Spirit of Kinopio

An online & multiplayer zine about Kinopio’s culture & community.

Collect · Connect · Create

In the digital gardens we tend through Kinopio spaces, there’s something magical about discovering the unexpected. Like stumbling upon a colorful egg hidden in tall grass, the serendipitous connections that emerge from our collected thoughts often surprise and delight us. This inaugural issue of Spirit of Kinopio celebrates the concept of Easter eggs in all their manifestations.

Sparked by Thibault Malfoy, cultivated by many.

Bluesky · Mastodon

Beyond the obvious Easter eggs exist at the intersection of intention and discovery. They are deliberately placed yet meant to be found through exploration rather than direction. Since the first digital Easter egg – Warren Robinett’s hidden signature in Atari’s Adventure game (1980) – developers have tucked away playful secrets for users to uncover, from hidden rooms in Mario to concealed messages in applications, rewarding the curious who venture beyond the obvious path. In Kinopio’s universe of spatial thinking, we find our own version of Easter eggs when disparate notes suddenly reveal unexpected relationships and patterns emerge from seeming chaos.

Rebirth & renewal The egg itself carries rich symbolism across cultures. It represents rebirth and renewal – the potential of new ideas cracking open to reveal something unexpected. Each note we place in our spaces contains this same potential energy, waiting for the right connection to transform it into something more.

The Adventure Easter egg: “Created by Warren Robinett”.

Wander is the way As collectors of thoughts, we’re constantly engaged in our own egg hunt. We gather fragments of inspiration, snippets of knowledge, and kernels of questions. We scatter them across our digital landscapes, sometimes forgetting where we’ve placed them until a later wander through our mind-gardens brings them back into view, often transformed by new context.

Unexpected encounters can be dangerous.

We invite you to explore this space with a flâneur’s spirit. Let your eyes drift. Follow unexpected threads. Notice what resonates. Contribute if you can.

Welcome to the first issue of Spirit of Kinopio. May your collection of thoughts continue to connect in ways that create meaning, surprise, and delight.

The universe begins as a primordial egg containing all potential, which then hatches or divides to create manifest reality.

A single egg can contain multitudes.

Submission deadline: May 12, 2025.

For this inaugural issue, we invite contributions exploring the theme of Easter eggs in any of the following ways:

Share a thought or an anecdote by adding a card below.

one of my favorite easter eggs is the secret flight simulator app included in early versions of Excel.

Unexpected Connections Share your experiences discovering surprising relationships between ideas that only became apparent when visualized together in your Kinopio spaces. How did spatial proximity reveal connections you hadn’t consciously made?

Contributors will receive a coupon for 2 free months off a new, or existing, kinopio subscription.

Time Capsules Document your experience revisiting older spaces and rediscovering your past thinking. What insights emerged when viewing your thoughts across time? How did your past self leave surprises for your future self?

possibly the precursor to MS Flight Simulator

Hidden Features Have you discovered delightful, lesser-known features within your favorite game or Kinopio itself? Document these “Easter eggs” and how they’ve enhanced your note-taking practice or brought you joy.

Incubation & Emergence Reflect on how the egg as a symbol mirrors your thought process in Kinopio – ideas that begin fragile, require nurturing, and eventually hatch into fully-formed concepts. Show us your incubation process.

One of my favorite hidden features of iA Writer is related to link creation: when you already have an URL in the clipboard, there’s no need to paste it after typing cmd-k when some text is selected – it’s automatic!