ABSTRACT
Sitting around a weathered table, six of us schemed and planned and dreamed. An incubating vision of what would become an ongoing, fulfilling research-driven project was developed concurrent with a parallel set of schemes, plans, and dreams. While we developed our vision of enactment, we also began identifying the infrastructure for driving this vision home. Like newly minted contractors, we eyed the new intellectual plot of land that we’d invested in and began to determine the layout and infrastructure that would house our work. Our project’s intellectual plot of land shaped how we communicated, organized, and shared with one another and with a broader public. Our moments of enchantment with a full complement of digital tools that worked seamlessly and productively to help us reach our goals were fleeting. Over time, we would wrestle with and be forced to fit our work to the constraints of the tools we had selected. Relying on specific tools for lasting tasks in partnership-driven work often meant recognizing initially invisible constraints and limitations that shaped how we work.
