Thursday Night - Intro Session Notes

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these are very rough notes!! - not actually intended for the wiki page, but please feel free to update/add/change

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several people recording audio
about 40 people in attendance

SYDNEY - notes from andy please (i hadn't started at this point)


PERTH IMC

problems with trolling
collective
?falling apart a little 


also putting on a radio show
getting bigger
fragmentation may be the best way of describing

NZ/AOTOREA

lulls and peaks and troughs
1999 ==> 20002 site really got going
idiosyncratic  - involves all the islands - worked well across the country on the basis of the internet
regionalised _maintaining_ the site because of need to develop network - then pool talents.

dunedin
christchurch
auckland
wellington

works well having national site with collectives.
autonomous local groups - specialisation

ideas to start 'history' category
- stuff not typically covered by history books

discussion about open-publishing
==> introduced policy of being able to ban people completely from the site - ? e.g. one particular homophobic spammer - took time away from productive stuff in the collective and really wore people out
one member ended up leaving collective although has now rejoined.

questions of sustainability,
burn-out and how to get new people involved
often same people involved who have always been involved

long term ==> sustainability is the big question for Aotorea


ADELAIDE

off line for a while
?working on moving to dadaIMC ==> credit to Finn
Melbourne had previously helped Adelaide
Attendance at meetings dropped.
people moved away....

problems with active software being hosted by Octapod == wanted the software removed,

technical advice from elsewhere. just transferred all content

relaunch :: 1st August

some problems with some posters - adopted the principle that if the poster is also spamming other sites or is hateful 

==> need good material for casual readers who stumbled across site

active ehightlights section but as yet no features



QC (PHILLIPINES)

all members from other organisations
some professional journalists who are interested
trying to develop the site for people to have easy access to different types of media from these and other groups

open-publishing is extremely new concept to the philipines.

need lots of demonstrations to help people learn how to post



MELBOURNE

all the same aforementioned problems 
eg radio talkback using the indymedia site as their main outlook
tried to move stuff into categories instead of hiding/removing
lots of people not actually writing original stuff
trouble with ABA - Australian Broadcasting Association
tendancy towards working on features more
sidelining the open-newswire - and this is where content for features comes from

always seems to come back to a few key individuals - ? problem with sustainability

pleased it still has momentum
set-up around a single issue (protest) - but has continued!

more-interesting question - how does indymedia relate to social movements?

is trolling related to 'lulls' in activity (in terms of activism) or local resistance?

making it more of a peer-based system. 
open-editing system - to decentralise out to involve the enduser and not just the local collective.

is there enough movement going on in australia to justify the amount of sites in australia/oceania?

who are we engaging with/ who are we trying to engage with?
eg best thread was about public housing - 200 comments later, stuff came out of it!


thoughts also that indy people should be getting out there and doing some reporting and feeding back onto the newswire

melbourne have managed to average about 5-6 feature articles a week!

there are stories there: just need to be found 
? need to reach a critical amount of features - maybe one/day and then ppl will see the site is changing 




VANCOUVER

-- alberta similar problems? service was abused so much that it was overwhelmed. pulling lots of data
huge amount of data pulled.

way in processing and sharing data has reached a bit of plateau
maybe cos of the decentralised fashion that has been reached.

most of us got involved in imc for the 

looking forward to discussing ways of crafting a peer-network

lull in western canada with imc organising
need new people
people have moved on, movedo ut of the regions
SUSTAINABILITY
popular site

some poorly defined murky relationships and positions eg who maintains stuf 

UK

been involved during a really exciting time period over the past year:
- change to mir
- decentralisation of Kollectives around the island



GLOBAL

going really well
internationalisation
languages
international problems eg belgium

lots of redundancy - people cycle in and out, but are  not missed when they are not there - but valued when they are.

quite rosy on the global site


DISCUSSION

Tshirts for sale

'indymedia economies'

PUSH collectives - someone wants to push stuff through


interest in the idea of australia.indymedia.org in terms of collaboration
would help with contributing stories?



traffic of media
traffic of experience and ideas
need to spread ideas and enthusiasm and sharing around
==> the process of sustainabilility has occured because and through experiences travelling

not sold on a regional site beyond syndication
shoud focus more on mutual aid. 
eg sharing more with each  other - not just on technical level, but also on editorial level. Needs discussion.




no-one here from the pacific/pacific representation
tino rangatiratanga site

there is the facility for articles to be translated - eg into maori that is coming
people are involved in indigenous stuff

lots of inspiration from pga networks

fiji.indymedia.org
samoa.indymedia.org 

==> these are not gonna happen, but imc can mebbe help those communities in facilitating stuff

Alex (Phillipines)

indymedia has helped in the internationalisation of media issues from the phillipines - e.g. the hostage issue (iraq) stories on manila and QC and global - so this was really pushed on a local and a global level
strictly speaking, not part of oceania region geographically
thought of incorporating oceania into the asia-pacific network
-------

v. difficult to judge/gauge how indymedia  does in actually achieving anything but it seems to have done well in this particular issue


one o fthe things for indymedia is to help try and influence govt.

stuff will improve - eg internationalisation/translations

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relevance of radical media to an audience or how does it relate

SOE conference. short interview on 3CR. immediately prior was postal workers on the radio

what are the political 

major issue is 

want a debate on radical media and radical activism - needs to expand to schools and mainstream etc. 
try to create a much more populous media than we are creating now.

OUTREACH AND SUSTAINABILITY

difficult to get different (other) groups to remain involved or to post stuff
be good to get more mainstream and arts and so on involved.

skills lists - probably will not take off: huge cop-information-happiness-database


argentina indymedia - news summation once/month by each group. decent stories of what's going on. 

melbourne calendar works well - means announcements can be taken off. helps maintain critical mass of people looking at site.



  Vulnerability of Media Posters

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-- GarconDuMonde - 15 Jul 2004
-- GarconDuMonde - 16 Jul 2004 - more minor editing
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