Wednesday, May 23, 2007

ArchSociety Physical Movements

Although ArchSociety is a virtual movement of a global architecture community but it has some plans to expand it's movements in physical as well. What will be those? Here are some ideas:
1. Introducing an office of ArchSociety after registering it as an complete organization of architects and students as stated in the 'ArchSociety Organizational Policies' post.
1. Publishing posters, brochures, stickers and hard copies of valuable ArchSociety contents.
2. Arranging at least one lecture or casual meeting per month.
3. Arranging a full-fledged students and architects jamboree with the respected members guests in future.
4. Making the collaboration with Discourse more effective and active.
5. Further more collaborations with authoritarian bodies and different global architectural organizations.
6. ............. you say something more what more we can do together? :)

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Collaboration of Discourse and ArchSociety: few answers

What is Discourse?
"Discourse is an open forum where architects, students of architecture and anyone from related fields gather to share, exchange and question. It was established in 1998 with a small group exchanging readings on architecture and has extended to lectures, slide shows, site visits, exhibitions etc. discourse is where we search... we inquire... we gather to find... we learn. Discourse is where we enrich ourselves in our pursuit of architecture."

In Discourse we arrange regular meetings, discussions and lecture on architecture, we arrange exhibitions, design competitions etc. Architect Nurur Rahman Khan is the founder of this organization.

What's the relationship of ArchSociety with Discourse?
Discourse is more likely a physical venture of aware architecture community. While ArchSociety is a virtual venture of community organization. ArchSociety is the web-partner of Discourse. ArchSociety and Discourse share their members, activities, contents for the sake of the development of the community.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Archsociety Organizational Policies?

It is said that ArchSociety believes in 'Open-source Knowledge Sharing'.
But still we couldn't set up a fixed legal strategy of publishing contents. Personally I want to open up all the knowledge sources including copyrighted books and articles to all of the architecture community. But it's not legal by global laws. There's a small chance of it's legalization as copyright law researchers are now thinking of being soft for community sharing and contents used for academic purposes. ArchSociety is trying to follow that guideline. But still there are confusions. ArchSociety always wants to remain honest in this regard. If we 'steal' some contents from books or any other source we are careful atleast to mention the name of honorable source of the content. (See ArchSociety Forum Rules no. 4).

Another important thing is the physical validity of ArchSociety as an organization or a community or a company (... don't know what it should be!) by law. ArchSociety runs under a sustainable 'self-help' policy. Which means ArchSociety tries to earn by itself what it spends. Still ArchSociety is running by extra compensation than it earns by itself. But soon it may start earning more than it spends. Then where this earned money will go? Or should it be the property of the organization for future growth and for arranging future activities? What should be the policy of the organization regarding earning and spending?
First of all ArchSociety is still not a legally registered organization. It will require a legal registration which is globally valid.
I still can't figure out these things. But now it's the time to move for these issues.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The History of ArchSociety

At the end of the first semester in architecture I felt that there were several things which if I could know before I could do more progress in that semester. Many hidden secretes of dealing with architecture education I came to know from seniors or from other sources but not in perfect time. Then I felt the necessity of a common place where everyone could share their knowledge and thoughts together about architecture so that the younger generation in this profession could cope up easily with this ultra tough thing.

Before this idea I was also looking for an open platform of talking where I can shout my truths. During the end of my higher secondary I was heavily influenced by the communist revolutionary ideas. Obviously Ernesto Che Guevara was my hero then! Thousands of criticism for the capitalist invasion in the world were raving inside me. I was looking for places to talk openly. Our typical corrupted media didn't give me the chance... although I didn't stop trying writing in news papers.
Anyway, suddenly I felt that internet is the only media where I can talk my very own in my way. Then I knew nothing of internet but sending emails to my brothers. But the urge of speaking truths took me to the way of web designing.

First of all I looked for some free webspace where I could start my experiments. Then I didn't have any computer even! Worked in cyber cafes. Started with Yahoo Geocities. Then came to know about some forums who give free pro hosting for posting in their forums. Discovered Lifelesspeople.com, they taught me a lot. Most of my basic knowledge of web designing came from this forum. LP Trel of Lifelesspeople gave me a professional hosting. I learned web-designing just from the internet itself!
I made The Brain Witness using WordPress blogging engine in the year 2004. Brain Witness was name of my diary when I was in school. I started that again in web. Soon Brain Witness became a multi-author blog. Nirghum, Dan, Pori and many of us started writing there. The truth was started to be spoken............

Then I attempted something towards the knowledge sharing ideas for architecture education. archnet.org of Aga Khan Trust was my guiding standard in this regard. In later Architect Sheraz Ali Bhai of Aga Khan Trust helped me giving me advises. Our teacher Architect Mujtaba Ahsan also helped me a lot then. Talked with Nirghum and his team. I planned for an interactive and dynamic forum and content management system.
My room-mate Partho Protim Daas gave me the name of my idea 'Arch Society'. I liked the name too much. A big thanks to him for the name.
Registered a domain for free somehow which was archsociety.info, then a promo was going on for .info domains I grabbed it. Started archsociety.info in Lifelesspeople.com server on Sunday 31 July 2005.
Started talking about it with friends and teachers. Tried to increase the number of members... Space, Dan, Rubel_RAF, Ashraf, Meema, Kaanita, Mujtaba sir were first few members.

In later Architect Nurur Rahman Khan (Jumu sir) did a lot for ArchSociety. I worked for Discourse and the Muzharul Islam Archive with him. And obviously ArchSociety became a part of all these moves. By these time I got a computer of my own for the first time in 2006 from N.R. Khan as the compensation for making the website of his office Tanya Karim N.R. Khan And Associates (although I couldn't finish the work yet!).
This is how ArchSociety went on.... and now ArchSociety is in it's own move....
I'll be the happiest when ArchSociety will be able to move without the existance of me, when it'll completely run by itself and it's members. I want to be nobody.....