Our story takes place in the nether of the Internet of fall semester 2012. New School Media Students: Bria Cole; Nima Moinpour; Stephanie Lim, and Teymour Sursock all met online for Professor Josephine Dorado’s course on Collaboration in Networked Environments.

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This group of intrepid hardworking researchers banded together to explore the socio-economic and environmental behaviors of Vimeo’s and YouTube’s respective communities.

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The group’s final course project culminated in an extensive research paper in the format of a working website, mind maps and a Second Life presentation.

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But the story didn’t come to an end with the arrival of the winter break.

The group so enjoyed the collaborative experience that they wanted to perpetuate it and so they stayed in touch. Since the research paper brought them together they wondered what else could be done with their paper. They wondered, “what’s next for us?”

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It became clear to them all that there were a number of interesting questions that could be pursued but as Nima correctly pointed out certain topics lay beyond their scope of academic expertise. Nima also raised a crucial question during this period of musing, “What problem were we trying to solve?”

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And this is where the story takes an interesting turn…

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That following spring Teymour was taking a very interesting course on Transmedia but struggling with the course’s core assignment: design a Transmedia project that could be implemented and tested during the course of the semester. His initial idea was to take the group’s research paper and expand its original scope but this idea was not getting any traction in class. The main problem lay in the simple fact that the new project had no relevant purpose to fulfill or a set goal.

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The assignment was stalling and already half of the semester had passing by. That’s when Nima’s crucial question, “What problem were we trying to solve?” came into play. With this question in mind Teymour thought back to the group’s first question, “what else could be done with their paper?”

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That’s when he happened upon the very problem.