From Wired to Wild The Origin Story
Wild Open was born from a desire to channel the living green spaces of the wilderness onto an online platform. As avidly connected to the net as they are, co-founders Even Dawn and Jonathan Davis recognise that to access wild nature is to connect with a deeper source of information.
The founders of Wild Open have been inspired to create this project by many influences that can perhaps be summed up in one simple premise: if people don’t connect to nature, they won’t love it; and if they don’t love it they won’t protect it. Wild Open is a response to the question: ‘if we could use our media skills to do anything, what would is the most important work we could be dedicating our lives to?’. Creating a media channel that helps people understand the benefits of connecting with the natural world is where they ended up. If you can’t quite see how important that really is, don’t worry… Wild Open is building a whole media channel to help with that.
Employed within the creative industries as media makers for most of their careers, Even and Jonathan have a range of experience and skills which combine to form the foundation of an independent online media channel. For more than a year they have ben envisioning how Wild Open can grow into collaborative network. Wild Open is being built to use the most innovative and effective forward thinking systems currently available. Wild Open is influenced by whole systems thinking, delayered hierarchy, decentralisation and distributed networks, and the power of collaboration and co-operation in everything we do. From March to June 2019 the Wild Open site will be in a beta state, with minimal content displayed publicly while the back-end collaborative systems are taking form.
Collaborative Media Making
Wild Open is focused on sharing content about the benefits of getting out into the wild and connecting to nature, not just as once off events but as a part of everyday life. So that’s the ‘wild’ part, what about the ‘open’ part? One reason the network is called Wild Open is because it operates as collaborative media project which draws heavily from the principles and philosophy of open-source.
Open-source projects take the very best of what has been done already, and allows others to take all of that and use it to make something even better.
At every stage of development the founders have discovered new ways of bringing the philosophy of open source to the way the project operates.
What’s Your Story?
If you are a nature-connected media maker, or you’d like to be, Wild Open wants to know your story. At present we’re drawing on the talent of our own local community with a handful of writers, online editors and filmmakers living near the most-easterly point of Australia, however we are working hard to make sure Wild Open grows to feel like a truly global media channel.
Wherever you are, and whoever you are, you can start to contribute to this project by scouting for stories that portray the depth of human connection to themselves, each other and wild nature in our current times. You can become a story catcher, giving pre-release feedback to media makers on their upcoming work. You could put your hand up to become a writer, an editor, a presenter, a filmmaker, a photographer and more. We are wildly open to collaboration.
Take a wander through what has already been published through Wild Open. There will be regular updates to both the content and the interface during the beta testing period so come back often to take another look.
Being an open-source platform you are warmly invited to send any feedback you might have through the contact form. Whether there’s a bug to report, you have a story idea or simply want to offer some encouragement, Wild Open welcomes you to the network.
