Choosing a Topic

With The Glocalization Site, you'll create a web site that allows a global audience to experience some local aspect of Duluth, Lake Superior, the North shore. You can also choose another place that is local to you.

Choosing an Angle on the Topic

In this site, you will address a global audience who will never physically visit your locale.

The only experience your audience will ever have of your locale is the online experience that you create, and the degree that you associate that local topic with the audience's own interests, passions, identity, desires, needs, etc.

Examples of Glocalizing on the Web

The following are examples of local topics presented to a global audience--not necessarily models of good Web design. In fact, some of them are crudely done.

A Local Instance of a Community's Origins or History

Members of groups are bound by their histories or origin-stories, and the places where these histories unfolded often take on a sacred status, even for those visiting them only virtually. You probably need to know about Mormon Church history to follow or care about this Tour of the Carthage (IL) Jail, but for the "saints" it's a compelling experience to see where it actually happened. Other examples of online sources describing origins:

• Tour of the Carthage (IL) Jail
• Jerry Seinfeld's New York City
• The New York City nightclub CBGB promotes its (arguable) reputation as the birthplace of punk. Certain kinds of music are good examples of how technology and networks can make the local global without requiring physical travel.
• Tabasco uses the exotic locale and history of its original home on Avery Island to market its hot sauce. Think about how this marketing establishes a close relationship of some tiny locale to the global market, undermining the mediation of the nation-state.

A Local Instance of Larger Interests, Concerns, or Tastes ("Totemic Places")

• Duluth Lynchings (political and social history)
• Beer Pong (youth culture)
• Seasons of Duluth (enthusiasm for seasonal change, photography)
• Duluth Night (tastes for city nightscapes, night photography)
• One Family's Christmas on a Minnesota Christmas Tree Farm (The ideal of the perfect family Christmas)
• The Bulldog Experience (the player's view of the college footballl pre-game experience)
  

Local Instance Made Universal by Aestheticizing, Narrativizing, Intellectualizing, or Personalizing (Literary Style)

• Noon Quilt
  

A Local Instance Presented for Globally Relevant Purposes (Educational, Analytical)

• Then and Now: Downtown Duluth

Criteria

• creating a site that creates a rich online experience of a local place, group, event, phenomenon, "scene," product, etc.
  
  
• defining and addressing a global audience who will never physically visit the local area, and who will value that online experience for itself, not as a mere advertisement of an embodied experience to come,
  
  
• producing a site with content presented in way that makes an original contribution to the web, rather than duplicating the same content presented in the way basic way as existing sites. taking maximum advantage of your local access to develop original materials for your site, including your own text, photographs, and research, which add value to the Web,
  
  
• using the first (index) page of the site to establish the purpose, audience, and organization,
  
  
• producing an effective, multi-page Web site with navigation,
  
  
• creating and using an effective page-design scheme for the site which makes effective use of screen real estate, and that gives the site a consistent, unifying look and feel,
  
  
• inventing a subtle means of documenting all sources of information, including links to online sources, without making the system of citation too intrusive on the online experience,
  
  
• designing pages of that consider Nielsen's recommendations for content-, page- and site-usability,
  
  
• combining words and images well,
  
  
• giving your content a sense of texture and voice which speaks to your audience

Documenting Sources

Since you will probably use information from other sources to make your site, you'll want to provide a means for visitors to find these original sources.

Your site should provide a subtle apparatus to identify these sources and make them available. Do not directly imitate academic conveitons of citation and document from print.

Information about print sources should include author, title, publisher information, and month/year.

For online sources of information or pictures, include the page/site title and a link to the page where you found the information or other content.

If you use pictures, you should ask permission from the owner or manager of the site, emphasizing that this is a not-for-profit school project.

Commentary

In addition to fulfilling the general guidelines of excellent commentaries, the Glocalization Project Commentary should

1. draw a meaningful comparison to at least two of the examples of glocalization discussed in class.

 

Criteria

You can open, download, and print the criteria checklist that I'll use to evaluate your project. This document is subject to change. I will announce any substantial changes to the basic expectations of the assignment in class.

Resources

• "Comments on the 'Global Triad' and 'Glocalization' (Roland Robertson)
• Tour of Carthage, IL Jail
• Sharpening Topics/Angles for the Glocalizaiton Project
• Brainstorming the Glocalization Project