Please give feedback on the new site

A few days ago, we introduced you to our new site for transcripts of talks I have given over the last few years (http://www.unfetteredweb.org/pod/).

Several of you sent some encouraging comments already:

• This looks absolutely fantastic! I look forward to "listening". (Toronto, Ontario)
  
• The new site is amazing. (Montreal, Quebec)
• Thank you, thank you, thank you for this...I really appreciate this new offering. (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

Now we would like your feedback so that we know how to make the site better for you.

Please take a few minutes to complete this survey

(http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PTT2C3N).

With best wishes,

Ken

New talks and transcripts site

Dear Friends,

Our new site for talks and transcripts is now ready! Here is the actual URL if you need it: http://www.unfetteredweb.org/pod/.

Over the last two years, an extraordinary group of people have done an extraordinary job developing this site. There is more work to be done, of course, but we wanted to make the talks, the transcripts, and the ability to search on key words available to you as soon as possible.

Please join me in giving heartfelt thanks to all of the people who contributed to making this happen. They all volunteered their time, energy, and intelligence to create a unique offering on the web that will serve as a support for people in their practice.

This new site is the first section of what will be a totally redesigned site for Unfettered Mind, just in time for our 20th anniversary. We are interested in your thoughts and feedback, so we will be sending you a short survey in the next few days, after you've had a chance to look at this new section.

Right now about half of the 37 TAN transcripts are up, along with a couple of other talks. More of the TAN transcripts will be going up soon, as well as transcripts of other retreats and classes. All the transcripts have direct links to the audio files, paragraph by paragraph, and you will find a list of key words to search on to the right of each talk.

You will find a fledgling user guide here, and a description of how this all happened here.

There are many other features and we invite you to explore, experiment, and then send us your feedback when the survey arrives.

With best wishes,

Ken

TAN 03 and 04 Now Available

Hello Readers,

Just a notification that we have published TAN03 and TAN04 to the UnfetteredMind.org website.

We had detailed level orientation for proofreaders a few weeks ago, and now our new team of proofreaders and editors has begun working through the backlog of transcripts. We hope to have several out to you each month.

It's been really exciting having new proofreaders and editors on board, as their expertise is raising the bar on our editing style and standards. I hope you enjoy the subtle, but palpable, improvements. We still could use some additional support in the proofreading and editing departments, so if you have some experience in this area and would like to help, please contact myself or Ann Braun.

I've also been working in the background with our Taxonomy team to refine some entirely new ways to access transcript information. We hope to have it delivered to you within the next few months.

In Joy,

Jesse

April Highlights from the UM Transcript Project

Hello readers.. it's been such a busy month, that Ken had to remind us to look up from our electronic scrolls to give you another snapshot into our progress.

Our big milestone this month was our third Cross-Team Transcription Orientation. We held a Skype conference with over twelve people, introducing five new volunteers to our ever-growing team that works year round to bring transcripts of your favorite podcasts to the web. The event was a culmination of weeks of work by the whole team, which prepared by reviewing existing documents, updating them with lessons learned, and preparing very detailed instructions for each step of the way from audio through editing the text for the web.

The majority of the new team members responded to our petition last fall for new Proofreading and Editing team members. These new members brought our total count of transcription volunteers to 10! Now that our Transcribing and Auditing Team has completed all 37 classes of the Then and Now podcasts, our new Proofreading & Editing Team members will start soon on getting these proofread and edited. We're still on-track to get all 37 of these out on the web before the end of 2010.

So what is our Transcriber and Auditor team going to work on next? We asked Ken to help prioritize the many requests received for various transcripts, and he's given us the following list: Releasing Emotional Reactions, one of the most popular podcast series; Guru, Deity, Protector, a wonderful resource for anyone interested in Vajrayana Buddhism and others including Death: Friend or Foe, The Four Immeasurables and Monsters Under the Bed. No doubt some of these will be ready before the end of the year as well.

If this project calls you to action and you would like to contribute your time and skills, feel free to contact myself or Ann Braun at any time and we'd be happy to get you started!

Have a Wonderful April!

Jesse & Ann

event postings on the ning site

If you haven't visited the ning site for a while, I suggest you do so. Ann Braun has done a wonderful job reconfiguring the site to make it easier to use and more helpful. There are any number of active conversations in the Forums and great participation in the photo galleries, curated by Tracy. Check out the Hell Realm photos, for example.

Our next venture is in the Events section. Starting today, anyone may post events, i.e., retreats, workshops and classes related to Buddhist practice. We want you to learn about events that may be helpful in your practice and let other people know about practice-related events in your area.

When you now click on the Events tab, you will see a drop-down menu with three items: guidelines, add an event, and events listing. All you have to do is enter the relevant information for your practice event. Be sure to include both city and state in the location field, to make it easier for people to find events close to them. You will also need to upload a graphic associated with the event.

In keeping with our community guidelines, please remember that Unfettered Mind and this ning site are all part of our effort to nurture and enrich a culture of awakening. A culture can be thought of as a collection of on-going conversations that take place in different media. Our aim is that these conversations support your efforts to be awake and present in your lives and be free from both promotional or commercial intrusions and from rigid rules of behavior. And this can only happen if you help to make it this way.

If you have any problems, please contact any of the site administrators (hmmm, we'll probably have to change that term, administrator sounds awfully official). They are all familiar with the site and are usually available to help with problems.

As I said, this is an experiment. We'll try it, and see how it goes. If problems develop, we have a Plan B.

Happy postings!

Ken

Many Hands Make Light Work

Today, a little over a year since the Transcript project was birthed, I wanted to take a moment to give a special thank you to the many individuals who have contributed to the Unfettered Transcripts effort, and without whose hard labor this transcription would not have been possible.

First off, I would like to recognize Janet H., Mary S., Ann Braun, and Tracy Ormond, who have been performing a variety of roles as needed, but always working regularly in the background, transcribing and auditing month in and month out as their lives permit. These four "founding transcribers" have been working since the beginnings of the UM Transcript project.

And no less important, but simply either newer to the team or of more modest contribution, I'd like to thank Fred Binchy, Loren Enders, Carolyn Bremer, Marc Clark, and Ann Hill. Thank you each for joining us.

If I have forgotten anyone, please forgive me and let me know and will gladly update my thanks.

I'd also like to express special thanks to Valerie Brewster, who not only helps coordinate the many transcript-related projects, but who has also shared her skills and expertise in publishing and proofreading the transcripts before they hit the web, as well as keeping me on my toes by asking the hard questions.

And last, I can't help but express my gratitude to my teacher, Ken McLeod, who has made all of this possible. I feel blessed many times over for these opportunities to learn and to serve all beings.

Namaste,

Jesse

Now There's More Then and Now!

Hello Listeners,

It's been an exciting few weeks at Unfettered Transcripts!

We had set a goal to finish two more Then and Now transcripts and have them proofread and published by our next Team Leaders meeting, which was this Thursday. had actually met our goal, but it took me a day to get them out to the web.

You can now enjoy Then and Now, Classes 1 and 2 in written format. We've also committed to finish publication of all 37 podcast transcripts by the end of 2010. At the rate we are going (we're going to try to stick to three or four per month), you'll hopefully see a few of the most-requested retreat transcripts as well: Monsters Under the Bed; Guru, Deity, Protector; and Releasing Emotional Reactions.

If you haven't actually read a transcript yet, now is a great time to start. I have listened to the TAN01 podcast several times, but in actually reading the transcript, I picked up even more. I had several of those, "WOW, this is just so painfully, beautifully simple! Why did it take me 30 years to find it!?" By the end of the transcript I felt like I had really received something wonderful, and I felt my world shift one more notch towards clarity.

Along with Ann Braun, who has agreed to be our temporary coordinator for the Transcription and Auditing team, I'm also getting ready to welcome four or five new team members who have experience with proofreading and editing, and a few new people interested in transcription as well. This will free my time up to focus more on the technological underpinnings of our publishing process.

We're hoping that among them (or any of you readers!) we might find someone interested in this process enough to help us with some leadership roles... the team is getting bigger but our leadership pool is not growing to meet the need! Please send myself or Ann an email if you might be interested in helping to coordinate the workflow at Unfettered Transcripts.

Speaking of technological underpinnings, there's been many great developments this past few weeks as well:

• We have now set up a development site for Unfettered Mind, where we can model new ideas and have the team give feedback before we "roll it out" to the main website.
  
  
• I'm working with Laura Trippi and the Taxonomy team now on several initiates. One is to help bring a special Google search capability to Unfettered Transcripts, making it easier and easier to find relevant entries to support your practice and teaching. I'm excited to be working with Laura on the "information architecture" which underlies the website to better integrate our transcripts with the podcasts. Look for some exciting changes coming down the road.
  
  
• We now have the times within the podcast itself available for each section of the podcast. This will help those interested in helping on the Audio Clips team generate their favorite podcast excerpts for sharing.

Well, that's it for February!

Yours in Dharma Publishing,

Jesse

Unfettered Mind on Facebook

Unfettered Mind now has a page on Facebook where Practice Tips and links to locations around the Unfettered Mind website complex are being posted regularly. Becoming a fan of Unfettered Mind on Facebook is a good way to learn about resources and activities that you might not yet be familiar with.

Unfettered Clips & Quotes

Now that the first podcast transcripts from Unfettered Mind have been published and the tool to create and deliver audio clips from the podcasts (appended with a notice of the source of such a clip) has passed its first real world user test, here is a new place (blog) to make further use of it all:

Unfettered Clips & Quotes
QUOTATIONS AND AUDIO CLIPS OF BUDDHIST TEACHER KEN MCLEOD

As it will grow over time hope it will contain something for you. Of course, if you think there is something missing from the podcasts or Ken's teachings that you deem to be important or that is meaningful to you and that should be added there, it would be great to learn about it.

Survey results

A few weeks ago Unfettered Mind announced a new offering. Now available on the Unfettered Mind website, are five examples of podcast transcripts presented in conjunction with audioclips. To inform the on-going development of this innovation, and to make it as useful as possible, Unfettered Mind invited everyone connected to the network to participate in a survey The task involved personalizing the following short story:

As a ___________________________________

e.g. non-native speaker of English

I want to_________________________________

e.g. have the podcasts in written form with accompanying audio

so that I can ______________________________

e.g. study and practice more effectively

Those responding were invited to submit multiple stories in order to share as fully as possible the range of uses they envisioned.

Over 70 people responded. We've put together an overview of the results in a short Google Doc presentation. Once you've opened the file, click on Start Presentation for a full screen view, or if you wish to read the explanatory notes, remain in the Google Docs view and click on the "view speaker notes" icon at the bottom right of the screen.

The presentation follows the story line.

• The first slide is about how users describe themselves.
• The second and third slides are qualitative and quantitative ways of showing how people responded to "I want to..."
• The fourth and fifth slides are two views of the "so that I can...." responses.
• The sixth slide is a quantitative snapshot of what different users want.
• The remaining slides summarize some key messages that we've drawn from this information.
• The final slide shows how people heard about the survey.

Please share your comments and questions.

survey sent

Franca and I worked on the transcript survey this morning, messing around with Google Forms, etc. We discovered that we can insert html tags into the Google form and create a better looking form as a result. You can see the finished form, and let us know your ideas for the podcasts and transcripts by clicking here.

Leave No Ashes

Leave No Ashes by Ken McLeod from What to Do about Christmas?

when something is experienced completely, good or bad, it’s done, that’s it. Yes?

Student: I have a question [unintelligible]

Ken: All of this is connected with impermanence because we know the passage of time by recalling what we’ve done and that engenders all of these feelings. But as we’ve seen, if you experience things completely in the moment, they tend to leave fewer traces and fewer reverberations or resonances around. So that’s one of the things to take out of this.

In the Zen tradition, Suzuki Roshi says, “Whatever you do, do so completely that there aren’t even any ashes left.” Which is an extraordinary intense way of living. But you see this reflected in the attitude of a lot of athletes, of basketball players or somethings that don’t leave anything on the court. Which is: do it totally.

So I just want you to think for a few moments about what it would be like that everything you do, you do with your total attention. Complete, there’s nothing left. What would life be like that way?

This is a quote, both in audio and transcribed form, from a class given by Ken in 2004.

The transcription of this class is kind of a warm up side project from the group transcribing all 37 Now and Then classes. It is a big undertaking started many months ago by a group of volunteers out of the UM Ning site (and fortunately with the full support of Ken himself, who again makes the material generously available for the public). When they first made their efforts known by asking for more volunteers, I was excited about the project, as the podcast sessions are and have been very dear to me.

I thought it would be wonderful to search in them for special sections I do remember, but that are hard to find amoung the many hours of audio content. Also, it would be very nice to select and send a quote to someone who isn't necessarily interested in meditation or Buddhism, yet something gets touched that might be relevant to them. But I wouldn't have the patience or skill myself to contribute directly. However I had created by hand individual audio clips for my personal use with sections that spoke to me. This was a way of finding certain locations again in order to listen to such a clip repeatedly for a better understanding and also to let things sink in.

At the first meeting with all the volunteers it became clear that there might be some synergies with the transcription project and also that it would be nice to have a tool to conveniently create new audio clips.

As a first result as part of the bigger undertaking you see on each of the transcripts pages audio icons interspersed in the text, which let you listen to just a particular section. BTW, the timestamps have been added by the transcribers, they are then used to create the appropriate clips automatically.

But just as the transcriptions might be useful for more than reading them top to bottom (and we are very interested in getting to know how you would like to use the material, as Valerie and Jesse are preparing a short questionaire), hopefully there will be more uses for individual audio clips as well. If you can't wait what's next in store, make sure we learn about your ideas and needs, and if you want to contribute, e.g. creating your own audio clips or collections thereof, just get in touch.

Ciao, Clemens

Projects related to podcasts

I'm Valerie, a student of Ken McLeod and George Draffan. The podcasts are the way I discovered Ken and was attracted to his teachings, so I guess it is natural that I've been active in the various online manifestations of Unfettered Mind. I follow the discussions on the UMNing site (my profile) and frequently speak up in the various threads. The online portion of UM has been my link with teaching and sangha.

My interest in the podcasts lead me to join the transcription effort that started last February. I am now the overall project leader. Currently there are three teams, Transcribers, Podcast Clips, and Taxonomy. I've also served the effort as the Taxonomy team leader.

Recently our efforts have reached the point where we can share some of the transcripts. I'm looking forward to hearing what others in the UM community and beyond have to say about them.

Unfettered Mind Ning

Kia ora from New Zealand! I'm Ann, one of the site administrators for Unfettered Mind Ning, UM's social network. The others are George, Tracy, Franca, Peri, Susan and Jesse. We do things like checking to make sure new members aren't spambots, dissuading anyone who attempts to use the site for self-promotion or commercial purposes, posting new events, organizing the appearance and content of the site, welcoming new members and responding to questions and suggestions for improvement. If you haven't visited The Barometer, The Privacy Watchdog or the FAQ, take a peek at these for an idea of some of the questions and issues that have come up since UM Ning was initiated. We welcome your comments, suggestions and offers of help. Please post these on The Barometer or send a message.

I'm also involved in monitoring use of the UM Ning site with Google Analytics and through direct observation, occasionally blogging about findings in a series called Visualizing Unfettered Mind. As a member of the transcribing group, I'm excited about the launch of podcast transcripts and look forward to hearing about the creative uses that people will inevitably dream up for them. For more about this see this post by Jesse.

Unfettered Mind Store

Hi, I'm Franca, the person who updates the main Unfettered Mind website. Recently we've developed a single area in the site where people can go to purchase the items Unfettered Mind has for sale: a couple of Ken's books, a poster, and some archived on-line teachings of a very special nature.

Before this, you could only buy one item at a time, ordered through different areas of the website. This pulls it all into one area and makes it possible to use a "shopping cart" if you want to get more than one thing. It's also (hopefully) easy to use.

You can check out (and beta-test) this section by clicking here. Your comments on the section are very welcome below.

News from the UM Transcription Team

Hello!

Jesse here. I coordinate our amazing and dedicated transcriber team, hailing from all over the planet: Ann, Carolyn, Fred, Janet, Loren, Mark, Mary, Tracy, and Tsogyal. I also meet regularly with Ken and the other team leaders at Unfettered Mind: Valerie (Taxonomy), Clemens (Audio) and Ann (UM Ning Community).

In addition to the leadership role, I also find myself frequently up to my elbows in technical gears and grease as I work with a variety of technologies to get the raw typed transcripts out to the web in a standard, readable way.

Within the last month, the Transcription Team finished transcribing all 37 of the Then and Now podcasts, and are now moving forward with our Auditing phase, to ensure the transcripts are complete. We're also starting up proofreading and editing the transcripts, and would definitely like to hear from anyone with proofing and/or editing experience who has some time.

Right now, I'm working directly with Franca, our UnfetteredMind.org web designer, to put up five sample transcripts for UM readers to enjoy. We have the various sections of the podcast broken out into topics, and each topic can be listened to with Clemens' clipping utility that he wrote for Unfettered Mind. I think it's going to bring a whole new dimension to transcripts!

As a part of this effort, we also are working with Valerie and our Taxonomy team to get an index of keywords to make the podcasts searchable beyond the standard full-text search. It's exciting and a little bit of a stretch sometimes as we bring together a wide variety of skill sets to make this happen.

I'll be writing more as things shift and grow.

Jesse

about this blog

Unfettered Mind now has a small complex of 8 or 9 websites, largely maintained by a global network of volunteers. While we don't operate at quite net speed, we are constantly developing and testing new features.

Here you will find news of updates, what's working, what's not working, and what's being done about it. Contributors to this blog include Franca, our main website designer, Valerie, Jesse, and Clemens, who all lead teams connected to the transcript project, Ann, who oversees the ning site, and, of course, yours truly.

Ken