hi,

these are some thoughts that came into my mind during the last irc meeting, some of them i have had for quite a while. sorry to be so late!

i'm really glad to see more people interested in dispatching and that this becomes are better known part of the indymedia work! some of my thoughts are already mentioned in the chat logs but i hope this way it'll get clearer which direction i'd like to go.

since the whole text got a bit long i did a short summary in the beginning and if you like you can read the whole thing afterwards ;).

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summary:

• before searching a technical solution we need to see wht the problem really is. spend some time on describing several dispatch situations to be able to integrate them into whatever tool we then develop
• we need to find ways to create a way to include people who are not familiar with indymedia nor with technical tools.
• we need to spend time on getting in touch with activists in the street to get them to cooperate with the dispatch team
• we need much better documentations of our work - tech how-to's as well as detailed work-flows that leave space to add good ideas
• i want to have a clear distinction between ongoing work and information that is publicly accessible. there needs to be a place for work where we don't need to be aware of possible abuse (also to avoid unconfirmed news from being spread)
• let's think twise about rss-feeds. who in ecuador wants to read lots of stuff in danish? i don't believe that a lot of information is necessarily the best information
• it is absolutely vital that we get in touch with the local media groups and protest organizers to prepare good co-operation and don't assume they'll just be waiting for us to impose our ways of working
• it's too optimistic to expect imc's elsewhere in the world to be sitting waiting to write texts or take up other parts of the work. mostly they will not be prepared to do anything but publish pieces of text that were already translated.

so what we need to do is prepare all the steps from news gathering and longtime preparation via confirmation to the final daily summary in several languages. in a way that makes people want to participate in this most exciting bit of indymedia work!

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[and here the long version starts]

with the experience of dispatch situations during more or less intense actions my feeling is that we're going a bit too fast with the search for a technical solutions. solution for what problem?

wouldn't it be useful to have a description of what is actually happening during summits first? a description from the point of view of those actually present, in major stress, as well as from those who are at home in front of their computer willing to help but at the same time somewhat helpless and not really understanding what the reason for all the confusion is. mostly the real situation is miles away from our ideas how it should go.

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we need to acknowledge that during every situation when indymedia is involved in coverage a number of new volunteers will want to participate. we need to put a lot more weight into this search for people to help! that is a big task to be taken on by a dispatch group.

there'll be different technical knowledge to start from. mostly there will be people who may be very unexperienced or uncomfortable with computers. we might need to have someone to explain to them how we work, rather then asking them to read for half an hour. or have a lot better descriptions - very simple 'how-to' are more difficult to make than we usually think but so useful. either one takes time and it helps to have a good documentation, as well as being well prepared - this also concerns other indymedia activists who will be doing other things but need to cooperate with the dispatch team. here i see huge deficits so far.

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i said this before but i really don't think synchronisation of the ongoing dispatch work won't help us having higher quality reporting. syncronisation places all little unimportant notes onto the newswires. that will make it close to impossible for the readers to actually find the relevant news. during every action there are lots of situations when the dispatch team follows any given action or demonstration minute by minute. you get a phone call, you type "demo arrives at street A". you get a phone call "police has beaten woman during action on bridge B". you get a phone call "tear gas at the end of the demonstration". you get a phone call confirming the location of the head of the demonstration". you take a minute to look at the city map to find out how to correctly spell the name of street A (in a language you absolutely don't understand). someone runs into the room saying "i need to ........can you help me" - you take 3 minutes to help, explain that you are busy without being too unfriendly. the phone rings constantly. you pick up the phone. someone wants to know whether the woman from action on bridge C was taken to hospital. you explain the this phoneline is not for people who want to get information and that she should call the info hotline - you have a look at the black board in front of you - and give her the no. xxxxxxxx. you ask a voluteer next to you to research whether the woman was hurt on bridge B or C. the pick up the phone and type "tear gas end of demo confirmed". you defend yourself against someone you have never seen before who suddenly stands in front of you and accuses you of beaurocratic elitism. etc. etc. etc.

i really don't think it makes sense to have everybody follow every detail? what use is there in having a lot of newswires plugged with 50 messages a day about who went where? plus these messages can be hard to understand because several things are happening at the same time and then it might be hard to understand which short notice relates to which other one (e.g. "bridge now cleared by police" doesn't make sense if you are not watching all messages the whole day and didn't notice that the bridge was occupied 5 hours earlier).

my idea of good dispatching is a lot of well coordinated work behind the scenes, and then to publish good confirmed information as fast as possible. which means something like a short summary like

"thursday afternoon's happenings in xyz: a demonstration of approx. 5.000 people started peacefully at sqare C at 16:00. later there were confrontations with the police at street corner D/E, two activists from ... were arrested but later released. the demonstration ended at 18:00 in the D square with speeches by blabla, blabla and blabla. again it was said that all .....needs to be ablished and that ........ doesn't lead to more justice in the world (link: video speeches). at the same time the group ActionNow^? stopped all traffic on bridge C. an aggressive car driver hurt one woman who needed to be taken to hospital. she broke a rib but is otherwise fine (link: interview)" whenever it's ready.

the point is that we need a working platform that is NOT accessible to everybody. another reason for this is that we don't want all the mainstream journalists who are oh so eager to find material for their 'this is how the activists work' picking stories from there. having been confronted with mainstream coverage of "see - this is how the cute young activists do their job" i'd prefer to not feed that.

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activists from other imc's who are at home and won't spend time to completely understand our system might often accidently pick up the unconfirmed news and publish that. often in the beginning of a day for hours there is nothing but dull "demo starting" messages and exciting but unfortunately unconfirmed news.

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we can't just simply assume that local groups will just be waiting for us to jump into their action with an all-prepared method of handling things. often the local activists (of the place where the action takes place) are also involved in several groups who are doing the protest actions and have distinct ideas of what they need. this might be different from what we think is practical. to avoid anger or misunderstandings it's useful to get in touch with the preparing groups as soon as possible to see how we can work together, and be prepared to adjust a lot. in my perception it is most important to not appear in the last weeks before something starts, unprepared, not knowing much about the issue, waving a flag saying "this is how WE do it!"

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during the irc chat i noticed the tendency to assume that during every situation when a dispatch team is involved - any major action, international summit etc - local imc's are sitting at home or whereever eagerly waiting for information to be put onto their own page. my own perceiption of these situations is quite different: mostly i spent time in irc chats informing local activists that something was happening and THEN they asked for information to use. as we usually don't have enough people to cover the dispatch work it's the same for the local pages: we are lucky if there are one or two people who are interested AND have time. mostly they will also be the ones who will have to do the translations. i think it's completely utopian thought to imagine a situation where a whole team is waiting for a lot of information to pick from what they want to use.

my proposal is that we try to raise more awareness in the indymedia world for ths usefulness of a well functioning dispatch. actually i really think this concerns non-european imc's just the same as european imc's and i think we should move this whole thing to another list! or create one, e.g. imc-dispatch@indy.... .

as far as i can see we are all from european countries (which isn't surprising since we're communicating via the imc-europe-list) and my impression is that we're mostly basing our ideas on experienes within europe. i think it might be a useful idea to ask other imc's about their experiences and how they deal with similar situtations. a) i don't think we can claim to be an indymedia working group (wg) when we're really just a european wg, and b) i am sure that there is a lot of knowledge that we don't know of.

on the other hand, like i said before, often people don't really understand the use of dispatch work. it has happened time and again that video teams, groups based on nationality, other affinity groups set up their own system of communication without networking with anyone. if we could get that to change we'd be a big step ahead i think. these groups often have a lot of information which could help dispatch teams to improve the quality of reporting and therefore the content of the pages.

one of indymedia's best qualities during action coverage is to have a lot more reporters out in the street than news agencies. but still we need more and we can offer good information to e.g. the teams in the street as well. we can tell them where to go and film.

so i think what we need to do is collect all information on the ways we work, let everybody know about it, improve the details and set up several methods so that we can easily adjust to local conditions and be effective. in this order. sounds simple, don't you think?

-- AnNa - 26 Aug 2003
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