Over the past few weeks, Allegra has been deeply engaged with a theme that is both topical and urgent: human smuggling. Close observers may have noticed that with these weeks arrived also an entirely new feature at our beloved website: namely Projects, a new sub-category under which we’ll highlight projects with which Allegra collaborates. In addition, these past weeks included a rather impressive roundtable realised in collaboration with openDemocracy.
Now, close observers may likewise have guessed that with these kind of online incarnations we are deep in the ‘tech’ side of the blogosphere – to the extent that few anthropologists dare to venture thus far. And indeed, despite of our bold and experimental spirit, none of Allegra’s board members have. Rather, once again, in realising these past weeks we have relied on our cherished Allies – trusted members of our editorial team who keep the website running! (With the addition that realising the Projects-page took some actual coding, and hence exceptional outside aid – warm thanks to Aashysh!)
Just who are these people? We are, of course, referring to the list of people to be found under Allegra’s About-section! What is it exactly that they do, and why do we owe them so much for everything that appears at Allegra? Just think about it!
Every time that we share a piece of writing on the website, someone has searched images for it – possibly processed the image a bit too – done the layout, fixing bits of text so as to make them appealing to the eye; someone has placed the post in the appropriate category, and added links to relevant contexts. Someone has created a profile in our authors’ gallery, including adding an image of the author, as well as overseen that all of this gets done, every day, every week – week after week!
Although we repeatedly get praise for the beauty of our website and our posts, we doubt that many people realise how much work it takes to make all of the fab analytical insights and colourful ethnographic depictions come to life.
We are not exaggerating when we say that each post takes in between 1-3 hours of technical editorial work – that is after everything in terms of substance has been finalised!
Thus, this week we want to celebrate our Allies by a week dedicated to behind-the-scenes action! We will introduce to you Allegra’s two wonderful Managers of Things & Stuff, namely Ninnu Koskenalho and Andrea Klein, in addition to our two hard-working language editors, Sarita Fae Jarmack and Marie-Louise Karttunen.
We want to thank them for their continued hard work, which is essential for Allegra’s general mission of sharing ‘anthropological gospel’ to the world. In addition we want to thank all the people who are a part of our social media team, as well as everyone who either has been or continually is a part of the ‘tech ed ass team’ taking care of the technical layout of posts.
THANKS ALLIES – none of this would be possible without you! And simultaneously: the fact that you all exist is certainly one of the most concrete embodiments of Allegra’s success – and we like to think, of the perseverance of genuine intellectual pursuit also!
Featured image by Matt Batchelor on flickr, derivative work: Octave.H (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons
