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News :: Miscellaneous |
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IMC Regional Gathering notes--PM |
Current rating: 0 |
by Brian
Email: bhagy (nospam) urbana.indymedia.org (unverified!) |
03 Nov 2001
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The notes for the pm session of the IMC gathering on October 19-21. |
Saturday afternoon focus on networking
Developing global IMC
How to coordinate efforts so that we are more effective
The group began to make false statements, ideas, questions relating to the global website of the IMC. Statements were posted and categorized on the wall. The facilitator read off the notes. Participants clarified
Catagories of false statement
American/Eurocentrism
How to develop in prisons and third world
North IMC should support IMC’s in the south
Translate to more languages
Structures and decision making
What structures are in place
How to make local indymedias easier to start
Share materials and content within and outside
Materials for international
Local imc share global
Regional imc sharing resources
AP IMC
IMC new blasts
Imc independent of carnivore
Contingency plan for
Transparent IMC structure
Security
Autonomy and independence
Face to face
Rating system
Other ideas
Policy issues
Decentralize independence
How to remain unique and part of a global IMC
Starting IMCs
Get resources from progressive organizations.
More Imc field trips
Next we began listening to descriptions of the global IMC.
Global IMC overview
Chicago labor writer
Prehistory of IMC Free speech tv and public access and internet radio made attempts. In 96 in Chicago a number of people wanted to report on the democratic convention. An alternative meeting center was set up. People discussed security and… Eventually the center was attacked by the police, which shut down those groups for a while. This demonstrated how combining radio, tv and print media. The next was the WTO in Seattle. That’s where the first IMC was started.
From mpls person
Tech people set up the conditions for IMC to spread around. If a tech person could set it up, a local
When 50 Imc’s got set up, the tech people refused to set up any more sights as of January 01 until a decision making structure
The global network is a set of volunteers that make it happen. Its not clear what is happening because the decision making process hasn’t been set up to i.e. give out money, How to set up an IMC transparency, open publishing, and other issues are dealt with
There’s a proposal then discussions then a decision is made. One problem is the time lag for email.
The global IMC is in Cyberspace.
Spokes councils are being set up. One per IMC?, so that
They are making a proposed charter.
A meeting was held in San Francisco to discuss this meeting. How did the spokes council get created??
There’s a core group for the global IMC who have been doing much of the grunt work. If you have a question go to Indymedia chat. Someone will respond and tell you what list to consult. Irc.indymedia.org.
The local IMC is what the IMC is. The global imc is the link between the locals. There is a global tech group.
The message boards are also a good spot to find out more information.
People took a stretch break then voted on topic
Eurocentric Americentri 5
Communication between Imc 6
Decision making 7
Becoming IMC 2
Sharing content 7
Security 7
Autonomy and the network 4
In person networking 0
Rating system 1
There will be a program at 11pm. The focus is the IMC. From Darryl Roberts.
We took a break, threw acorns and began to focus on
Decision making 20 minutes
Sharing Content
Security 20 minutes
Decision Making
Inclusive decision making process
What processes are in place now
Email is a problem. There’s too many emails and they are difficult to catagorize. This isn’t democratic. When decisions are being made, it must be formalized. This hasn’t happened with the IMC. Membership doesn’t know when decisions are being made. There could be a web page with discussion, proposal and then one
How do we coordinate discussions. It should happen all at once.
There isn’t a global interlingual decision making process in place.
A proposal came from a meeting in San Francisco. The IMC has been working on revising this. It’s a chaotic process that is difficult to follow.
One option is to set up one day in which to vote on the decision.
Everyone should have input on the decisions.
If the decision making process doesn’t allow people who work 9-5 then
Passive consensus allows people to object over five days. One idea is to set up a global IMC group that makes global decisions that allow for autonomy within that system.
What language would it be in?? Esperanto is one language.
A large translation team is needed.
A spokes person council is another way to do it.
A web page for proposals with discussion thre
WHAT DECISIONS SHOULD THE GLOBAL BE MAKING?
Where does the money come from, what is it used for,
What does it do?
New IMC
How to get in and out?
What goes on global features and the process for doing that.
Who decides and how is that de
Who decides which decisions get made by who?
What is the function of the global IMC.
Global security
Sending people to international conferences i.e. people from the south.
Software to new IMC
People want to know who is deciding and how.
SECURITY
Too much dependence on the main server
How can independents be more independent from seattle
Security
Technical limited # of server
Legal
Political
We are in a new legal period with legislation limiting internet use. We need to know what these are. What is posted is a problem
Political Membership needs to be defined. How to prevent infiltration from the government is a problem.
Technically seattle going down is a problem though we could be up in a short time. There are benefits of centralization. We need more technical people and more servers. That will solve the centralization problem.
IMC can’t be responsible for illegal activity, though if we see an illegal post we must deal with it.
Rotating facilitation avoids problems generated by cointelpro. Consensus minus one is also a remedy for cointelpro infiltrators.
Is there a way to back up IMCs? One can develop infrastructure. IMC’s could be mirrored across the system to add redundancy to the system. The ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are allies with IMC.
Security threats 10% are down one can threaten the person who is running a sight. There’s a lot of self censorship happening.
They remove detailed plans for illegal activity.
Centralization is a vulnerable spot. The IMC in Seattle went down before. When that happened, the process of getting it back up was disturbing. We can intensify low tech communication in the form of broadsheets.
Sharing skills, additional server space and shortwave radio are options for making us more secure.
Carnivore has been installed in many local locations.
We can’t outsmart them in a hacker war.
We are about open information, so if they use carnivore on us, we are not vulnerable.
Decentralizing is a big problem. The more we can set up our sights, the more secure we will be.
Legally, it would be good to have servers
Free net stores information temporarily. One idea is to interface the IMC with freenet. This would eliminate another threat. The government couldn’t get it.
Use Aliases.
We took another break, and came back and did another brainstorming session, similar to the morning’s, in which we created lists of solutions for the concerns we were investigating. The two sentence limit was stipulated again.
SHARING CONTENT BETWEEN IMC
This includes files and artwork
Cross posting and storing in different locations is good.
One person writes a story for everyone instead of multiple people writing one story.
Create a search engine that searches all IMCs at once
How can regional IMCs share infrastructure. How can IMC support imc’s in poor areas.
Care Package. Send snail mail policy and other statements. The print article
Create a library of articles, print media, audio files. Updates are good, highlights.
Mailing lists for someone who puts up a new feature.
All postings should have date, length and format.
Sights could have a button for “possible feature” button.
Infoshop sights has some features the IMC could use.
Get to know other people in different IMCs.
How should we discuss this ten minute brainstorm
Mailing list for new features (all media)
Create a page for people who violate the rules
Link your story to different IMC sights.
Indymedia has a newsreel service that people can use.
COMMUNICATION BETWEENT IMC that isn’t
Process, decision making and skills.
Decision making should be posted so that other IMCs can see those. Those could be on the global sight
The global IMC should have a web page which coordinates writing, audio and video projects so that people don’t do the same work, especially at big demonstrations.
Sometimes one person at an IMC has the information that noone else has. Its important to find that person.
Focus on regional networks. Make sure one person gets information regarding global IMC information.
The regional file sharing/message board is another solution.
Make sure contact information is current on the website.
We should notify each other about news events for other sites.
??? Sharing meeting notes could be too much. Summaries are more appropriate.
Someone would need to make this happen.
Recording or printing a radio piece is another option.
One person could summarize what is going on in the tech list or fundraising list and put that up on the website.
Next Creating a sustainable funding plan Producing an audio piece editing training
Pickax is the story of resistance to logging after arsonist fire destroyed the forest.
The following are the desires and false statements that were written on the post-it notes for the afternoon session, which focused on connecting IMC's.
SATURDAY (10/20/01) AFTERNOON DESIRES AND FALSE STATEMENTS
American-European Centrism
North IMCs should be net exporters of resources to non-English, South IMCs.
Display Non-American generated perspectives is important for getting better depth of understanding of say, the Middle East.
How to develop IMC access to Indy Media in "underdeveloped" areas such as Afghanistan, the"ghetto," in prisions, etc.
Ease of translation of multiple languages.
There is no common language among all IMCs.
Amerika (+Euro-) Centrism
Rating System
Webby's incorrectly classified IMC as an activist rather than a news source.
Develop criteria for evaluating media.
Autonomy and the Network
Local Autonomy
Decentralization
Local IMC autonomy within decentralized network :)
How to remain open to original "flavors" of local IMCs, & not become too rigid an unstitution.
Incorporation
Independent Media Corporation
We affiliate with progressive economic companies and catapult the freedom movement.
Becoming an IMC
We, as a network, have a support structure to assist newly forming IMCs, especially in geographies hindered by U.S. government policies.
200% growth of new IMCs for next 5 years.
Better and more support from global to local
Need short clear perspectives for IMC which addresses our historic period.
Getting new IMCs off the ground
All IMCs get the resources they need to at least get established.
IMCs raise enough money to fund other indymedia--(or) IMCs have more $ than the Gates Foundation
Hard to contact IMCs
Security
IMC is on its own ISP, protected form Carnivore and other threats.
There is too much dependence on stallman.indymedia.org.
When one IMC is threatened to be shut down, perhaps as a terrorist organization, for example, the other IMCs have a plan of action to respond.
We get more hits than CNN.com
How can Indymedia Centers wean themselves from Seattle?
Publishing & Sharing Stories/Content/Art, etc.
How does the web user identify quality and facts from rants and lies? I won't check every site.
How can regional clusters of IMCs share infrastructure?
Can we create an accessible global news service--like AP? something newspapers, weeklies, community radio could use.
We have a way to share material from our various print projects so we don't reproduce efforts.
We have a way to let other IMCs know when we've posted a feature that they may want to use.
IMCs could send each other their print stuff--monthly care packages.
What kinds of tools can we create to facilitate story coverage of national or international scope?
IMCs share skills, equipment & resources & those more established help those getting established.
"News blasts" are mirrored by every local IMC.
Why should I work hard to post a web story that is quickly buried on the wire or appears on a single local site?
IMCs need to equitably share the load for global.
Global "resource wire" for local IMC use: features, pix
Decision Making Process
Global IMC has an efficient and effectively inclusive decision-making process.
What kind of governing structures are in place on global indymedia? (more factual than speculative)
Global needs to make applying to become an IMC easier.
Need clearly described structures and decision making processes.
Face To Face Meetings
More IMC field trips where we tour each other's facilities, host workshops and share resources. Also to learn about regional events were covering.
Huge peace festivals.
Regular regionals? what do you think? how to share knowledge and resources.
global indymedia gathering.
we have monthly/bi-monthly IRC gathering among local/national/global IMCers.
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