A small story about how we started writing Shortis
January 2013, after years of saving plants and animals we sat around the campfire in Costa Rica and saw how distribution of knowledge was the constant fundament to all our efforts.
When campaigning for planting trees in Tanzania or protecting habitats in Costa Rica. When coordinating thousands of volunteers in Sweden, or building a Learning Platform for the Swedish Government in Stockholm, it always came back to the same things: honesty in information, clarity in communication.
In our travels we met researchers, volunteers, teachers, all with the same need of getting their message through the noise, searching for clarity in their communication.
Everywhere we found knowledge left unheard, research left unseen, followers left untouched.
At a specific station in Guanacaste, researchers had unique information about 9.000 individual butterflies. Every single one with a photo. But there it was, collecting dust in a spreadsheet. Visible for a select few, comprehensible for fewer.
We strongly believed we had to find a format for things like this. A vehicle for the little things.
How can we help?
People need to be informed to be involved.
Change is born from awareness.
Getting information out, read and passed along is growingly difficult in the noise online and among people on the ground.
First, we knew distilling information makes communication more effective, as it assists readers in comprehension and sympathises with everyones search for time.
Next, the distribution model wasn’t working. Never had we shared anything from Wikipedia to Twitter or Facebook, nor did we feel compelled to write down facts or pieces of knowledge on our own and share it with friends.
Reaching more people means making information widely available, accessible, no matter technology or place. Shorter pieces of information can move in rugged terrain, it fits in people’s hands, it can be shared with a friend standing next to you.
Rinse, remix. Once information is treated with clarity, putting the pieces together creates new contexts. Guides, learning material, manuals and lists, new ways of reading information, expanding knowledge.
Life is short
Two years after Costa Rica. We’re now using the very first version of a platform that helps us write and share snippets of knowledge, fast facts. Information written to fit a life in motion. Short mobile information. Nomadic stories that comes to life on Instagram, embeded in an article, printed as a card, or in an SMS somewhere out there.
Tiny stories that when put together completes a picture, creates relationships and expands contexts. Stories everyone can write. Stories perfect for a modest butterfly, urgent issues in a city, or history that deserves to be repeated.
We believe this is what it comes down to. We believe it needs to be this simple. To work in the remote Guanacaste jungle on a lousy phone or on your clever watch speeding your bike down 5th Ave.
We are handed portions. What we need is bites.
Life IS short, information must adapt.
“We searched for mobility. A format that would fit our own lives. Something we’d read on the trail. Stories we could write without anxiety, with no planning. I’ve written close to 200 shortis now. 50 on trains, 50 in the air, 20 in camp. At least 1 new every day.” @obin
Today, we’re 15 Shorti Writers who believe we can help. Next after water, food and sleep, we believe getting information out, read and shared is as fundamental as it gets. If you have information to share, knowledge to teach, if you have a cause that you believe in, a movement waiting to start, you’ll find fellow people, new friends, and a small canvas waiting for you here.
Join us, write shortis
We write shortis
@obin, @staffz, @buff, @mini, @wader, @perl, @zykadelic, @lilyjane, @raluca, @tom, @mathias, @jonathan, @axel, @niclas
