A Digital Day Book

Long ago, businesses would keep a log of daily minutiae but we don’t have that today. We want to make one because recording our own history will benefit future colleagues.

About the project

It’s a combination of two things:

  1. Research results on our 100-year plan – There’s an early theme around mentorship and documentation. Colleagues who haven’t been born yet will need to access and absorb the history of the organisation. That’s going to be impossible if we don’t archive our digital work.
  2. Continuation of a 2014 research project with Het Nieuw Instituut about architects MVRDV in Rotterdam. Pondering how we might “view corporate [digital] archives through a feeling of human activity and depth, and not just a set of static documents.”

“Companies today don’t have a filing cabinet with all the things to be kept. They use hundreds or thousands of additional services owned by other people to keep their most precious information. That’s a big hairy problem.”

-> The need for human intervention: Annet Dekker in conversation with George Oates

How do we archive ourselves?

Three men work in a testing facility. A person in a metallic space suit is suspended horizontally, supported by two others on either side. A grid pattern decorates the background.

Looking back over 2025

Here's a handy compendium of all the stuff we've done this year. Wheee!

Oreoluwa’s Midpoint Reflections

Flickr Foundation's Winter Research Fellow shares their reflections on the Fellowship so far and the next phases of their creative, archival research

New Podcast: How we made Flickr's community so nice

George talks with Rabble of Revolution Social to discuss her work designing Flickr and the model for an alternative internet with care, community and preservation at its core.