"Indymedia Dispatch. Hello?"

When I came up to Scotland I planned to to help the Indymedia volunteers from the UK with the IMC and the dispatch, but also to go out take part in some action and do some video filming. Somehow I had assumed I would be able to leave Edinburgh at least once. Of course, some of the infrastructure for that fell through: the satelite truck decided to stay in the Stirling camp site, and another bus that was meant to drive around never made it to Scotland. However, staying in the IMC building, even sleeping there a few nights, and working together with all the people there were a great experience. Running a dispatch system that was as fast as we could type and with people in different countries, videos made on the spot and screened in the IMC, people helping us when needed. My only regret is, that I never really managed to some of the great food that the Forest cafe downstairs prepared.

To start from the beginning. After some travel problems, I ended up on the Dissent! train from London: several hundred activists in a chartered train... a workshop with "Stop the G8 tactics" in one of the carriages, a meeting of samba bands in another, people walking through the train with flyers and bust card with legal info. One could have done probably more such workshops and info events in the 6 hour train ride, but then again last-minute preparations were probably hectic enough for everybody. (And of course, the smokers took over the train to fast that I had a headache after only half of the trip...)

When we arrived in Edinburgh, I expected the usual set up: a room too small for all the gear, full of cigarette smoke and coffee cups. What I found instead was an old curch. A big, light room with a lot of wood, high ceilings and two balkonies. Smoke free, alcohol free, and just above a nice bar with great organic beer where people could socialize instead of around the computers. Space enough for some 20 computers for general use, several computers as picture desk, space for the video group on the former pulpit, enough tables for laptops, a big dispatch table and some couches. I know, people worked hard to prepare a room in the basement for dispatch or for any other working group that would have wanted some more space or privacy, but everybody decided to stay in the big room, and in the end that seem to be a wise decision. People coming in with photo cameras found direct help and card readers; especially in the evenings the video group was clearly visible working and - as the days went by - they burnt CDs and DVDs with all the videos made to take along and/or to screen at the camp sites.

The only group rather invisible was the radio group, located on one of the balkonies, hidden behind thick curtains to provide some sound proofing. For whatever reason the radio didn't seem to be broadcasted in the IMC itself but apparently they produced some good pieces. Since we were all in one room, one or the other techie always seem to be around when needed, fixing problems or setting up an additional wireless connection from one of the university buildings down the street with what the council called "an unsafe structure on the roof". Moving a wireless antenna and the roles of lead that held it in place at night on an old church roof is an experience for itself, but certainly worth the view. Other people were constantly available to answer questions and to point people into the right directions.

Besides the IMC in Edinburgh, there was a second space in the Convergence Centre in Glasgow, and a third one running of a satelite truck and a tent in the eco-camp in Stirling. Glasgow was alltogether more quiet, but from Stirling we got a constant flow of information, about the actions happening there and about the state of police controls in front of the camp.

The anti-G8 mobilisation had called for a whole week of different actions with different intensity in different cities so those of us running the IMC found ourselves with ever changing hectic and a bit more quite days, but somehow never with enough time. I wanted to go out on the streets, but there always seemed on or the other thing that needed doing, and time and again going out for a coffee meant leaving the people running the welcome desk stuck on that table for another hour. I'm glad that I at least once got out on the streets, to see the Clown Army in action and to do reporting from there.

The welcome desk is probably the one most un-media activist task of an IMC: A table to block the access to the stairs to the IMC upstairs, to make sure that we were not overrun by people who just wanted to check their emails, to keep corporate journalists out, and to give general explanations. Time and again, we were looking for people to take over, threatening them that we would have to close the whole space in 10 minutes if nobody was willing to guard the door. In the end we always found somebody, and quite often people who were not involved with Indymedia (so far), but it meant a constant task to look for people and to explain to them.

Strangely enough the attitude from IMCistas from other IMCs towards the space and the people who ran it was rather mixed. Some came up to us, introduced themselves and helped were they could: making cables, answering the dispatch phone or calling in. Others however seem to use the whole space as a service to them without need to interact with us. Once in a while, I saw a posting coming up from an IMCista whose name I recognised and wondered whether s/he had just been in the room. Especially those who had a bigger event in their own place should know enough to at least ask. Often enough, other activists see Indymedia as a service, but other IMCistas shouldn't take the work of a local collective for granted.

It took a while to sort out the dispatch system, but when it worked, it was a great example of an international collaboration and of a mix of technologies; its design was driven by the immediate needs of those on the ground in Edinburgh. It was also an example of why to keep things simple. Somebody had developed a special software, but when dispatching started on Saturday morning it became obvious that the system was too "umstaendlich" and to slow for the speed in which dispatching is done. We tried it anyway, if only to give feedback on it later, but - as so often - software for specific tasks as Indymedia has them needs a close interactions between the activists writing and using it, and for a dispatch software that fits our needs it is good to see that the software developer actually took part in some of the dispatch.

It also once more became obvious that mailing lists before an event are a good organizing tool, but that one should never expect that those people who show up in the end actually have followed the list and are willing to to everything as planned by others before. Any info that is not available when one enters the actual IMC space will just be lost, and even if it's available it's likely to be changed depending on the real situation on the ground. Clear poster about which computers are for the picture desk, which table should be kept free for those needing access to special electricity plugs, or which IRC channels to use, however did the trick.

After some initial problems we worked things out and the dispatch system as it was running on Wednesday, the main day of the anti-G8 protestes with street blockades and the march to Gleneagles, included at least 17 people in Edinburgh and in at least 4 other countries, not counting those that called in. It was an excellent example of international collaboration and a mix of technologies - keeping things simple and "outsourcing" those tasks that don't need local presences to IMCistas around the world. Looking back at what has been written on numerous wiki pages about dispatch systems in other European mobilisations, it seems that we come back to the same basic issues every time, but sometimes with different setups and software. Some might call it re-inventing the wheel. On the other hand: if different people start with a somewhat fresh mind and still come to the same setup, then that's a good indication that this setup works fine and is not only used because it's always done that way. Using different software to do the same thing is probably redundant, but redundancy is one of the strength of Indymedia. The more different software, hardware and mode of communicaiton we use, the more likely we are to continue even if some of that fails or is shut down. And maybe it's necessary to re-invent the wheel because it also empowers those people who come to a moblisation and develop things based on the actual situation, resources available, and on existing knowledge. Most of us will certainly be able to set up a dispatch system from scratch now because we understand the underlying concept, not the software.

Starting at 3:50 in the morning on the first day of the G8 2005, we got phone calls and SMS messages about the Beacons of Dissent, clashes with riot cops when people tried to leave the Stirling camp sites, street blockades on the A9, choaches stopped on their way to Gleneagles, spontanous demonstrations in Edinburgh, and finally the security fence at the Gleneagles hotel being breached and more cops being flown in by army helicopters.

The general dispatch system is simple. We got info in from phone calls (and a few sms's) either by people who go out to with the aim to call in or by other callers who got the dispatch number from the thousands of flyers we had copied. Later in the day, postings with reports and photos appeared on the website. Callers also reported life on the radio. We got phone calls on three official numbers, on our private phones, by (photo) SMSs on the newswire, by people walking into the IMC space, and even by people in the IMCs who were called by friends and passed their phones on to us. We would have missed those people and calls if we would have moved down to the basement, so even when it got hectic it was good that we stayed there and that people actually saw what we were doing.

Reporting from the streets is sometimes not as simple as it sounds. How many people are there really? Is that a police helicopter? On which street are we right now? Was somebody 'just' arrested or beaten up? Has the police attacked, or do they just look like they will any moment? Stories change when you repeat what somebody else told you, and the same event can look totally different from another angle. Add different native languages to it, unfamilarity with the location, or local details that might explain the situation, and rumours can spread easily. Confirmation of the incoming info becomes necessary. So unless we had a caller who we trusted to give correct numbers and locations, all info coming in that way was considered "unconfirmed" until we had at least two independent reports from the same event. Only confirmed news were supposed to go out. Sometimes two phone calls would come in with the same info at the same time, but at other times it could take a while to figure out for example whether callers were talking about the same blockade, or whether there two. Sometimes we called people on the street or the legal team to hear what they knew. It's tempting to produce a minute-by-minute timeline of events, but on the other hand, no information is so important that it couldn't wait another 10 minutes - especially not when those who read it are not directly on the spot anyway. Minute-to-minute timelines also run into the danger of just being a list of numbers of police cars and arrests. Better take some time and also ask about the atmosphere or texts on banners.

So, news would come from different sources and those of us sitting around the dispatch table would just type them into a special (closed) IRC channel, classifying it as confirmed or unconfirmed. Naturally, that would be full of abbrevations, half sentences and rather creative spellings of Scotish names. We then asked some other IMCistas who were not in Edinburgh but somewhere in Belgium, Switzerland or wherever to make sense out of it: to check whether different reports confirmed each other, and to formulate that into clear sentences, stating location and time, or to ask when they felt information was missing. With the hectic in the space, it was good to know that there were some people in a different place who could concentrate on this task. (And thanks to the google and mulimaps sites giving detailed maps and streetnames to however might need them.) Confirmed information was then posted in another channel where only those posting the news could speak. The result was an open channel that only contained a timeline of confirmed events: open to everybody writing timeline articles, doing radio or just wanting to know what's going on, but without the general chit-chat that arises on such events. (We had another general channel for everybody from around the world who wanted to discuss and socialise, and when times were really quiet we tried to give some input there as well.)

Sometimes confirmation was straight forward, sometimes it needed some clarifications in the first IRC channel, and sometimes when things got unclear we could fall back onto a list of phone numbers to ask for additional info, including the legal and medical teams and the organizers of specific events.

Especially on Wednesday, when we run an continous dispatch system for at least 17 hours, we coverd different actions at different locations, so we made 3 different posting for the different timelines from it, with one person responsible for each. It's a good feeling that you can tell everybody who walks into the space and wants info, to check the newswire because that contains everything we knew up to the last few minutes. It felt even better when we once more could say "Don't trust the corporate media" because we had direct info from the GR organizers that the march was going ahead while for example BBC broadcasted the police statement that the march was cancelled.

Dispatch systems rely on people using it, fast exchange of information and trust between the people doing it at that moment. We got good and diverse reports for actions in Edinburgh (for example for the Carnival of Full Enjoyment) and the March on Gleneagles, when quite a few dedicated IMCistas were out on the streets and coming back to the IMC space later. On the other hand we got little information from the road blockades near Stirling; maybe because people were not so aware of the phone numbers, maybe because it is still easier to report about something you see then from an action that you do yourself, maybe because people didn't have their mobile phones with them or where out of reach. Maybe we also lacked a good dispatcher on the Stirling camp site. Only a few days later I learnt that there were notes being posted in the camp, stating which roads were blocked for how long. With that information either given to us by phone or IRC, or posted on the newswire, our timelines and features could have shown much stronger that the A9 was successfully blocked for hours, causing delegates and staff to be late.

The 'input' system was clearly not up for the speed with which we worked at times, but since it was the first time it was used, there is room for improvement. In this case, we decided to stick to IRC as the simplest working tool even as it has some flaws. It is such a simple tool that, throughout the day, we had new people joining the dispatch table and just started working even when a few of them had no experience with IRC. We showed them the IRC client on whichever laptop was free at that moment, explained them how to change their nick and then the only thing necessary was to answer the phone and type things into the channel. Simple and straight forward. But even as explanations are short it always take time to give them, and the time and effort to keep things running smoothly should not be underestimated. It's a balance to strike: do we want at group of dispatch experts on a sophisticated special sytem, or a system using rough technologies (and maybe quiet some extra typing and copy-pasting) in which absolute new-comers can be included or which users can continue if necessary if a server or location goes down?

Another piece of software came up when nobody was really expecting it. On the evening before the G8 officailly started, some software was included by two IMCistas from Spain to post photos and videos directly from mobile phones. Not many people knew about it during Wednesday actions, but nevertheless we got a picture of the Beacons of Dissent burning on the hills above Gleneagles long before those who lit them made their hours-long walk back.

Of course we had disagreements about a couple of issues, especially about (how to decide) how to do things, and who should have access to the channel with unconfirmed news. As said earlier, in a situation where there are several solutions for the same problem, it should be down to the people on the ground to take those decisions, because they see how the situation is, whether they prefer people to talk to them directly, whether they deal with people who pick up things fast or need a lot of explanations etc. No system will ever be perfect, but after years of doing this at different mobilisations and with different groups of people we seem to come down to a few basics.

About access to unconfirmed info: these anti-G8 protests were without the kind of dramatic events we know from Genoa and Evian, so in the end unconfirmed information that could turn into life of its own wasn't so much of an issue. Still there were examples of what can happen. A comment under one of the features claimed falsely that a child had been injured in Stirling, and additional comments were running wild before any of us had the time to even look at the site. That's the kind of info I would like to have confirmed before I post it on the site, because the relationship between local residents and a camp of protestors can easily turn nasty. Once we saw it, we checked with the medics and the local police and where able to hide it. Another strange rumour was started through one of the radio stations. Apparently somebody from a local radio station somewhere in Europe called somebody they knew in the Stirling camp on Thursday, the day of the bombings in London, and got something like "all actions here are cancelled, except from a silent vigil by the clowns." Somehow that turned into a statement that all anti-G8 actions were cancelled due to the bombings. I only heard that because I took a moment to check with my local IMC and they were just writing up a new feature with that info. In fact, most actions in Stirling were cancelled because the police's stop-and-searches at the camp entrance made it more then difficult to leave in bigger numbers, and also because several hundred people were in police custody anyway. Yet again, if such an info would have come into the dispatch system, we would have checked on it and then posted a confirmed and more accurate news.

However, there was some diagreement about whether a dispatch system needs a closed channel or whether we were even allowed to have it. Of course, Indymedia is based a lot on openness and transparency but that's another issue. On the one hand, especially when things get hectic callers will come with unclear information, with rumours, or maybe even with dis-information. As a dispatch team, I think, we have the obligation not to start rumours, not to heat up situations based on false information but to give not an objective picture of what is going on, but nevertheless a somewhat true (or confirmed) overview. If we want Indymedia as a source of "passionate and subjective telling of the truth", we need to take a step back and not send every story out the moment it comes in, not about a child hurt in Stirling, not about exagerated numbers. I don't want a timeline or a feature where people look at it and say: "Oh, that's Indymedia. Only half of it is probably true." By giving ourselves time and a closed space to confirm our info before we post it in publich IRC channels, newswires and radio programmes, we produce a much stronger story. Having a closed confirmation channel also means we can work with more openness to our fellow dispatchers. Because it is closed I can type into the channel who gave me that info, or who I will call to confirm it. We can talk freely if we are unsure about a situation, about how to formulate something, or about what to do with info that appears to be rather dodgy. I didn't know everybody personally in that channel, but among the core group of dispatchers there were enough personal connections with those in other locations to have a strong trust about our work. Maybe that's another essence of a good dispatch system: a team of strong dispatchers and a web of trust between them; trust that they would have a good judgement of what is confirmed and what not, trust that they stay calm, trust that they don't have other motives but to get out good and trustworhty news. Having a closed channel only for active dispatchers also meant that we also knew how many there were of us, and that (nearly) everybody in it could spring to action when needed. No unclear situation about who's working and who's just listening, so when numbers appeared to get to low we knew to go out and once more actively find more people in the space and in the Indymedia network to join us. And even when we had a closed channel: we managed to include people in the IMC space and IMCistas from around the globe into working together, people who help answering the phones and making the timelines, people who were willing to put other things aside just because we needed somebody at that moment, people who made sense out of our notes, and people who took our timelines and main articles and turned them into a feature summarizing the events of a day while others added new links to the features of previous days, or roamed all other Indymedia sites in search for solidarity actions in other countries.

In fact, there are even more tasks that could have been done by others, like finding appropriate photos to add to the timeline. Too late we thougth about picking a few articles and asking some IMCista somewhere to lay them out in a two page flyer that we could have handed out at the camps and info points. Maybe we could have set up a better information system with the legal, medic and trauma team instead of repeatedly phoning them up. Maybe we could have asked good and fast writers before the events started so that they knew we would need others to write up the features. But nevertheless, I never thought that I would look at a 17 hours shift of phones, IRC and timelines, and think that i actually enjoyed doing it. And none of it would have been possible without all the other people who contributed their parts going out from those out on the street giving us detailed reports, to somebody who provided us with tea and sandwiches throughout the day, and without whom I simply wouldn't have made it to the evening.

Using so many different media, and so many people in different places to give an instant picture of what was going on is a powerful tool. Maybe such a detailed timeline was not necessary for these events, but in other situations it certainly is. And while you are doing it, you won't know whether such details will be needed afterwards. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But in any case there was a lot of information: information for the activists on the streets, for those who want differenr and more direct news then the corporate media can provide, for those at home doing solidarity actions when necessary, or for those who need to be able to reconstruct the events later.

When it started, Indymedia was technically a new thing. Now - especially with all the blogs - direct posting on a website is state of the art. Images taken from the protestors side instead of from behind the police lines are now a common thing, and as the BBC news from the bombings in London show: even videos made with mobile phones are material that can be used. But Indymedia's strong points will remain the large number of people to put time and effort into setting things up and keep them running; the redundance that makes our networks strong; the international collaboration where space not matters, or where it even can be an added bonus to have people in safe and quiet places in other countries and continents; the time and space to play around with hard and software, writing new code as we go along, for applications that might sometimes might be just what we needed or sometimes appear rather pointless to others, but that will find their way into our pool of resources and pop up again when it's needed. A network of activists that is based on political ideas as well as on personal contacts. The ability to give us and others space and power to describe the world as we see it. And the collaboration and solidarity of so many people globally that make me feel that I have spend hours and days in the IMC space, only been out on the street once and not being able take part in any of the actions myself - and to still think it was worth it, that I enjoyed it, and that I will do it again.

-- ClarA - 26 Jul 2005

• View of the Edinburgh IMC centre and Forest cafe:
  

• Gaelic banner at the IMC entrance:
  

• IMC front desk:
  

• Wide view if the IMC's main room:
  

• Another view of the main room:
  

• IMC-Scotland and Radical Radio Coalition banners in the main room:
  

• Dispatch area:
  

• Video desk and Dispatch area:
  

• Video desk:
  

• Photo desk:
  

• Radio studio:
  

• View of the balcony with the radio studio:
  

• Computer network in the balcony and tech hang out space :-):
  

• Video screening at the main room during the IMC's closing night:
  

• Police "Forward Intelligence Team" hassling people outside the IMC:
  

-- MaQui - 05 Aug 2005

• More FIT outside IMC:
  

• Searching people outside IMC:
  

• Dubious parking from unmarked police FIT vehicle: