*openmargin dialogue

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”

- Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author known for his economical writing style. He committed suicide with his favorite gun. 

This is a 6-word story. Hemingway called it his best work. It may be short, but it’s definitely not simple. As a reader you can sense the world in-between these words. Depending on who’s reading it when, this world will be different. The gaps are mirroring the reader and the context. 
This story is like good teacher who gives his students a direction, but no solution. He acknowledges the different realities and allows students to walk their own path. 

When the margin of a text is opened (soon), every reader can write his thoughts between the gaps. The purpose is not to fill in the gaps, but to open them even further with new gaps. When participants build possibility on possibility the text will be ever-expanding and the perspective on the subject will become broad, very broad.

openmargin has different incarnations. One is a tool, which gives you the possibility to publish your notes within a public margin. Another incarnation is the ‘way of writing’. Writing with an openmargin in mind means raising questions, leaving gaps and expressing half-baked ideas. The tool has no use without the mindset. 

We have been selected as one of the ten start-ups to pitch our business during the PICNIC Pitch Night! Considering PICNIC is one of the coolest European conferences this is pretty epic. 

We’ll be pitching *openmargin at September 22nd to the PICNIC audience and the following impressive jury:

• Andrea Vogel, Ernst & Young, Partner
• Menno van Leeuwen, ABN AMRO, Sector Banker Media & Technology
• Alexander Ribbink, Prime Technology Ventures, Partner
• Willem Sijthoff, Media entrepreneur

So if you’re attending PICNIC, be sure to watch us and the other 9 companies present our businesses and of course, come say hi afterwards!

Event details:
Location: PICNIC (Specials 1)
Date: Thursday, September 22nd (aka Day 1) from 18:00 ‘till 20:00

You can find all the details right here.

We hope to see you there!

Update: Thanks everybody who attended! Unfortunately we didn’t win (they were looking for established companies), but we met some awesome people.

Yesterday we pitched *openmargin at ‘Kom je ook?’. A conference with an honest theme: mistakes.

We were one of the seven participants who got two minutes to tell about their product or service. And we’re proud to tell you we won the audience award. Thanks to all the lovely people who placed their RFID badge under our umbrella (great set-up from the mediamatic people).

Now we have an appointment with Stichting DOEN. Looking forward to it!

We’re proud to announce we’ve been nominated to present *openmargin this thursday at the ‘Kom je ook‘-event organized by Mediamatic.

More information can be found on the event’s website (in Dutch). We’ll be presenting between 14:45h and 15:15h.

Event details:
Location: Kloveniersburgwal 50, Amsterdam
Date: Thursday, September 9th
Entrance fee: €99 (ex VAT), if you’re lucky you can get a free ticket though (see site for details)  

If you’re able to make it, please come and say hello! Otherwise, you can read our pitch right here: http://www.mediamatic.net/page/159654/nl (again, in Dutch)

We’re all locked inside our own body. Which is a shame of-course. Wouldn’t it be nice to be a spirit, traveling around the world and staying in different bodies? Hearing what they hear, seeing what they see. 

Unfortunately there’s not yet a travel-agency for spirits (if you start one, I’ll be the first customer), but there’s another possibility: listening. By listening to another human being, nature or art, we lose ourselves and experience the other. Our mind becomes wiser and our heart more empathic. 

But listening is not very popular nowadays. ‘Everyone is a producer’ is the promise of the interactive media. And after a century of radio and television, this is a welcome message. But while the speaker is celebrated, the listener is neglected. Passivity and silence seem to be bad things. If you don’t tweet, you don’t exist. 

But what if everyone is speaking and no one is listening? What’s the use then? 

Consider your attention footprint for a moment. Are your speaking and listening in balance? Your reading and writing? If you need to compensate, try one of these:

• Read a text with your full attention. Don’t skip. 
• Ask for clarification. Really try to understand the author’s opinion. 
• Ask an open question. You know, the one where the answer is not build in already. 

The last couple of months we have been steadily developing the *openmargin platform. A space where readers of the same book can share their perspective inside the margin to initiate a dialogue with like-minded people.

Today we invite you to take the very first version for a test ride. It’s still an early beta with a lot of known and unknown bugs, so the road will be bumpy, but nevertheless we want to hear YOUR perspective so we can decide which direction to take in the ongoing development.

Requirements
To take part in the beta test you’ll need an iPad with internet access, either 3G or wifi. For the web platform we recommend the Safari browser, while we’re working out some kinks in Firefox.

The book
To encourage an active dialogue we’ve decided to start off with one book only, namely Content by Cory Doctorow. It’s a collection of Doctorow’s essays on technology, creativity, copyright and ‘the future of the future’. 

How to take part
Everything is explained on this page. 

Other things you should know:
If you need help, found a (major) bug, or just want to talk to us go here: http://beta-info.openmargin.com/feedback.html

We hope to see you in the margin!

Joep, Ruth & Marc
Founders of *openmargin 

We’re currently putting the finishing touches on the first version of openmargin. Part of this is the API, which will allow developers of eReaders to incorporate openmargin-functionality into their existing app. Although we’re currently developing our own basic openmargin-enabled eReader app on the iPad, we’d like to start talking with external developers as well to see how we can help eachother.

So if you are, or know someone that is, developing an eReader and am/is open for a new way to approach books, get in contact! marc@openmargin.com

The very first newspaper was ‘Publick Occurrences’. It was four pages long, with one page left blank intentionally. People were encouraged to write on it, be part of the conversation and pass it along to someone else. 

Overtime news became big business. People were shut out of this conversation. 

Nick Bilton on Poptech