[Imc-belgium-process] [blicero@ecn.org: [New-imc] on imc belgium and so on]

[han]

Hi

For a collective answer you really will have to wait untill the next general
assembly of  the .be collective.  Other collectives : W-vl, Liege, video,
circus, ... are hopefully discussing this at their next meetings.
As we have people on holiday's and a lot of people not using e-mail to
discuss such things, it is jus impossible to be able to take a collective
stand.  So we will have to wait untill the beginning of september to have a
collective stand.

> i really don't see why
> a. people in various region start an imc and promote its use
> b. people presently doing imc be (since they are actually all based in
> bruxelles) don't do bruxelles imc
> c. belgium becomes a portal to all this different things
> 
> i don;'t really see why this proposal is not reasonable to imc be people
> and/or
> to other regional imc in belgium

I can give you my personal thoughts.
Belgium is smaller than a city like Rome, Londen, Paris, NYC, Washington,
... You should take that into consideration.  It takes les time to get from
one  Belgian city to Brussels than it takes to get from a suburb from Paris,
Berlin, London, ... to the city center.

I said before that I personally like the idea of local IM's.  But we have a
long way to go to get there.
What does local mean.  The proposal by Bart speaks about 11 provinces, but
those are adminstrative borders that do not mean verry much,...
For instance we  have people in Mons, Charleroi, Mechelen, Antwerpen,
Leuven, Sint Niklaas, ... Those people do work on a  local level (if
somethings happens in their city they report) but I think those people will
not be very happy if they need to work on provincial website.

We have probably more people working on the railways, busses, schools &
universitys, ... then there are people  living in some provinces or main
city's?  So what does local mean?
It will take time to enable people to set up local IMC's and to figure out
what local means.

And than there is the issue that we have a Belgium collective, with people
from the different language communities working together.  We deliberately
did this to enable people to work together.  As for  me this is one of the
strong things of the .be collective.

...

And the main question to me is : What are problems we are trying to find a
solution for.  And I think that the main problem "diversity" will only be
"moved" from the .be level to the local level.
We will not have more diversity if we have 11 sites reporting on the same
issues, having the same debates, ....  What does diversity mean?  Does it
means more different issues, problems, reports, media, .... or does it mean
telling 11 times the same story with the same picture from a different
angle?
That said, I think that local site should start right away if they there is
a local collective that would like to do this.  As for me they can work
within the .be collective or start a whole new site (like w-vl).

---

So these are some of my personal ideas on this whole debate.

I think we will be able to sort all this out, but I think it is bad idea to
force things and to go for "fast-solutions".