Feel free to modify or add to. I intend this to go up on Melbourne IMC and global features, and any other Oceania IMC
Takver
Oceania IMCistas meet in Melbourne
IMCistas and other media activists travelled from around the oceania region to gather in Melbourne for the first ever Oceania Indymedia Conference. Highlights from the four day conference included workshops on online video compression and distribution, writing news and features, analysis and direction of the Indymedia project.
Indymedia Centres or working groups represented in some way included: Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Aotearoa, Quezon City, Vancouver, Indybay, UK, Global features and the Sydney tech collective Catalyst.
The conference came several months after the launch of the
Oceania Indymedia website which draws together news stories from around the region and has facilitated collaboration between the many regional IMCs. The conference kicked off on Thursday evening, with a discussion of, and proposals for new features for the website. Participants proposed more collaboration and (irc) meetings to consolidate the connections made. Also on the agenda were money issues and issues of personal and collective harmony, particularly in regard to the Brisbane IMC.
On Friday afternoon the Oceania meeting broke up to observe and participate in a Reclaim the Streets action (
pics,
more pics) organised by the Students Of Sustainability Conference. On Friday evening participants were able to attend a fundraiser event: never before seen footage from Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein's film, The Take, screened at Victorian Trades Hall. About 100 people attended and watched the film. Afterwards, Augusto, an activist visiting from Argentina gave a brief statement with questions from the audience.
Saturday, in a program called Transmission, was filled with three workshops on: System Interrupt! Why do we work as media makers? ; Information Society ; Avenues for syndication and distribution. About 100 people participated in some way on the day. Workshops facilitated the cross-fertilisation of ideas between activist media makers and information distributors, including radio activists from 3CR, video activists (like SKA TV), print activists (like Spinach7 and Anarres Books).
This was followed by screening of the Oceania Indymedia videos and dinner. Several bands performed at a music Benefit held at a pub that evening.
Sunday provided practical workshops on software, hardware and collective process issues. Probably the most important aspect of the conference is the collaboration and trust building between individuals, infusing more energy into the Oceania project. The conference has allowed some self reflection and analysis, and hopefully empowerment of individual IMCistas.
The Oceania IMC collaboration came out of informal gatherings of individuals from regional IMCs at the Electrofringe festival conferences in 2000 and 2001 in Newcastle. Then in 2002 IMCistas met at the Borderlines conference in Adelaide and decided to create a site which syndicates features from regional IMCs, which resulted in the Oceania Indymedia website.
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TakveR - 18 Jul 2004
- Augusto speaking after showing The Take:
- Oceania Conference Transmission Workshop:
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