Welcome to Public Access: Community storytelling at its weirdest
Before YouTube, before Twitter, before Lil Bub and The Dress, there was the localized meme generator known as public-access television. As an alternative to commercial broadcasting, public access gave voice to local communities, fostering often bizarre, sometimes thought-provoking outpourings of DIY creativity.
It's in the spirit of that great social melting pot that Engadget invites you to embark on a new journey in community storytelling. With the launch of Public Access, we're giving you the tools to publish your opinions, experiences and discussions alongside those of Engadget's editors and some of tech's brightest minds. This is your chance to have your voice heard by millions of humans like you, and maybe...
... a few like this guy.
Beginning today, you can apply for an account, create a profile page and start telling us about your 21st century experience through a version of Engadget's content-management system (aka AMP). Your bio, stories and discussions will all live on your profile page. If we like what you have to say, we'll promote your work on the Public Access home page (launching soon), where we'll surface the best stories, discussions and reviews from our editors and the Public Access community.
And because writer's block is a very real thing, we'll be giving you optional "assignments" each week to help get the creativity flowing (e.g., a list of the best AI films of all time, an essay on your post-apocalyptic fallout plan or a haiku about your ISP). Every Monday, we'll send out a weekly digest of the best stories from the week prior, suggested assignments for the week ahead and a letter from our editors.
What about the forums, yo?
As many of you are already aware, Public Access isn't Engadget's first community initiative. Over the past 10 years, we've engaged with y'all in person and online through events, comments, forums and user reviews. While we love the conversations many of you have created through our forums, however, today marks the end of that section of our site. In an effort to consolidate our community experience, we'll be shutting down the forums and encouraging discussion through comments on Public Access posts. If you have a question or want to start a conversation around a particular subject, just write a new post, share it through your social channels and follow the comments thread like you would on any other Engadget post.
For the time being, you'll still need to sign in to Livefyre to comment on both Engadget and Public Access posts and for those of you who want to write a user review, you'll have to do that through yet another account. We know having three different accounts to interact with one site is a major pain in the ass and Public Access is the first step in remedying that. In the coming months, we'll be unifying all of these accounts to make dialogue between Engadget and our users as seamless and as streamlined as possible.
So bear with us, and in the meantime, let's keep the weird and wonderful spirit of Public Access alive. Apply now!
[Photo credit: Ekkamai Chaikanta / Shutterstock]
