Without going into too many details this website is taking rather longer to take form that I, somewhat naively, first imagined. We’re still looking at January as a deadline for the bulk of it but I thought it would be useful to share the current plan, done in the form of a mind map, because mind maps are bloody useful for mad projects like this.

It’s kinda sprawling so download the jpeg or pdf version.

This is, of course, still a work in progress but the final product will resemble this in some form. There are four main strands and I’ll talk you through each of them.

Blog

What you’re reading now. This will carry on scouring the internet for stuff about the Custard Factory - blog posts, YouTube videos, photos, news items, etc. I also want to bring in the folks on reception to do some kind of diary thing. And in the future some kind of Custard Factory TV strikes me as a good idea, probaby along the lines of Boing Boing TV. But this is the least prescribed part of the site - it’ll develop and evolve as it needs to.

Wiki

This will make up the bulk of the site and is what I’m currently working on behind the scenes. At it’s heart will be a directory of all the tenants, businesses, venues and other facets of the Custard Factory all categorised and indexed so you can find out who else is in the building and what they’re doing.

Because I’m using the same system as Wikipedia for this it can pretty much grow in any direction and I want to use it to build up a resource of information from the history of the place to where it’s going in the future and everything in between. Need a logo? Want a map? Need to check something for your press release? Get it here.

What I’d like to do it is open this up so anyone who’s renting a space can edit it so the wiki builds itself but I need to figure out exactly how that might work.

What’s On

A no-brainer and something that was in the plans from the off. There’s so much going on here and we need a central point to find out about it. I’m currently researching the best way to do this but yes, there will be an events listing.

Magazine

This is partly an afterthought but also possibly the most important part of the site. The site has an opportunity to be a platform for good writing about the arts and culture in Birmingham and across the world. I’d like to see new writers using this as a venue to hone their skills and tenants using it as a platform to talk about their work. This came about from the conversation I had with Matt Price along with an unease about the blog being a venue for such things.

As is the nature of these things everything will change and none of this is set in stone but this is where I’m coming from. Your feedback on this is more than welcome.