If Maya Frodeman ’15 and Ben Moe ’15 have the anxiety typical to first-time startup founders who have yet to find funding, they don’t show it. Posters for their startup-cum-journal, Table Talk, which seem to have appeared on every step and in every bathroom on campus in recent weeks, describe the venture as “Reed’s new student journal.” But Frodeman and Moe eagerly describe Table Talk as everything from “a new paradigm for reading text online,” to an academic journal “almost like a novel” that creates “a fluid experience for the reader” to a publication that aims more broadly to “reconstitute the unhappy marriage between print and online content.”
Frodeman and Moe’s variable terms reflect the dual nature of the startup, which Frodeman and Moe originally conceived, Moe says, only as “a journal that didn’t polarize faculty and student publishing.” While working for a film festival in Greece last summer, Frodeman and Moe came up with the idea for journal that publishes undergraduate and faculty work side-by-side and excludes academic jargon. Whether a paper is written by an undergraduate or a full-time academic who specializes in the topic, Frodeman says, “the content is just as rich and meaningful.”
Each issue of the journal will have a unified theme, both visually and in terms of content. The first issue, which Frodeman and Moe intend to publish in March, will feature photographs from Varanasi, India and be centered around the concept of duende, a Spanish word for, loosely, the deep emotional response one has when interacting with powerful art. The duende issue will feature eleven contributors from around the world, including, says Moe, “a prominent American philosopher who has written flash fiction; a Reed poet who channeled the issue’s theme duende through her trip through the blues towns of Louisiana; and a Chechnyan born, Athens-based poet, rapper, and boxer.
Frodeman and Moe asked Finance Committee for $3,500 this week to meet their remaining costs for printing 400 copies of the first issue, half of which Frodeman and Moe will distribute around campus and half of which they will distribute around Portland and sent to think tanks, academic department heads, nonprofits, and art galleries. The pair also requested an additional $1,000 to begin development of their online reading interface and $500 for a launch party. But Frodeman and Moe will have to find funding elsewhere—Finance Committee recommended that Table Talk receive no student body funding. That recommendation still has to be approved by Senate, but the approval process is usually little more than a formality.
While seeking the best way to present the first issue of Table Talk online, Frodeman and Moe stumbled upon the idea that blossomed into the startup-half of Table Talk. The online edition of Table Talk will feature a reading interface that allows readers to annotate text and compare their annotations to those of other readers. By bringing reading and discussion closer together, Frodeman and Moe say Table Talk will facilitate collaboration and fill an unoccupied niche in the classroom and, potentially, the blogging world. Table Talk plans to eventually sell subscriptions to its reading and discussion interface to colleges and universities, and Frodeman and Moe say they may also market the platform to book clubs and bloggers. While they have yet to nail down the finer points of their business model, Moe says that “the goal of the both the journal and web app is not to make money” and that they “are seriously looking into registering as a nonprofit.”
Frodeman and Moe have enlisted the help of a graphics designer in Moscow, a layout designer in Calcutta, a web designer in San Francisco, and a programmer in Portland. With the help of their team, Maya and Frodeman hope to bring Table Talk to select newsstands and bookstores and deploy their web platform in classrooms nationwide over the next year.
Even as Frodeman and Moe seek to create a tool to aid collaboration, they say coordinating their international team is one of their biggest challenges. “I am tempted to say that Reed has taught me how to work hard on a project, but I am now noticing that group work and team collaboration is something most Reedies have to learn outside the classroom,” Frodeman says. “Hopefully we can begin to change that soon.”
Those interested in learning more about Table Talk should visit tabletalk.io or email the founders at ben@tabletalk.io or maya@tabletalk.io.