[CIMC-working] (collective intelligence) Fwd: [Imc-strategies] intro

[Chris Kaihatsu]

Subj:  (collective intelligence)  Fwd: [Imc-strategies] intro
Date:  1/8/03 5:29 am


-- Forwarded Message --

hi,

i'm sheri from seattle imc and involved in many different projects in
the network.  i found myself organizing the imc during the wto in
seattle with some cool people and have been involved both locally and
at the network level since then.  on the network level, i participate
fairly actively (with some breaks here and there) on imc-legal,
imc-commwork, finance, women, new imc, newsblast and resolve.

in seattle, i'm a current spokescouncil member, try to be a liaison
(unofficially) for key lists and work on organizational development
things in seattle.  my past history was more as a journalist in radio
and video.  alot of my interviews are on indymedia.  i'll have a blog
soon and hope to share more of my ideas in that forum.

personally, i'm very interested in documentation, best practices,
network reflection (who and what are we really) and sustainability.
that means internal communication and the sharing of knowledge are
critical.  i'm also very keen on redistributing the wealth on many
levels and thinking outside the box when it comes to funding and
fundraising and transitioning from more capitalist centered economies
to those which engender supportive resource sharing.  gifting it is a
great documentary on burning man with a central interview with lewis
hyde (author of "the gift:  imagination and the erotic life of
property).

i've been thinking alot about indymedia for three years.  it's been a
kind of love affair.  i've met some of the most amazing passionate
brilliant hard working people in my life and have fallen in love many
times.  i think this is a good sign.  at one point we had
amor.indymedia.org set up and some of us would jokingly say that all
roads lead to love.indymedia.org.  i think love is a great and
wonderful thing and we need more of it everywhere.  that's a personal
principle:  nothing evolves us like love.

on a less philosophical and more political level, i see huge
potential for what this network can do and it extends beyond
currently covering protests.  which does seem to be a focus and which
is really critical.  i hope we can begin to also focus some of the
collective attention in the network on alternatives
(alternatives.indymedia.org was set up to be a kind of repository for
this kind of information but has yet to really be used).  the
"revolution" is as much about documenting, creating and acknowledging
the solutions that exist and/or could exist.

as tom hayden said at the jail in seattle "it is not enough to slow
the rate of destruction, we must increase the rate of creation."  i
find that to be a guiding principle as well.

figuring out, discussing and developing models to help us think about
how a network of this size can communicate effectively with itself in
order that we can then coordinate and share and support each other is
critical.  this is a kind of self-governance (as opposed to
decision-making).  and it's a very interesting experiment we are
engaged in.  i hope that we can continue to use a mindset of
experimentation and not get bogged down in being afraid of making
mistakes.  let's make mistakes and quickly correct them.  let's think
of the open source model of software development.  those mistakes are
bugs.  but look at what has happened with open source software.
because of the large-scale collective input, the belief in running
code and rough consensus and the ongoing nature of the development
over time, some of the best software in the world is open source.
i'd call that utilizing collective intelligence at a level that i'd
love to see on the social side of things.

love
sheri

"if the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new
programs, but by new minds with no programs at all.  old minds think,
if it didn't work last year, let's do more of it this year.  new
minds think, if it didn't work last year, let's do something else
this year."  -- Daniel Quinn