The award winning Wikiklesia Project  is an experiment in personal participatory media  and on-line collaborative publishing. Wikiklesia may be the world’s first self-perpetuating nomadic business model: raising money for charities – generating new anthologies and giving voice to emerging writers .

Originator, John La Grou said of the first volume “It's our hope that Wikiklesia generates a continuous stream of high quality collaborative literature - embracing topics of significance to the global church. We have no idea if this will work, but we're giving it a good go.”

Volume One broke new ground as a crowd sourced, collaborative ecclesial publishing model - from purpose to publication in just a few weeks.  Volume One, Voices of the Virtual World, presents a “far reaching exploration of spiritual journey contextualized within a culture of increasingly immersive technology.”  VolumeTwo, Taking Flight: Reclaiming the Female Half of God’s Image.  A Journey of Freedom and Reconciliation  enlarges the virtual anthology by exploring the rapidly changing perception of women in faith leadership and how their participation will shape the future church.

Can a publishing organization thrive without centralized leadership? Is perpetual, self-organizing book publishing possible? Can literary quality be maintained in a distributed publishing paradigm?  Wikiklesia was created to answer these kinds of questions.  John La Grou (yep we’re married) and Len Hjalmarson launched the first Wikiklesia Project in May 2007 - original objectives here.

Wikiklesia has created a between- publishing paradigm based on collaboration over copyright. The model is flexible and nomadic.  It is open source and the content is crowd sourced.  After a project is published and in the marketplace, new editor-facilitators take on the next project and can change the protocol to suit their needs. This open source model leaves plenty of room for ongoing experimentation.    The first volume includes an e-book with live links throughout and a hard copy version, both available at Lulu.com.  

Peggy Brown and yours truly – both involved with writing and production in W1 -decided to do some remodeling for W2.  Although we loved all the live links in the e-book – people commented that they felt more comfortable with a book in hand and the hard copy has sold more copies. We kept getting the sense that the second project needed to be an ongoing conversation – but the “how and where” was not coming together.  The Wiki site is fully functional, but we wanted more…. 

When Missional Tribe was introduced, it seemed like a natural progression and extension of the Wikiklesia project, community and values, especially since many of the MT Instigators were involved with W 1.  So we decided to host the conversation there and you are invited to attend and participate.

We will start by posting a chapter per week in Missional Tribe rather than the e-book.  As with volume one, most writers will be accepted in advance on the basis of their chapter proposals and some based on invitation in that they are already known for writing on the topic. This time, there will be comments on the chapters all of which will be "harvested" at the end of 6-7 months for the final Wiki2 book.  All donations/royalties will go to the non-profit, Emancipation Network.

We are also pursuing the opportunity to hybridize as a non profit / for profit.  The best material from the book can be extrapolated by a handful of authors for traditional publishers who might be interested in a particular emphasis.  Why do this?  At this stage of the game authors, even though passionate about their topic, typically do not have the time or savvy to commit to on line marketing. 

Some art from the project: "Comp4on White"

Should we really expect authors to do it all? Personally, I’m stretched with recruiting, production, editorial management, editing and writing – all in my spare time. Ideally, creative’s need to focus on their content. It’s not easy for a writer or artist to start from scratch publishing and building a tribe or audience. But many talented writers and content producers are seeing opportunity and realizing, especially in this economy, that they cannot afford to hold their breath, and ARE rolling up their sleeves and making the sacrifices necessary to get the word (conversation) out surrounding their material.  Others are starting to rely on social media marketers. 

The supposed beauty of a collaborative model is that the participants will include various types of talent to pitch in - but the value for this paradigm has not gained traction, so there is a wait and see before we fully invest outlook, along with being in the experimental stages of measuring impact, seeing what works or what to do better (or try) next time.  

So having said all that, what all of us busy content producers really need assistance with is some online PR/ marketing.  Any takers?   I think for this and the next volume to be successful, advocates with innovative PR / marketing savvy, could donate their expertise just as the authors have done so.  Crowd sourcing should include synergy with sneezers (connected bloggers and people with social networks) as well as writers to get the word out. 

Why hybrid publishing?  The lines between traditional and online publishing are starting to blur. The delivery model has changed and is rapidly evolving.  Here are a few thoughts on where things are headed:

• Interactive online publishing is conversational and takes place within overlapping virtual communities.  New publishing models incorporating both traditional and interactive online elements can not only create streams of information and narrative, but generate social movement.  Top down is now bottom up – user generated “content is  king” and the consumer has become the producer. “ Indymedia”  is user generated media in news, citizen journalism, film, video, and publishing.
• Portable and social media is becoming ubiquitous, like the telephone, converging technologies and platforms are here to stay.  Hardware will continue to evolve and converge into single devise touch screen media tablets and portable devises that will combine books, Internet, phone, cameras, movies, open social, and Apps and text. 
• Books will merge into dynamic multimedia web content and interactive user events. A person's work in progress and personal data may ultimately be stored via cloud computing.  Such devises allows people to become more mobile, taking their work with them while staying in contact with colleagues and co-workers.  This arrangement works particularly well for anyone involved in missions, publishing, media or anyone with a story to tell.     
  
• Publishing will morph into an on demand, downloadable format – as with movies and music publishing  is next in the domino effect.  The first prototype for hardware is Amazon’s Kindle and Amazon is expanding its e-publishing program.  Apple, who owns 87% share in music downloads, is poised with its experience in design and building electronics, to take the portable reading (media) tablet  to the next level and beyond.  
• Digital media distribution over the Internet is more efficient than manufacturing.  It levels the playing field for writers as it has for musicians. 

Collaborative publishing - the Hive Mind

The hive mind is a term used by Wired’s, Kevin Kelly in his endorsement of W1. It’s also referred to as collective intelligence or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration of many individuals, also defined as a form of networking enabled by the rise of media convergence and participatory culture. This is my favorite part of being involved with this type of project.  Currently, I simply do not have time to research /write the entire scope for this book. (I’m invested in another open source collective community involving film, video, digital storytelling, etc)  This is a huge burden as I feel deeply impressed that important information needs to circulate NOW and I seriously doubt that many traditional publishers are willing to tackle this issue, nor are they picking up on the conversation and needs (of the marginalized – thus perpetuating the marginalization and repeating similar mistakes the music industry made).

Can we trust God to speak His heart through multiple vessels?  As editors and curators overseeing production, we can pretty much achieve what we sensed all along and actually much more, as a rich tapestry / gorgeous mosaic of different perspectives and experiences comes to life.  It is very rewarding to receive chapters that really nail it and yet have their own flavor and unique perspective, the biggest plus being new and purposeful relationships and connections that would have never existed before.

Find out more about the theme for W2 here. As anyone who has blogged on this subject matter knows, this is a hot topic! One of our original goals was to portray innovative women practitioners exploring new horizons.  However, the hive mind that is coming together may be focusing more on the reconciliatory aspect of both genders leading and serving together.  Will have to see which direction the flight path goes.  Tokenism and a dearth in radical innovation across the board will persist until both age old presumptions and thoughtful solutions for both genders are, in all humility - illuminated.  It is our hope that this resource and conversation will ultimately benefit men and women around the world.   

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Need more information? Contact cynth@mil-media.com , or edbrenegar@gmail.com.

Cynthia is a founding director / social entrepreneur, founding partner / artistic director, creative media specialist, and catalyst among other things at various companies, projects and non profits. She is always busy wearing 12 hats and loves to take on new challenges.  She is incapable of accomplishing anything without the amazing support and help of friends, family, and associates all of whom are greatly admired and appreciated. She occasionally blogs at emerse.