[New-imc] "that is I"

[Petros Evdokas]

> At 10:45 AM 5/12/2002 +0300, Petros wrote:
> 
> >2. If you are the same Christofer with whom Scott Lewis
> >is working toward expanding the Bandwidth co-op, there
> >are concrete ways you might help us for the specific
> >(and desperate! needs) of the cyprus -imc group.
> >
> >Thanks again,
> >Petros
> >------------


christopher mitchell wrote:
> 
> that is I, what do you need?
> --christopher
> 
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Hi Christofer,

Thank you for writing back and offering to help.

I'm not quite sure how much of the help we have been
receiving is also due to you in addition to Scott Lewis
of the Bandwidth co-op. It has been very precious. If
you are one of the people who have been working with
Scott to help us, I wish to thank you on behalf of all
of us at Cyprus Indymedia. We are really grateful!

Many people in our region expect some kind of war, or
military incident, to break out in summer or late
summer around the Cyprus conflict. I hate being an
alarmist, and I hope these fears will never be
confirmed. The Cyprus Indymedia group is still not
functional enough to handle a sudden onslaught of
publishing and journalist work if things go to hell
before we have our online Open Publishing functional,
in place. More than that, there is a need for our
voice, of a local/ regional Indymedia voice, to
contribute to the peace-building and justice- seeking
efforts, now, hopefully to help prevent escalation to
war. We are still unable to do it by ourselves. We
still need some help in the technical sphere. 

A few weeks ago, I started writing in desperation
because a lot of us at the Cyprus Indymedia group felt
that while imc has bucket-loads of technically
proficient volunteers, our need for help to go online
with some kind of webpage similar to what most imc
groups operate, was (and still is) being ignored. I
understand that this is not a result of policy, and it
has nothing to do with Cyprus, and it has everything to
do with a lack of organization where some things just
"tend to happen" while others "just don't". Still,
whatever the reason, the outcome is that a newly-
formed imc group like ours is left just floundering,
and our cries for help were just ignored. 


The way things are now, is seems that if a newly formed
imc group already has a technical infrastructure in
place, it receives attention and help, if it doesn't,
its needs are ignored. I don't understand it, but this
is my experience.

So far, the only people helping Cyprus Indymedia
technically, are colleagues who were contacts and
friends from *before* we formed Cyprus Indymedia. After
several pleas, we have received two or three querries
from tech- related people who then just switched off
and never wrote again. Weird? Perhaps.
But I see continuous activity by technically proficient
imc- volunteers on many projects. For example I see
some people traipsing all over the globe in the name of
imc, setting up new imc groups complete with websites,
and "giving" them to people who have no participation
in the social- political process of their locals or
regions. Which imc body among us approves, or generates
those projects? How is it decided that network
resources will go in one direction and not another?
That is a significant, major concern.

But but the more specific point is that if a newly-
formed imc comes into the network and does *not* have a
technical structure in place, like the Cyprus
Indymedia, and believes that the "mission statements"
made by the imc- Tech group and by the New- Imc group
that "there will be assistance" are true, as we
believed it, then what happens? It's worse than
dissappointment. To tell you the truth, I experience
this fog of disorganization with a personal bitterness,
with a sense of betrayal. And so do my other colleagues
in the Cyprus Indymedia group. 

I guess by writing all this I wanted to share our
agonies with a new friend like you who has offered to
help us:  partly, to give you an idea of where we are
at, and partly to share with others reading this, a
slice of imc reality nobody wants to hear. We can learn
from what happened to imc- Cyprus, and find ways to
improve imc. We need:
o - to warn new imc groups that there is much to be
desired in the organization among us; 
o - to ask of the New- imc group and imc- Process
group, which handle the orientation of newly formed imc
groups, to shoulder some responsibility for this,
perhaps by taking some initiative to repair the
situation in co-operation with the imc- Tech group;
o - to create some process which will prevent this from
happening to other new imc groups;
o - to create credible structures which can give to all
the hard- working technical volunteers an assurance
that all the work they do is in the *right* direction,
and not being wasted on somebody's personal fantasies
or in projects which do not embody the mission and
principles of the emerging global imc network.

I guess this letter ended up being more about the
broader needs of the imc- network rather than for the
Cyprus- imc. May I send you separately an update for
the Cyprus- imc detailing "where we are and what we
need"? Friends and allies are also invited to visit our
Archives or write to our tech- dialogue tool:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/eastern-mediterranean-tech

Thanks again,
Petros
---------------