<img src="/images/onionworkshop.png" width="600">
(text-style:"bold")[Warning: May contain non-downloadable content]
You are in the popular co-working/maker/making space <a target="_blank" href="http://doesliverpool.com">DoESLiverpool</a> in their event space, Dinky where [[many events take place|events]].
There are some people from <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/DomesticaSci">Domestic Science</a> who are thinking about <a target="_blank" href="http://domesticscience.org.uk/index2.html">Interactive Non-Fiction</a>. You can see a [[workshop|workshop]] and a [[cockle|cockle]]
<img src="http://www.thecatsbreeds.net/gallery/deaf-cat/deaf_cat.jpg" width="200">
You are in the workshop. Everyone is thinking about (text-style:"bold")[Interactive Non-Fiction].
We want to embed data and other things from the internet(maybe cats, maybe voting data) into choose-your-own-adventure style Text Adventures using easy to use tools like Twine.
The aim of the workshop is to start to make some simple tools that help non-technical people embed and manipulate knowledge and data on the internet and make them into simple adventure stories. <a blank="_target" href="https://twitter.com/cheapjack">@cheapjack</a> of Domestic Science talks a bit about the [[ideas behind it here|ideas]]
We want to use API's and other tools to make not just human-readable information but human-engaging conversational narratives.
In the corner <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/amcewen">Adrian</a> is making a [[piratepad|piratepad]]
<a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/octopusbarrow">Glenn</a> & <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/hwayoung">Hwa Young</a> are planning things.
Oh look there's a [[twitterbot|twitterbot]].
There is a cockle. A cockle is part of the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/mcqn/cocklecraft-of-things/">Cocklecraft-of-things</a> developed by <a target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/amcewen">Adrian</a> It's meant to help non-experts of all ages post sensor data in a cheap, sensible & <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer#Applied_to_web_services ways">restful</a> fashion.
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There is a piratepad here. It says
<object data=http://bit.ly/inf-prehack width="900" height="400"> Error: Embedded data could not be displayed. </object>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">areas are discussed in the organisation of the top-100 uk ceos are generally built for the given area.</p>— Policy O'Matic (@policyomatic) <a href="https://twitter.com/policyomatic/status/">22 June 2016</a></blockquote>
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Below is a calendar of the events that take place at DoESLiverpool.
You can <a href="mailto:[email protected]">ask them nicely</a> to run your own event also if it's good for the DoES community.
Things like <a target="_blank" href="http://www.meetup.com/iotliverpool/">IoT Liverpool</a> take place there.
<iframe src="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=doesliverpool.com_4f906tbj39irupt6crbjhi998k%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=Europe/London" style="border: 0" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
Ultimately we like the idea of turning Internet of Things objects or real scientific data sets into something human readable; and to do that we liked the exercise of making simple prose-like or conversation-like writing or even full blown text adventures that represented data rather than wizzy html5 vector visualisations or graphs that we see everywhere. It's not that graphs and awesome dashboards are bad it's just that by making 'just' text it makes you really think about what the data could mean and what you might want it to say.
Take <a target="_blank" href="http://wttr.in">wttr.in</a> is a lovely elegent ascii page for weather: its got hard data in it but its just text (almost teletext): imagine if it could also conversationally say
(text-style:"italic")["An awkward day of not knowing what coat to wear but great for the allotment as you will probably not need to do much watering and can just sit in the shed with some tea"]
Or an adventure story that refers back to the weather at a certain point in time or the source of weather information.
I also liked the idea of developing tools for debate. @amcewen referenced <a target="_blank" href="http://worrydream.com/">Brett Victor</a>'s article to me last year and it still stays with me. In the current climate having people on television saying things that you are meant to believe because you can't easily refer to the data they are quoting seems crazy when we are tagging and spidering everything online. An argument where you <a target="_blank" href="http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/#media-debate">can see and play with the source of data quoted</a> without having to look it up could be powerful.
Of course all we are really doing is making hypertext; html web pages. Interactive non-fiction is exactly what the internet already is. Essentially we are re-framing what we mean by human readadble by looking back at some of the origins of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.textadventuretime.co.uk/2015/05/06/a-history-of-interactive-fiction/">computer game culture</a>.