The #rdcHQ Mission (Historical)

The Rural Design Collective is a not-for-profit professional mentoring program which furthers the education and experience of residents of rural Southern Coastal Oregon who are interested in working with web and/or media technology by involving them in real development projects. We focus on work that advances important social causes or helps make a difference in our local community. We also emphasize an open learning model as well as working with free and open programs and technologies. You can learn more about us by viewing the presentation on the right.

The Rural Design Collective … (Fast-Forward To The All New #rdcHQ.)

Levi Thompson and Nathan MalamudRebecca Hargrave Malamud

Current Team → W. Paul Gaetjens : Voice of the BookMobile, Friend of the RDCLevi Thompson : Graphic Artist and IllustratorNathan Malamud : Videographer, Junior ScientistRebecca Hargrave Malamud : Fearless Leader, Mother of All ToDoSir Phineas Phogg and Tripod : HugPugs Forever
Nathan Malamud (2006-2015) – Nathan David Malamud is the official videographer at the Rural Design Collective, where he documents the antics of the team with his trusty Flip video camera. He is also working on an independent project called YouGood at his own site where he is learning web and video production basics to complement his interest in theater.

The Cobwebs Crew (2012 -2015) – Cobwebs is an animated series being produced by a really cool creative group of kids. They are writing the script, creating the music, drawing the art and producing the movie all on-site at #rdcHQ. Our 2014 Cobwebs Crew includes of Evelyn Jennings, Devon Richard, Nathan Malamud, Gabby McCutcheon, Harry McCutcheon, Tyler Mendell, and Quince N.

Rural Design Collective Alumni

Cobwebs Crew (2012-2013) – Cobwebs is an animated series produced by a really cool creative group of kids. They wrote the script, the music, drew the art and produced the movie all on-site at #rdcHQ. We’re looking forward to a Cobwebs Crew Reunion when the long-awaited and rumored “Cobwebs — Part Three” will finally be produced. Stay Tuned! <3

R. Scotty Auble (2009-2010) – R. Scotty Auble was Development Mentor during the Rural Design Collective 2009 Summer Mentoring program and worked with the mentees to develop genCollectionInterface (gCI), an interface toolkit for public domain books written in Python. In 2010, he pitched in on outreach to the area schools and helped with overall development of the RDC program.

Jenn Covington (2011) – Jenn Covington worked with the Rural Design Collective from Columbia, South Carolina, on the website for New Artists Productions. She is a multi-talented designer, and brought over 20 years of advertising and graphic communication experience to our group when we built a WordPress-driven website for an inspirational youth group!

Oceana Rain Fields (2010-2013) – Oceana is a visual artist and creative spirit with a flair for the unexpected and the desire to support worthy causes with her art. She graduated in 2010 from Pacific High School, earning several notable scholarships. In 2010, her painting “Malaria” won first in show in the Vision 2010 high school art competition at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon.

Christopher Garcia (2010) – Christopher Garcia is a talented artist hailing from Modesto, California who attended the San Francisco Academy of Art in 2008. His distinctive and bold illustrative style lends itself well to his traditional medium of choice, serigraphy. His enthusiasm, energy and humor are always right at home at #rdcHQ.

Steven McKenzie (2009) – Steven participated in the 2009 Rural Design Collective as a first-year mentee with an emphasis on programming. During his menteeship, he began work on his own open source software program entitled “Ogham’s Prayer”, a program coded in Python and designed to download public domain books from a variety of sources. He also worked with APIs and search interfaces to collect metadata for our interface for public domain books for kids. His code was integrated into the final production release of genCollectionInterface (gCI).

Jerry McManus (2013 – 2014) – Mr. McManus’s passion has always been doing cool, creative things on computers and he feels extremely fortunate to have enjoyed a long career doing just that. Jerry pitched in as an RDC Mentor in 2013 and 2014 getting the Cobwebs Crew up and running with Blender Basics and Animation Techniques.

Becca Malamud Ozer (2012) – Becca Malamud Ozer joined us remotely from California in 2012 to work on “Life on a Redwood Post,” a.k.a. “The Bug Book”. She studied at Laney College and the California College of the Arts and is accomplished in the culinary arts as well. She is currently devoting her creative time to convert text to e-text for students with disabilities.

Nichole Richard (2008) – Nichole Richard participated in the RDC program in 2008, and was project manager and lead designer for the North Curry Community Radio website. She designed, produced and managed the development of the site working on location and remotely with her client and the design crew. As part of this, she learned to use a broad variety of programs relating to the creation and deployment of websites, and learned how to use Web 2.0 technologies to build a streaming media web site. She transferred this knowledge by creating several useful tutorials to facilitate the transition of the site, so her client can effectively manage her creation and train others to maintain it. She also helped coordinate the press rollout, working with the local media and designing supporting print collateral for the marketing campaign.

Jasper Shumaker-Pruitt (2011-2013) – Jasper Shumaker-Pruitt served as the Project Lead for our MathML Track on our Codes of the World project. A math major from the University of Oregon, he has a strong interest in open-source software and has taught himself several new FLOSS programming languages, applications and operating systems.

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