There are many terms used for the growing group of people that in an economic sense are amateurs but pursue something to a professional standard, be it programming, filmmaking or city planing. In the book "The pro-am revolution" published by DEMOS, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller describes the term "pro-am":
Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy. For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations. The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organizations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it. The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought. Based on in-depth interviews with a diverse range of Pro-Ams and containing new data about the extent of Pro-Am activity in the UK, this report proposes new policies to support and encourage valuable Pro-Am activity.
The latest partner joining forces in the Scandinavian Sci-Fi mega-project "Gatekeeper" is the crew behind the pro-am production "Star Wars: Threads of Destiny". Thomas Dahl from the 4Fathers has made their new poster.
In "The Making of Star wars: Threads of Destiny" you get a feeling of how the global collaboration works. The clip features many of the 3D-artists who have now agreed to join the Scandinavian Sci-Fi mega-project Gatekeeper - The Nexus.
Star Trek: Phase II (aka "New Voyages"), the biggest Fanbased Star Trek production with a large number of professional actors in supporting roles has agreed to supply the gatekeeperproject with actors.
