We've crossed oceans of time for you to find us.

Summary

For years, it has been Mute's dream to conduct its publishing on a more participatory platform. Starting with our mini-manifesto Ceci N'est Pas Un Magazine (Sept 2001), we plotted the project as it moved through various developmental stages and now, after years of planning and building, it is alive and kicking at brand new site Metamute.org.    

With the move to this new location, Mute has embraced the evolving culture of Open Publishing and finally made the web its home. Mute content is now made freely available as soon as it is published and users can post to the site in numerous newly created areas.

Mute still retains a printed magazine (now quarterly), which is produced using print on demand (POD) technology and extends our core editorial activity through themed issues. We have also added a facility for users to make their own personalised collections of POD content, straight from the site.

Another online facility, called the Agent Network, exists for distributing publications. Through this, users can sign up to distribute Mute in their own neighbourhoods and communities and receive a portion of the cover price in return. At Metamute.org, you can register, input details about sales outlets and events to build up the existing network, as well as manage your own activity by organising orders, deliveries and payments. Our hope is that this feature will help get the magazine to the full diversity of its audience and build a more sustainable economy for the organisation as a whole. On the back of this model, we also encourage users to get involved with editorial and promotion too.

Mute continues to feature the critical writing it is known for, but by using the internet as a production base and home, it can explore the web's multimedial nature and better engage its  audience. In this respect, other notable projects associated with our relaunch are a BitTorrent, the Public Library, and a series of online art commissions.

Finally, keep in mind that what you are looking at is the BETA version of Metamute.org. This is currently being tested to gauge usability, design and architecture. This phase will be complete once beta users' feed back has been acted on. If you would like to be part of this process and would find a beta users' document helpful, you can view it here.

Table of Contents

    What's new?
    Participation
        How do you get involved?
    Economy
        The mission!
        How are we doing it?
        Partnering with Mute
        Consulting with Mute

What's new?

Membership
Metamute.org is a membership based site where you can log in to submit articles or upload media. There are a variety membership categories, reflecting levels of involvement and usage. These are: anonymous, authenticated, subscriber, agent and editor.

Free to share magazine content
Simultaneous to its publication in print, Mute will be making its magazine content freely available online for non-commercial use, reprinting and translation.

OpenPublishing
The following areas of the site are open for members' contributions: News & Analysis, Public Library (P2P file sharing service), Calendar, Forums & lists.

POD and User POD [*]
Print on demand is a high quality, low cost form of digital book printing, through which one or 1000s of copies can be printed in several locations throughout the world. Mute has opted for this technology for reasons of cost, but also so we can be more responsive to developments on our website. Outside of our regular magazine run, we will be producing a variety of other POD imprints.
    As a user, you can recompose any content items from the site and have your own book printed and delivered at low cost. The digital print process also means you can leave a PDF of your book online to share with others, in our POD Park.

Public Library (PL)
Media based works can be uploaded/ downloaded by any user at our P2P BitTorrent, the Public Library. At the PL, you can also share your opinions on the files available and we encourage users to regard this reviewing as integral to the uploading and downloading of their media warez.

Content filtering [*]
The Mute site is vast and will become even more so. To make its content more accessible, we have added a system of classification which helps you sort the content of the site. We feel strongly that the new Mute should be about your view of things as much as ours; to make this happen we invite you to expand on the subjects we've included in our category listings. Help guides will soon be available on how to do this, and we will also keep our own classifications constantly under review (the present listing is definitely just a beginning!).

Shop
We have opened up our shop to allow users to sell their cultural products and digital downloads next to ours. In line with this, we have also enabled multi-currency transactions via PayPal or credit card to make it easier for users to make associated financial transactions.

Agent network, the Networked Distribution Services/NDS  [*]
Mute invites site users to join our agents scheme, which rewards the local distribution and sale of Mute with 30% of the cover price. The system – whose working title is NDS (Networked Distribution Service) – is made possible by software which allows orders, deliveries and payments to be tracked online. Mute's agent network is also open to users offering their publications for distribution and sale: through this process of mutual support, we aim to contribute to alternative distribution networks globally.

Translations [*]
Users can translate articles on the Mute site into a variety of languages through a simple online editing process. Volunteering to translate can be done without contacting the editor, as the site provides an easy to use text editor and automated submission process. Mute is still working on the protocols involved, as multiple translations in (likely) varying degrees of completion will need to be categorised systematically and original authors consulted on their preferred relationship to new texts.

Banner monitoring
Metamute.org allows web advertisers to have greater control over, and awareness of, the activity of their ads. Information relating to banners' performance can be viewed and analysed by day, week, month, and banners can be switched on and off for specific periods of time. As in other areas of the site, this activity is contained in a personalised work area which automatically responds to members' status and registration details.

Project commissions
Metamute.org has a projects area where we will regularly feature new art and cultural commissions.

[*] Items accompanied by this sign are still in varying stages of development, although they are a full part of our project planning.

Participation

Participating in Mute happens through three roughly drawn categories, namely Content, Distribution and Technology.
    On the content side, our OpenPublishing features mean users are free to contribute articles to the site. Should you want to have greater involvement, you can also work as an as editorial agent in closer contact with Mute editors.
    This deeper dimension of participation engages the hybrid nature of Mute, since it highlights the gap between open content and content commissioned and edited in the conventional way. Mute's print magazine will be heavily influenced by what users contribute through the OpenPublishing channels: getting involved in between the two will help editors make a more responsive magazine.
    On the distribution side, our agent network and online distribution system mean users can help Mute and other publications directly in their distribution efforts. You can add details of appropriate outlets and events and/or actually sell the magazine for a commission.
Mute engages with FLOSS as a social movement. In addition to doing editorial work, it has done this through technology initiatives. To carry on this work we need your involvement and support, whether it is in the area of research, coding, finances or another realm of activity we haven't imagined yet..

How do you get involved?

Content
OpenPublishing areas of the site are places that you can openly post to once you are registered as a member. These include:

â—?    News & Analysis – here you can repost or write on any topic you feel is of relevance to Mute editorial. The title may evoke a factual, 'newsy' orientation, but we welcome material on any subject, including fiction and reviews!

â—?    Public Library – here you can upload any size of media file along with opinions and reviews relating to them.

â—?    Calendar – here you can post details of events you think other Mute users may be interested in. Take care to fit your item to the format: short and snappy is best!

â—?    Forums & Lists ('Discussion') – our forums allow for our email lists to feed into the site, so you can either post from inside the website or through your own email client. Mute has several lists, including the general discussion list Mute Social. To join any of them, visit the URL http://lists.metamute.org/mailman/listinfo.

â—?    Create a POD – users can make their personal compilations of content from the site, keep them stored there as PDFs for other users to browse, and make them available for ordering and delivering as a POD book.

Moderation [*]

Users can rank articles and comments. This information is aggregated by the website to prioritise articles and comments for transfer to the home and main section pages.

Agents

If you want to become an agent please contact the Mute webmaster on webmaster AT metamute.org  Our agent types are broken down into:
·    Editorial agents
·    Distribution agents
·    Promotional agents

Economy

The mission!

The Mute site has been designed to address the difficulties facing a small publishing cultural group, the most persistent of which remain reaching your audience and covering your production costs. Since our history is probably representative of that of other small cultural organisations, we would also like to use any lessons learnt as a starting point for a broader discussion on economic working models. The holy grail remains building a sustainable content economy that is not centred primarily on advertising. We want to see whether the other 'traditional' revenue streams of distribution & sales, subscriptions and, latterly, 'services' (like software provision and consultancy) can be developed to generate a working financial model. Mute has received increasingly regular and generous public funding over the years, and regards this as the kind of base investment other businesses might receive from the private sector. These funds currently contribute to basic running costs and special projects, such as software and workshop initiatives. FLOSS culture has also become an important part of our organisational model, as we use free software tools and reciprocate through knowledge and code.

How are we doing it?

PODs

PODs help Mute continue as a print publication by eradicating the set up costs associated with traditional printing methods. By allowing you to print precisely the number of publications you need at any given time, PODs allow publishers to spread out their expenditure on printing. You can subdivide your total outlay on a print run into however many parts you need to, meaning the way you spend money is more in keeping with how you receive it (in dribs and drabs!). The publications also get printed in different locations around the world, significantly reducing shipping costs.

Agents network, the Networked Distribution Services/NDS  [*]

To reach your audience you need good distribution. Having had a mixed experience with traditional magazine distributors (where, especially for international sales, an enormous amount of postage cost and actual magazines go to waste meeting loosely calculated 'sale or return' order numbers from sales outlets), Mute has now started using an NGO-built 'Contacts Management' web system to attempt a more precise operation. The software we are working with is called CiviCRM: this was developed to reach voters in the US Democratic presidential nomination campaign of Howard Dean, but can be used just as well by a small magazine to organise relationships with its distributors. We are creating our network of local agents to sell Mute together with other publications at a variety of outlets and events. All orders, deliveries and payments are conducted over the net. To find out more or help out, see http://www.metamute.org/agents

Donations  [*]

Mute is developing a variety of fund raising drives to raise donations from its users. We plan for them to support the organisation generally, as well as specific projects, and they are presently categorised into the following

â—?    Mute organisation – a donation of £10 ($15 / eur 15) or higher from a 25% percentage of our user base would go a long way to helping Mute sustain its ongoing editorial activity and web infrastructure. We are presently exploring what users would like to receive in return, going from simple name credits to other free services.
â—?    Print fund – this fund is being developed to support translation and international re-printing of Mute content and the NDS 'agents network' service for Mute and other publishers. The print fund will also help facilitate collaboration with other organisation in different regions.
â—?    FLOSS and Web2POD/ NDS – this project will will contribute to the ongoing development of POD technology and Mute's NDS service. Here we will be looking for small donations from users as well as partnerships with organisations who want to use the technology or services.
â—?    Public Library – the public library BitTorrent needs financial support to pay for server bandwidth use and site maintenance. Users can offer non-monetary help by contributing some of their own bandwidth, while financial donations can help with technical maintenance.

Partnering with Mute

Sell your products on Metamute

Metamute has a shop where you can sell your cultural products. In return for listing your product and integrating it into our sales system, we ask for 25% of your sales price. You can also offer your product on our NDS 'agent network' system where sales and distribution arrangements are negotiated individually between sellers and distributors.

Distribute with NDS

NDS is a DiY distribution system for paper print currently being developed by Mute. You can offer your publication to the network's members worldwide and see if they will sell it for you at local outlets and events. In return we ask that, as a user of NDS, you add any relevant local contacts you have and also act as a distributor. NDS will be financed through user donations and fund raising. This service is currently under development and will not be available until March 2006; please get in touch if you have any suggestions for development or improvement of our plans.

Become a FLOSS partner

We have developed a series of new tools for the FLOSS CMS Drupal and CiviCRM, and there are several ways you can get involved in this project. Firstly on a technical level, as a voluntary developer or researcher. Secondly on an economic level, as a contributor to the fund being built to continue development. The following FLOSS projects are available from Mute:

â—?    Web2POD
â—?    User POD tool
â—?    Contextual and multi dimensional menu
â—?    E-commerce modification for multi-currency, multi-region payment on account tool
â—?    Networked distribution services

Or look at the NDS Web2POD project invitation at http://linkme2.net/6n (Dec 05).

Consulting with Mute

If you require a paid-for installation of the same system or consultancy of any kind for your own project, please get in touch with Simon Worthington on simon AT metamute.org or see http://3d.openmute.org where Mute's software and consultancy activities are described at its project OpenMute.