Right on brand for 2020, the writers’ residency we planned for the Worldbuilding Academy is likely to fall in the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the moment, the Italian government imposes travel restrictions that imply our writer-in-residence would be spending the entire residency in quarantine. We need a plan B.
I am just fantasizing here, and of course open to all kinds of alternative proposals. But we could do this:
- See if we can find some extra resources to onboard two writers rather than one.
- Schedule a SF-Econ Lab webinar with our chosen writer(s). to happen in 2020. A possible date could be December 1st.
- Do a bit of work from here to there to set up an online space for collaboration. “Set up” means that, of on December 2nd I go online determined to help figure out what means of exchange works for interstellar trade in the world under construction, I find some skeletal description of the overarching concept, instructions for where to put my contribution and in roughly what form, and someone (from the EDGE team) listening in and replying to questions. A couple of visuals would be nice, and we do have a concept artist lined up on the Messina side.
- Do some pretty constant work for the following week or two. The writer(s) write(s), the EDGE & Messina teams try to drive engagement. It becomes kind of a virtual residency!
- Meanwhile, tentatively reschedule a physical residency for, say, May 2021. COVID allowing, that residency could then become more “writing fiction based on the world that was developed”, and less “building the world itself”.
- Between December and March we would find out how much traction this idea really has, and re-invest in it or just archive it as a fun episode.
How does that sound? Ping @nadia @hugi @giacomo.pinaffo @estragon @yudhanjaya @Kix @IvanC .
