them designing the games.

The Predator-Prey Game – a game that taught me a lot both as a kid, and as a teacher when I developed this game for my students. In hindsight, getting my students doing the developing would have been an even richer learning experience. Image care of the Waterloo Nature Club.

The Twine below represents my reflections on Gaming Learning from the Perspective of a Science Educator.

You’ll need to give the Twine below a moment to load, in order for the black box to disappear.

I had another realization while reflecting and exploring project based learning and constructivism through the creation of this Twine, that perhaps this style of learning and education is what we need in order to allow diverse groups of students with different learning styles to succeed. Rather than prescribing how our students should learn and demonstrate their learning, constructivist project based learning allows student to find their own learning path in a way that works for them and allows them to shine. I always knew this is where I excelled as a student, and knew this is what built my confidence in my own academic abilities, and I have seen the same in the students I’ve taught, especially those who like me are considered to have ‘learning disabilities’. It hit me in these reflections that perhaps the reason for this is that when learning in this way, rather than telling others what they can and can’t do, and are and are not capable of, we are giving them the tools, platform, and freedom to create and discover for themselves, in a way that is meaningful for them – allowing them to approach learning and creating in a way that works for their individual needs. We need to make more such learning opportunities available to our young people, so that they too can shine and build their confidence.

Image courtesy of Gordon Johnson.

References

Kafai, Y. & Burke, Q. (2015). Constructionist Gaming: Understanding the Benefits of Making Games for Learning. Educational psychologist, 50, 4, 313-334.

Tran, K. M. (2016). “Her story was complex”: A Twine workshop for ten- to twelve-year-old girls. E-Learning and Digital Media, 13(5–6), 212–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753016689635