Build in Progress: Closing Down and Opening Up
Farewell for now…
After 3.5 years of development and 2,000+ shared projects on everything from 3D printed chess pieces to unicycle mechanics to crowdfunding a virtual reality tour of an interactive media lab, Build in Progress is going on indefinite hiatus.
Effective Monday, September 19th, it will no longer be possible to create new content on BiP. Instead, over the next weeks, an open-source version of Build in Progress [BiP] will be shared so that anyone can build their own project-sharing platform from the source. The entire site will also be archived so that you’ll still be able to access and share any projects you’ve already created on BiP.
How it all started
When I first conceptualized BiP, I had just completed a study of Instructables, where I talked to both authors and readers of the project-sharing community. Through these conversations, I realized that instructional documentation, while valuable for replicating projects, did not necessarily capture the messy, experimental nature of creating a project. I wanted to fundamentally reconsider what DIY documentation might look like that enables creators to capture iterations and shifts (the process) rather than a final list of instructions (the product).
