The Open History Timeline was part of the preparation for A decade of web design, an international conference PZI Media Design Research held in early 2005 in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam. We were interested in researching what you could call the ‘oral history’ of this recent past, through the collaborative production of a visual and textual timeline. The timeline was designed to include collections of first homepages; the first use of a specific technology; original html code; interviews with key designers, innovators, critics and technologists and much more.

From the original course text:

We will work together on developing prototypes for an online extensible collection of materials documenting ten years of web design. A series of guest lectures and films will bring in different perspectives on the construction of history and the history of web design in particular.

The Open History Timeline serves as the initial exploratory phase of a two step development process. Over the summer, a team (possibly including participants from the first stage) will be selected and commissioned to complete the project. To this end, participants in the thematic project will be expected to properly document all prototypes and ideas to facilitate the transition to the production phase.

A weblog containing the project handbook, draft schedule, and additional information can be found here.