[Imc-finance] Ars Electronica Application

[evan]

Lo siento, no esta en castellano.

SUMMARY: Application for 10,000 euro digital communities prize, due 
March 26th 2004.
		Make comments as soon as possible if you think changes need to be 
made.

This is the application for the Ars Electronica Award. Clara and I put 
this together given that there was no objection on this list and one 
IMC consented to support submitting the proposal. Unfortunately there 
is not much time for editing as we have to submit it by tomorrow, the 
26th of March.

We've created a wiki page to track the project and revisions of the 
application:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/ArsElectronica

It has links to this document as well as the ArsElectronica website:
http://www.aec.at/en/prix/communities/communities.asp

Please give comment ASAP given the time constraints. I'm sorry we 
couldn't get this out sooner for people to review.

in solidarity,
evan


Title / Name of Project Indymedia

  Type of Project: community project, social software, publication and 
other

  Description of your project  what is your project about, who are the 
people involved and addressed (3.000 characters maximum)

Indymedia is a collective of independent media organisations and 
hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. 
Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, 
accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.

  Indymedia offers the possibility for direct publishing on a global 
website and more then 130 websites run by local collectives who all 
work independently. Besides maintaining these websites and contributing 
feature articles, local Indymedia groups engage in numerous other local 
media projects like (digital) radio, video, print versions, and the 
organisation of alternative media coverage of events, protests and 
actions.

  Indymedia's network is not only transnational, but deeply rooted in 
local social movements.

  Web Address of the Project  http://www.indymedia.org

Project Details (max. 3.000 characters per question)

Objectives:  What is the objective of your project? What is the common 
goal, topic, interest, etc. of the community or the main uses of the 
software?

A media revolution to make revolution possible, a community that 
empowers itself and others, and a tool kit against all forms of 
censorship . Indymedia as a network does not have a mission statement, 
but Indymedia Seattle which founded the network has a mission which 
broadly covers the objectives of the network.

  The Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to 
using media production and distribution as a tool for promoting social 
and economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination 
of people under-represented in media production and content, and to 
illuminate and analyse local and global issues that impact ecosystems, 
communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the 
biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to 
identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable 
society.

  Language and context:  In which cultural and geographic context is the 
project rooted?

Indymedia is a global project.

  The 130 local Indymedia groups use between one and four languages on 
their sites, depending on their local language(s).

  The global site currently in a transition from predominately English 
to multi-lingual. The site can be displayed in 7 languages at the 
moment, and translations are added on an ad hoc basis, so there is no 
restriction. At the moment of writing, translations include English and 
Spanish, on a regular basis, as well as for example Italian, Czech, 
Swedish, Urdu and Arabic. A custom software has been developed to 
enable this collaborative multilingual publishing.

  Local indymedia centres within the network use the following 
languages: Arabic, Aymara, Basque, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, 
Dutch, English, Esperanto, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, 
Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Quecha, 
Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

  Project History: _What was the project's origin, when and how did it 
start? How did it develop up to the present 
day?_ArsElectronicaHistoryOfIndymedia

  Indymedia is the collective effort of hundreds of independent media 
makers from around the world who are dedicated to providing a forum for 
independent reporting about important social and political issues. 
Several hundred media activists, many of whom have been working for 
years to develop an active independent media through their own 
organisations, came together in late November, 1999 in Seattle to 
create an Independent Media Center to cover protests against the World 
Trade Organization.

  After the WTO protests activists who had participated in the first 
indymedia center took the ideas back to their own community. The 
network of indymedia centres has grown organically over the last four 
years to stretch around the world. A new local Indymedia Center (IMC) 
has been founded and joined the network every 11 and a half days.

  Each indymedia center is initiated by a local group who want to create 
an organization modelled on participatory media making for their own 
communities. They organise and network local activist groups before 
contacting the network.

  During the first year of Indymedia's history there was not formal 
network structure, principles of unity, mission statement, or even 
contacts between the indymedia centers. After a year a conference was 
held where a set of principles of unity were adopted and criteria was 
laid out for membership within the indymedia network.

  The indymedia network has no central office or elected leadership. 
Rather all network decisions are made by semi-autonomous working groups 
and direct participation of the 130+ local IMC's who use consensus 
decision making internally.

  Individual collectives often have histories of media activism that go 
beyond the "official" start as an Indymedia collective.

  People:  What is the core team carrying the project? How many (groups 
of) individuals are currently involved as members or users? How would 
you characterize the people participating in the project? Is access to 
the project open or restricted?

Indymedia has about 130 core teams as each local collective works 
independently. Besides that individuals also work in global working 
groups on different issues regarding technical issues, content and 
organisation.

  We can only estimate the number of involved individuals with at least 
2000 who work with it on a weekly basis. This does not include writers 
who publish their news on Indymedia, translators or individuals who get 
involved in Indymedia at events, actions and protests (like WTO, G8 and 
anti-war demonstrations).

  People are very diverse, ranging from teenagers to 80 year olds, with 
most of them in the 20 to 40s. They come from all continents 
(especially North and South America, Europe and Oceania) and from 
diverse backgrounds. All have in common that they are interested in 
providing a news platform for themselves and others. Skills range from 
writing, radio, video, to software development.

  Using Indymedia to publish news in the open newswire is open to 
everybody, and only restricted by the need to access a computer and the 
internet to do so. It is key to Indymedia that all collectives and 
working groups are open and that they make their decisions on a 
consensus basis.

  Lessons learned:  What has worked / what has not worked in the process 
of realisation of your project?

Indymedia has been a large project and as a result there have been many 
lessons learned, unlearned, and yet to be learned. It's a project in 
exploration about the future of collaborative open media on the 
internet through the advancement of the philosophy and implementation 
of open publish. It's a project to build a democratically run 
decentralized grassroots network which uses the internet as the primary 
medium of communication. We've learned how to build solidarity and 
links from across many barriers including those of developed and 
developing countries, between countries such as Turkey and Greece, 
Israel and Palestine, between communities within countries such as 
flemish and francophone activists in Belgium, indigenous and european 
Bolivians, anglo and latino american activists in the United States. 
We've learned how to make shoestring computers serve millions of page 
views day. We've learned how to save video tape and make documentaries 
films in a open participatory format in mere hours or days. We've 
learned how to shoot steady video during a riot or while avoiding a 
snipers bullet. We been able to empower thousands of people to 
understand that the media is not something to be consumed, but rather a 
tool which can be used to change the world.

  We have only limited successful in extending the indymedia network in 
much of Asia and Africa. We have had some problem with factional 
infighting as well as repression from the state. More than a dozen 
indymedia centers have legal cases brought against them. One project 
which has been proposed but not successfully created is to use 
indymedia to build an international network of progressive and civil 
liberties lawyers.

  We have not always been able to bridge the gaps of knowledge, 
training, and access to resources to bring the truly disenfranchised in 
to the world of media making.

  Technical Information (max. 3.000 characters per question)

Technological basis:  What is the technological basis of your project 
or software (infrastructure, operating system environment, connectivity 
/ telecommunication, etc.)?

Solutions: If your submission is a software, please describe the 
problem it is answering to, what solutions and most important features 
it offers.

Implementations: In what areas / sectors / regions is your software 
currently applied? Where are running implementations of your software 
to be found?

Indymedia is a network of autonomous media centers, which themselves 
include many tech and media making collectives as well as links with 
grassroots movements around the world. Within this network a number of 
free software applications have been developed including web publishing 
platforms of active (active.org.au), sf-active (sfa.indymedia.org), mir 
(mir.indymedia.org), and DadaIMC? (dadaimc.org). Indymedia activists 
have collaborated on projects to create a number of custom GNU/Linux 
distributions including Dynabolic (dynabolic.cjb.net), Debian 
Non-Profit (nonprofit.debian.net), FreakBox? (tinyurl.com/3c6gp), and 
X-Evian (www.e-oss.net/x-evian). Indymedia is developing v2v 
(v2v.indymedia.org), a p2p high quality video publishing and 
distribution system for video activists. Indymedia has contributed 
patches to mailman to help manage particularly high volume mail list 
servers. Translations.indymedia.org is a participatory translations 
workflow application to for multi-language translations.

  Ongoing software development is continuing in close collaboration 
within users to advance the state of the art in terms of open 
publishing, collaborative editing, and participatory media making.

  Indymedia runs about 40 servers spread around the world which host the 
public websites, mail servers, development, internal communication, and 
management of the network.

  Indymedia also maintains dozens of public media labs which provide 
media making facilities to community activists from Johannasburg to 
Brussels, the Antiplano of Bolivia to New York City.

	• 	 Users:* Who are its (potential) users and beneficiaries?

The users and beneficiaries are every individual and organisation who 
want to make their news heard, everybody who wants to hear them, and 
everybody who wants to get first hand accounts instead of main stream 
media. They are the social movements which are provided the tools to 
extend their message and organizing through the use of new and old 
media.

  Indymedia websites are spread around a number of servers which makes 
it difficult to track exact traffic. A conservative estimate is that 
there are more than 100,000 visitors to indymedia's web pages a day. 
Beyond that, indymedia produced content is distributed around the world 
under a copyleft license reach millions of people a year.

  The physical community media centers serve thousands of platforms for 
people to get online, make media, and communicate to the world their 
struggles.

	• 	 License: Under what kinds of licenses do you make it available? 
How many copies / licenses have so far been handed out/downloaded?
  All indymedia software is released under the GPL or GPL Compatible 
licenses. The website and network has a principle of unity requiring 
indymedia centers to use free software where possible. Unless stated 
otherwise by individual authors, all publish material (text, audio, 
video) is copyleft. Each individual is free to use a license of their 
choosing, but a vast majority use copyleft.

  Because of the decentralized nature of the indymedia network we have 
no statistics for the number of copies distributed of indymedia 
produced media or technology.

	• 	 Statement of Reasons:* Why the submitted project deserves to win a 
prize in the "Digital Communities" category.
  Indymedia by its very nature is a digital community that links more 
then 130 local coommunites through various digital tools (websites, 
email, wiki, irc) and with uncountable users worldwide. The idea of 
Indymedia is constantly spreading with new IMCs being set up by local 
media activists around the world. Indymedia is a community that works 
as a network and that thrives from the efforts of the individuals who 
feel that their work is part of local and global struggles and 
empowerment.

  Planned use of prize money: Indymedia works with volunteers only, and 
a lot of technical equipment and internet access (bandwidth) is 
sponsored, however money is needed for basic equipment in African, 
Asian and South American IMCs, as well as for transport costs for 
shipments of second hand equipment. Only in extraordinary cases travel 
costs are paid for individuals from the Global South. Prize money would 
go into the global account, for which local collectives can make 
proposals to receive micro-grants to fund projects. Such proposals are 
decided upon by consensus. An overview over past financial decisions is 
at http://docs.indymedia.org/Global/ImcFinance

Biography (max. 1000 chrs) of the community / author of software or 
publication For a biography of Indymedia please see the history 
(above). Most local collectives are linked to a longer history of media 
activism through individuals and organisations engaged in them.


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