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Table of Contents Building Project Hover One Start with a Blog, one post at a time Coordination From Blog to Book Two Cultivation Three Halloween Halloween for the Morgans Favorite Horror Films

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Building Project Hover

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One
Project Hover started out with a question: How can I most efficiently distribute my writing across all of my online friends and relatives? Soon, it changed into a general question about distributing content across the Internet. Everything was downhill from there. I still dont know where Im going, but I at least have a better idea of where I am now. The basic idea behind Project Hover is that all content is fluid, whether youre talking about videos, audio, photos, or text. Thanks to the flexibility of online sites such as YouTube, Scribd, Facebook, and Twitter, you are able to share as much or as little information as you want: one letter, a sentence, a book, or several books. A two hour movie, or a 30-second clip. Ive been focused on the challenge of creating content that is fluid while being easily packageable and managed. This hasnt been an easy thing to figure out, but I think Ive gotten closer to the right solutions.

Start with a Blog, one post at a time

The first thing I needed to do was figure out a way to generate content that is both shareable and easy to distribute. Ive been doing that through my blog on Posterous at http://notesfromjon.posterous.com. Ive flip-flopped a bit on how this should have been done. Do I post on a dedicated blog under the name of Project Hover, or do I post as an individual? Ive ultimately gone with the individual approach. I made this decision after I began to look at the information I was sharing via Project Hover as a very broad, very long conversation. How broad, and how long? Potentially, it could be a conversation with the whole entire Internet, but for right now Ill just settle for my friends on Facebook, or maybe my followers on Twitter. As I worked out how to manage the conversation, I began to imagine myself on the set of a morning talk show, like The View. On The View, you have five or six woman hosts who cover different topics, and interview featured guests. So, a blog could be compared to the TV show The View, and the blog writers are the hosts. But, as I expanded my thinking I began to think about how many blog writers there could be, and really there are no limits. What would a talk show be like if it had 50-60 hosts, all talking at the same time? Or a live studio audience which had constant access to a microphone? It dawned on me that I should take a look at the larger picture, and so I realized that each host on The View (or any given talk show) is actually speaking into their own channel via a microphone. So, in the comparison between a talk show and a blog, the writers/hosts and tv show/blog are the same thing. I have a channel, and if you were writing for Project Hover you would have a channel. But, wed call our channels blogs.

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Coordination
The big difference between two people writing blogs in parallel and two people writing blogs as a part of Project Hover has to do with one word: coordination. After some searching, Ive decided to keep things coordinated by using a tool called Pivotal Tracker. Within this tool, Ive started a project for each level of content creation or management. Naturally, everything would start with the first project which I called Hover Content. This might be where someone would post an idea such as Lets talk about the history of the car. The idea could be bounced back to the person who made the suggestion, put on hold until the moment is right, or assigned to another Project Hover writer. That writer would go to their blog and write a post about the topic. When theyre done, they would mark the task on the board done, and their work would be reviewed or commented upon by other Project Hover members. Then, once approved, their post would be moved to the next level, which is a project called Hover Social. During this time, they would share their work across any number of networks and social sites. The feedback and responses they get back could be used to fine-tune their post. Next, their post is turned into a document which lives in Google Docs but can now be shared with a whole other side of the Internet via Scribd and other document-hosting services. At this level, it would be considered to be a Hovernote. Once it completes this life cycle, the post can now be revised, refined, and scheduled to appear in a monthly publication which for now Im just calling a Hoverbook.

From Blog to Book

When you think about it, Project Hover is really all about figuring out how to manage content while it is traveling between blog post and a published compilation of work. I just had to think of an entire methodology before I could study the process in the middle. Post Comments

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Two
I had known about the website Paper.li for a long time, but really hadnt thought about it until it came back up recently in a search. When I checked it out, I saw that there is now a way to add content to a Paper.li site (or whatever you call it) manually. Hmm, I thought. I soon had the idea of launching a paper.li site dedicated to just one topic, and then manually adding the content that I wanted to have appear there. Up until now, curation had been one of my toughest struggles as I figured out how Project Hover should work. Posts would start out in a blog, but where would they go next? I tried Squidoo, also an excellent content curation service, but it didnt give me the flexibility that I wanted. Neither did Google Sites, although for a while it was a prominent part of my plans. The problem was that I wanted to be able to share content via RSS while at the same time directly posting and displaying content. Squidoo did some of this, but you really couldnt share Google Docs, and Google Sites was good at displaying Google Docs, but stinks as a blogging platform, and doesnt process RSS feeds real well. So far, Paper.li seems to be the tool that saves the day. I cant embed Google Docs, but I might not have to if I can insert the public versions of the documents manually. It already handles blog posts and RSS feeds just fine. Ive started three paper.li sites around the time of this writing. One is called The Jon Morgan Daily, and displays all posts from my blog at notesfromjon.posterous.com. The other is called Ghost Town Online, and covers Halloween, and the third one is dedicated to my sons cub scout troop. Each paper.li displays its own combination of content, but what Ive found is that there can actually be a lot of cross-over. For example, the blog post I wrote about my sons cub scout Halloween party can go up on all three of these paper.li sites because its so relevant. Ive called these as Hover Topics, but actually they work a lot more like traditional portals or landing pages.

Cultivation
These Hover Topic sites allow me to truly cultivate the content that is being generated through Project Hover. This was important because I always knew that the power of publishing on the Internet lies within the ease with which readers can give feedback. This feedback, in the form of comments, suggestions, and questions, will help authors improve their content. Maybe there is an angle they didnt think of, or theres a typo. Readers can help with these improvements. As I was building the three Paper.li sites, I started a new group blog on Posterous where readers can contribute their stories or articles. The Cub Scout Paper.li features a link to this group blog and an invitation for readers to share. Im hoping that as I pick up more and more

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contributors, Ill begin to recruit additional writers for Project Hover. Or, maybe theyd prefer to remain as guest writers. Post Comments

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Three
Are you interested in helping with Project Hover? There are many different ways in which you can help. Just email me at 32bpwr3@gmail.com or register with the content project on Pivotal Tracker. Post Comments

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Halloween

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Halloween for the Morgans
During our visit to Greenfield Village this weekend we toured the village during the day and then returned after dark for their Halloween Night. The weather stayed absolutely beautiful throughout the day and even into the night. Halloween is less than a week away with still more special activities to attend. Were going to be taking our kids to the Boo Bash this Saturday, Josh will be walking in the elementary school parade on Monday, and then of course there will be Trick-or-Treating on Monday night. What are your Halloween plans? Post Comments

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Favorite Horror Films
Im not a big fan of the horror film, but the combination of cooler October weather and, of course, Halloween to look forward to on the 31st puts me into the mood for watching at least one scary movie. I thought that I would share my list of favorite horror movies that Ive seen. If you agree or disagree, please tell me so in the comments. Or, submit your own top ten list via the Project Hover Feedback blog. 1. The Ring - This movie left such a big impression on me that I ended up buying the sequel on DVD and reading the original novel which the movie (and the original Japanese movie) was based off of. One question which was left in my mind was how things might have gone differently if the cursed video could have been released onto YouTube. 2. Let the Right One In/Let Me In - Thanks to Twilight, its easy to assume that a love story between a young boy and the 10-year-old female vampire who moves in next door would be all sweet and cuddly. Well, you would think wrong. Both the original movie and the American remake hit on similar plot points but still have their differences. Id recommend Let Me In only because its easier to understand without the subtitles, and the events are explained a little better. Beneath the gore and violence that you would expect from a movie with vampires, there is a chilly subtext about relationships which left me with a lot to ponder. 3. The Grudge - I dont remember very much about this film, other than there was a creepy ghost kid who was always crawling across the floor and made an annoying ratcheting sound whenever he opened his mouth. Honestly, I dont know why I even mentioned this movie. 4. The Eye - This was another American remake of a foreign film which had some thrills but it turned out to be rather unremarkable.I think it involved an eye transplant, and superstitious voodoo. 5. Skeleton Key - Speaking of voodoo, Skeleton Key was a really suspenseful movie which kept me guessing all of the way to the end. 6. Teeth - This movie was uncomfortable to watch, yet fun at the same time. Can you think of other movies that should go here? Post a comment or submit your own list on the Feedback Blog. Or respond via the Hoverstream blog.

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