Developers, designers: Lend ORGZine your skills!
As you're aware, ORGZine needs a site revamp! No, not the vamp with the teeth and blood... A Redesign, a Remodelling, shall we say?
But what we really need is the knowledge of web heads who know their stuff about all the coding and layout planning that goes on behind the scenes. And the whizzy prettifying styles of a gifted designer, who knows how to make a site all that more pleasing to the eye.
So, if you're interested and have hands-on expertise of HTML, CSS and the like, or are handy with creative suites such as Illustrator and InDesign, please contact us. Email Nishma (nishma@openrightsgroup.org) or Habib (orgzine.editor@openrightsgroup.org) for more information.
ORGZine is hiring!
Imagine a NEW Zine. Imagine where it could go, what we could do. Imagine you could be the creator, the genius behind the scenes.
You can.
We're organising a revamp of our informative and entertaining online magazine — ORGZine — which aims to provide readers with news, analysis and features about digital rights issues.
You would be an excellent communicator and would help dream up a new layout/design to encourage an open arts/tech culture, and bring digital rights to forefront of online publishing and blogging.
Skills required:
- Excellent proof-reading skills
- Interest and some experience in blogging, journalism, and/or news writing
- Interest in issues relating to digital rights (including free speech,
- data protection, privacy, open data, etc.
- Some interest in culture, arts and tech.
- Be able to work independently
- Have some interest/experience in video editing
- Be creative and enthusiastic about online publishing
The position is (currently) voluntary, but aimed to help you gain skills and confidence. You will be in charge of the Zine itself and will be able to implement changes, discuss development, and to recruit volunteers.
The position is for three or four days a week for three months (subject to paid employment). We publish stories daily. You will be working from our office and from home. You will need to have access to a computer and the internet, and be able to come into the office a couple of times a week.
To Apply:
Please send Nishma (volunteer[at]openrightsgroup.org) a copy of your CV, a brief letter explaining why you are interested in the position and some samples of your writing (links or attachments) by Monday 18th July 2011
Art is democratic
As ORGZine's celebration of all things bookish draws to a end, it's important to remember why we value books, libraries, knowledge and information
At last year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, I had the privilege of going along to a talk by Jeanette Winterson, who candidly told the story of her greatest love affair – with books.
Growing up in Lancashire, in a house where there were only six books—all about the Bible—Winterson would often escape to Accrington’s local library. She spoke of how she started at ‘A’—Austen—and slowly began to work her way through.
It gave her access to a whole new realm of imagination, experience and emotion. They became her only friends, her best friends – “perhaps they still are,” she added seriously. She would bring them home, read them late at night under the covers, and hide them under her bed, away from her mother’s evangelical eyes.
And when Mrs Winterson discovered her daughter’s despicable clandestine habit, she gathered up the books in her arms, flung them out the window, marched out into the yard, poured paraffin over the pile, and set them alight.
Winterson’s aghast horror at her mother’s hysterical act of arson, should be matched by our horror at proposals to shut hundreds of public libraries.
Philip Pullman’s incredibly emotive speech to defend public libraries says it all. Libraries—for teenagers like Winterson, and indeed adults—are not only havens of solace and knowledge, but also portals to the wider world. In shutting them down, we are denying people access to vital books and resources – particularly those who have the least access to begin with.
It disproportionately affects people who may not have internet at home, or enough knowledge about how the internet works, or what books are out there. It affects families who are not able to buy their kids Kindles for Christmas, or send them to public schools with well-stocked libraries. It affects people whose cannot always afford a trip to the theatre, or tickets to events at literary festivals. It affects researchers and academics and students and artists and musicians and pensioners and the poor. It affects children who may, one day, grow to be any of these things. It affects the most vulnerable people in society.
This is a grave atrocity. Winterson’s resounding words were, “Art is democratic” – it is for everyone. Shutting public libraries would be to restrict access to the privileged. And it would mean we're a step closer to a dreaded cultural wasteland.
But—as the argument goes—when funds are limited, and alternative, often cheaper, options in digitisation are becoming available, there is a need to think dynamically.
Book Week at ORGZine was an effort to reconcile books with the increasingly digitised world, in an era where profit-margins take precedence.
As this week and the last (there was too much to say to have it all out in just a week!) at ORGZine has shown, there are many passionate voices out there, responding to the challenges at hand with excellent and viable solutions. Please join us in the debate, and help to keep art and knowledge open and accessible to everyone.
- Iman Qureshi, Editor, ORGZine
ORGZine launches Book Week!
We love books here at ORG towers, and so we're very excited to be launching our book week. We'll be covering all issues bookish on ORG Zine
ORG friend, the award-winning writer and technophile Hari Kunzru, is helping us to get things rolling. The Zine has an interview with Hari plus some kind words of support in a video message. We also have 25 signed copies of Hari's novel "My Revolutions" for anybody who joins ORG to become a regular supporter.
Also this week, the Zine will be examining the changing role of libraries, how technology may change the publishing process, a series of book reviews, an excerpt from Evgeny Morozov's excellent The Net Delusion and much more.
Enjoy book week, let us know what you think and become a supporter to help ORG keep defending our digital rights.
[New supporters donating £5/month or more by direct debit and who join between 31st January and 7th February will be eligible for the Hari Kunzru book draw.]
Happy Data Privacy Day!
Please enter your: email address, password, street name, contact telephone number, emergency contact details, post code, home address, work address, insurance details, health records, dietary requirements, religious affiliations, gender, security code, answer to security question, bank details…
There’s no limit to the amount of information that is stored about us somewhere in cyberspace. From everything we have ever bought online, to details of our bank accounts and home addresses – absolutely everything is out there somewhere.
Cross this with details of the information stored on travel cards, and the numbers dialled or received on your phone – anyone with access to this information can know just about everything there is to know about you. And anyone with an ounce of creativity will know exactly how to exploit it.
No, this is not a conspiracy theory, and when people treat issues of data privacy lightly, they are making a grave error.
Whilst technology has empowered and improved our lives in many ways, it is not without its risks. We need to be able to protect our information from being misused. We need to look at how technology affects our lives, be aware of the dangers and how to protect ourselves from them. That’s what Data Privacy Day is all about.
But, as the website states, it’s also an “international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information.”
This is a dignity that we need to uphold at all costs, so do get involved!
Welcome to ORGzine
ORGZine
Welcome to ORGzine. At the Open Rights Group we’ve long felt the need for more space to debate digital rights issues, and related areas.
We hope that ORGzine will provide some of that space. ORGzine isn’t the “voice of ORG”, that remains our own blog. But we do hope that ORGzine will be a place where ORG’s community and others who share our values will be able to explore, debate and review developments in the digital world.
A large number of people have contributed to launching ORGzine but in particular I’d like to acknowledge the hard work of two ORG interns who’ve taken the lead: Richard Millington and Iman Qureshi.
We hope you enjoy ORGzine and perhaps will feel inspired to contribute, we welcome all submissions.
- Jason Kitcat, Acting Assistant Executive Director, Open Rights Group
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