My project Moments Like Today is featured this week on the Vimeo Staff Blog.

We now have over 100 members and 234 contributions. Feels pretty good!

A while ago, Myra suggested that I start an adoption agency for chairs since I have an obsession for abandoned chairs. The idea has stuck with me. This morning, Jing and I were having breakfast and she mentioned that she’s been getting into upholstery. She’s trying to find a pattern for her chair. We spent the rest of the morning browsing fabric and textile shops nearby. It became apparent to me that this Abandoned Chairs adoption thing could really work!

I started kind of brainstorming for fun what kind of resources and things I would need to get this going.

Since I like naming chairs, each adopted chair would have its own name and a story behind it. The individual(s) adopting the chair will have to sign an agreement to take care of the chair. There will be no returning adoptees. This is partly inspired by a book Maryam showed me recently all about chairs. Each page has a picture of a chair and a blurb about its history.

<< a hello note to my Moments Like Today facebook group >>

Hello!

I am very proud to (finally) release the Moments Like Today website. This is the final piece of the project that combines photos and videos of our members on Flickr and Vimeo into one consolidated place.

Background:

In June 2009, I started Moments Like Today by scribbling notes in my notebook and drawing a couple of process trees. The inspiration came from an overload of appreciation for simple things/acts in life and I was curious about how different or similar my life is to others. The underlying idea is to inspire people to post their everyday life moments in three segments: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening.

Process:

I created a group on Flickr for people to post their moments. I did the same for videos on Vimeo. To get the idea out there, I created

this group on Facebook and massively invited people. I also posted on the Vimeo Projects section about this project. The biggest win during this process was to be chosen to appear on the Vimeo Featured Projects list. This was priceless promotion for our project!

The website was a bit trickier to implement. I had to consult a lot with our tech master Darryl Clarke. Between the two of us and a bit of help from Myra, we worked on the website portion with ideas ever changing.

Result:

So far over 140 moments have been shared from all around the world and a lot of these entries are posted by people I don’t even know in real life. We have received a lot of positive feedback from our members. I am always impressed about how some people can come up with very polished pieces for submission, while I find ones that are unedited just simply so beautiful. Hopefully these captured moments will be personally stored and shared in years and decades to come.

I find it really easy to show my appreciation for everyone who have participated in this project so far. They have truly inspired me in life and I hope to have inspired them too.

Please take a moment to check out the project at

http://www.momentsliketoday.com

Sincerely,

Margaret Kwan

(P.S. I’m sorry to have never tested it in Internet Explorer, so it is best be viewed in Firefox)

Wishing you a great holiday and a happy new year! I really enjoy watching all your videos. It never ceases to amaze me how a simple moment in life can be so beautiful.

Lately, I’ve been looking back at my childhood photos and realizing how lucky I am to have documentation of what my little life was like back then. I can see what my kind of bowl-cut hair style my grandma gave me or what my baby snoopy looked like when it was still new and clean.

When your moments are documented, hopefully they will be with you for a long time and that you’d be able to pass it on to your loved ones or just for yourself a few years, or decades down the road.

Sincerely,
31km

taken from Moments Like Today on Vimeo

Exercise #6 – Create an infographic on how to participate in Moments Like Today.

Part 1 I started this project when I was travelling to New York for three days. The idea is to capture some of the shadows I noticed while I was there.  I especially liked the shadows casted on the objects in the galleries.

Part 2 I was trying to find ways to visually present this project, and came across this full-window browser scalable j-query gallery. I cropped the photos at a ratio of 16:9 at 1000 pixels wide. If I only knew how to write javascript, I would try to add a preloader for each photo instead of one for the entire gallery. It gets a bit overwhelming when you have to load so many photos at once. I really liked the scalable and full-screen part though, so I’m keeping it! I will eventually make a simplified slow version of this where its just one simple page.

Shadows of New York

p.s. I also haven’t checked this in an IE browser so please don’t make fun of me if this doesn’t work in IE7  :]. pps. For personal projects, I am not designing for IE6 anymore.

-a true Broken Telephone-
(I’ve never done this but I’m sure others have whethere intentionally or not)

-Things You’ve Lost-
(draw/describe in words about something you’ve lost..could be an object or a feeling or something even more abstract)

-Tell Me Something About Yourself-
(go up to someone and ask them nicely to tell you something about themselves. write down what they say, and think about why they might have chosen that to tell you)

and along the same line,

-Let Me Tell You About Myself-
(go up to someone (who seems approachable) and tell them something about yourself. describe their reaction and response.)

Here’s one of my latest projects, Ordinary People.

http://ordinarypeople.thirtyonekm.com