Grand plans...

So, I thought I'd outline to everybody who will (hopefully, eventually) read this blog what I am hoping to use this for, and what I'd like to add to the site:

-I'd like people who don't necessary want to be interviewed, but want to add their memories of Ottawa's queer community to feel free to write me here or add to posts via the comments section.

-As I write sections of my paper, I am hoping to put them up here for people to look at and comment on/critique/ suggest/ spell-check. Of course, final say will be left to me (it is my thesis after all), or perhaps my supervisor, but I think it would add something special to my writing, something I wouldn't get if it was just a process that included me and two or three other people editing my research.
I am thinking of it sorta like open-source programming, but for academics, and without an iphone app being the end result. Or maybe...?

-I'd love to see people talk about places/spaces and events among one another, and see what sort of collective memory can be shaped by folks without me intervening too much in the discussion, if at all. It is a community history I want to construct, so why not have the community involved as much as possible?

-I want to find a way to have a place on here where people can post photos, if they feel like doing so. I know over this fall I am going to bike around Ottawa and take photos of old spots -at least exteriors- and post them up here to see if they get anyone's memories going. I think the best way to trigger memories about a place and to quickly understand it is to see it (yeah yeah, a picture says a thousands words and all that), and having a photo archive of submissions would be fun to use in any presentations and/or exhibits. Any suggestions how I should organize that?

-Finally, I want to have an interactive map, where people can place the spaces/places/events that they thought were important, even if only to them and what sort of space it was. Hopefully with each entry participants can give a time frame for the space (was it in the 70's? 50's? five months in 1999?) and people can comment and add to each individual entry. Ideally, I'd like the map to track the changes in the geography of the community, and also how each person's personal geography reflected their place in the community and in Ottawa as a whole.

Ambitious? Yeah, but there you have it, and my philosophy is that any little bit will help. Now that this has been all written, I think it is time to go public...