History

2003 The story of ABC Pool began with an idea for an online space where people could contribute freely and publish work on an ABC platform. It was early days for social media, and the idea sparked interest inside the ABC and in the wider community. An advisory board was formed, made up of new media researchers from some of Australia's leading universities, and what started as an idea became a concrete project to build such a space.

2008 The first trial website was built using Drupal 5 and launched in April 2008. It immediately attracted a vibrant community made up of creative, collaborative individuals and groups. Everyone was keen to share media and engage in a discussion about how public broadcasting could include online community participation.

2009 In response to community requests, the ABC Pool team published some ABC Archives available for re-use by the community, which is how the ABC open archives project began. In 2009 we were proud to be the first to release ABC News footage for creative re-use. We received the Government 2.0 Innovators Award. In the view of the Federal Gov2.0 Taskforce: "ABC Pool is a great example of a publicly-funded agency using Web 2.0 tools to revolutionise the way it does business". All this good will and feedback from the community, both inside and outside the ABC, helped inform the next phase of ABC Pool, which effectively began in 2010.

2011 The last version of the Pool website launched at the start of 2011, and the site was re-designed in collaboration with the ABC Pool community and the Pool team by RMIT researchers at the Australasian Centre for Interaction Design. The website was built using Drupal 6.

Works

Curating a collection from more than 25,000 works was a challenge, but here is a selection to represent the wide range of creative work including photos, images, audio, video, text and cross-media work. This collection focuses on popular work, collaborations between contributors, and responses to ABC call-outs. There is also work here outside of those parameters to demonstrate the organic nature of Pool, which attracted all kinds of creators from around Australia and beyond. Lastly, included in the mix are media items from the ABC itself, such as archive audio and video licensed for creative re-use under Creative Commons.

Broadcasts

Over the course of the project, numerous broadcasts were produced with ABC Pool – from short ‘drops’ a few minutes long to full-length radio features. ABC Radio National’s Poolside Stories aired over the summer of 2012-2013 and looked at some of the ‘crowdsourced’ programs made with ABC Pool, with excerpts from the radio features alongside short interviews with producers and contributors. Other ABC Radio National (RN) programs are listed as links under the playlist.

A key broadcast channel for ABC Pool was Sound Quality (SQ) on RN, which regularly played music from the site. SQ featured a ‘Poolcast’ in 2010, produced by contributor Sean Scott, as well as a live Sound Quality Session for Australian Music Month by Masonik in 2011. The group were active contributors to Pool, which is how they came to the attention of SQ.

Continue the conversation

There are many ways to connect with the ABC. Every ABC outlet has call-outs for contributions from the community, though the channels for input are always changing. The relationship between broadcaster and audience continues to evolve, and so too does this area of work which ABC Pool played a part in for a decade.

At the ABC, there will always be a need for strong input from the community and although Pool is no longer online, some of the project’s key partners are continuing this conversation with our audience, including:

Resources