[Imc-finance] Ars Electronica Application

[sheri at speakeasy.org]

thanks evan and clara for putting this together.

i'm taking a look at it and will probably send back some small comments this evening.  when are you planning on sending in tomorrow so i have a precise deadline?

Sheri
 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: evan [mailto:evan at protest.net]
> Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2004 08:56 PM
> To: Imc-finance at lists.indymedia.org
> Subject: [Imc-finance] Ars Electronica Application
> 
> 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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