Memo #405
By: Hyung-Gu Lynn (Editor)
This announcement marks the end of Asia Pacific Memo’s production of new content for the foreseeable future. Per our Notice of March 8, 2017, we stopped accepting new submissions in late March. This also serves as a brief summation the APM’s run from 2010 to 2017.
The intricacies and complexities of specialized research, distilled into clarity and accessibility via a constricted writing format with accompanying images or multimedia, pushed out via multiple digital channels and platforms – this was the initial idea behind the Asia Pacific Memo (APM) at its launch in 2010. Covering all of Asia and the Pacific and a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities, the APM featured 404 memos over seven seasons.
The format challenged the axiom that brevity produces bagatelles. With a de facto word ceiling between 350 to 400 words (roughly one computer screen without clicking down), the APM format remained a rare and nameless animal in an ecology where different labels proliferate (e.g. minisaga for 50 word stories; drabble for 100 word fiction; sudden fiction for 750 words, etc.) and 1000-word essays and blog entries are ubiquitous.
In terms of contents, the APM’s authors ranged from undergraduate students to professors emeriti; traversed spaces covering the Pitcairns to Finland, Chile to China; and dealt with subjects that included refugees, literature, anime, submarines, and elections, among many others. The authors who contributed were essential to the production of such a large volume and variety of memos.
The editing and the layout processes for most memos also required not insignificant investments of time and labor. Many thanks to those who worked with me from 2013 to 2017 – Léo-Thomas Brylowski, Justin Kwan, Ian McDonald, Daniel Kane, and Daniel Jacinto. Please also check the full list of all those who contributed to the operations of the APM during its run from 2010 to 2017. The support of Yves Tiberghien, Marietta Lao, and Yoko Nagao, and others in the Institute of Asian Research were also invaluable over the past four seasons of the APM.
We are in the process of migrating the website with all its contents to an openly accessible UBC website that will serve as the APM’s digital amber. We will also maintain our current Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn accounts until further notice.
Finally, a thank you and a goodbye to all our readers.
About the Author:
Hyung-Gu Lynn is the AECL/KEPCO Chair in Korean Research at the Institute of Asian Research and the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, where he also edits the journal Pacific Affairs and served as the Editor of Asia Pacific Memo.
The Institute of Asian Research (IAR) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the home base of the Asia Pacific Memo from 2010 to 2017.