topherchris

So, here’s a thought.

Take Jonathan Coulton’s hugely successful Thing a Week concept, wherein a new song was written, recorded, and released every week for a year, and port it over to websites, web-toys, webthingys, and what have you.

Every week, a new project. After exactly one year, there’d be precisely 52.177457 new webthings. Some of these would be medium in scale and some would inevitably be small. While it’s true that I could, of course, cheat by putting out a one-word nanosite whenever I got lazy, I’d pledge to continually strive for something greater. On the other hand, a Digg-killer (or whatever the kids are trying to viciously maul these days) isn’t exactly feasible either. I’m okay with that, I’m not a violent person.

Why do this? Coulton says it best:

It was an attempt to keep the creative juices flowing as freely as possible, and a way for me to push myself to take risks, work quickly and trust in the creative process.

I imagine Ze Frank’s year-long daily video experiment had similar motivations.

Surely, making websites is different from making music or videos — but I don’t think it’s that different. There’s a creative side and a technical side, whether it’s happening in Final Cut or Logic Pro or Textmate. I’m not talking about websites that’ll change the world: A three-minute video or a cover of “Baby Got Back” isn’t supposed to change the world either. I’m talking about Nuggets of Fun.

Why not do it? Time constraints. Unlike the two giants I’ve mentioned here whose shoulders I’d be climbing toward, I require secure full-time employment to enable the lifestyle I’m accustomed to (which consists mainly of shelter and the occasional food item).

That’s my idea of the morning, and I’ll neither commit nor disavow it at the moment. I’m merely putting it out into the Sub-Etha.