[New-imc] IMC Romania - first meeting report

[boud]

hi joanne, everyone,

On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, joanne richardson wrote:

> First, to give you an update, I tried to contact Laszlo Szabo and Joseph
> Lyons who sent in the IMC Transylvania request form last summer. Joseph
> replied that I should contact Laszlo, Laszlo never replied and noone has a
> phone contact for him. Seems a lost cause. I did manage to have some real

Hey, relax! :) They've been contacted, no need for you to chase after
them, but now they won't be able to claim that they've been excluded.
If they're really interested, they'll contribute sooner or later,
as long as the structure is open and non-hierarchical.

> email exchange (actually about 20) with Cristian Bowie who asked about
> Indymedia Bulgaria/Romania. As it turns out he is working with some
> friends at Bootlab in Berlin, and since we have some Goethe money I
> invited him and a few others to come to Romania to do a sound performance
> and workshop with our radio group at the end of February.

Great!

> I already sent in the new IMC request form (some of the fields were kind
> of funky and wouldn’t accept stuff I copy-pasted, or my replies were too
> long, if it didn't arrive in a decent format, please let me know and I’ll

It looks like it came through fine :)  :
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2003-February/003354.html 

> resend it by email. I’d also like to also send you now the report on the
> first Indymedia Romania meeting last week in Cluj (which I wrote for the
> Next 5 Minutes editorial group and for a few Romanian mailinglists).

Thanks - this sort of thing helps us a lot to get a feel for how organising
is going on.
 
> The Romania IMC meeting was organized by the group in Cluj (we still don’t
...

> floor (for Indymedia & video group). We hope this is the beginning of a
> collaboration that will result in the creation of the first public access
> media lab and free internet café in Cluj (actually in Romania).

Hmmm... i'm not aware of any free internet cafes here in Poland...

> What we have been doing since October is in an important sense part of the
> Indymedia horizon – attempting to create an alternative to the mainstream
> media monopoly thru self-produced media. So we decided after some
> discussions (and, to confess, after a few reservations about the
> homogenous content and look of many IMC sites) that forming a Romania IMC

When you work through the "principles of unity" and "membership
criteria" you'll see, IMHO, that there are no constraints trying to
force any homogeneity of content or look, apart from, say, the request
to have some variation of the (((i))) logo on the site and a link to
the full list of "approved" local IMCs. i think it just happens that
some issues come up naturally (the IMC PL site has been about 90% or
so dominated by anti-war stuff over the past two weeks - nobody ever
decided this, it just happened, and we've even commented that we need
to do more outreach to people who have other human rights priorities,
just as "bread and jobs"). It's maybe also that many groups have much
less internet experience than your collective seems to have, so they
have difficulty being more creative about the form of the website, and
consider form to be lower priority than content.

> Participants in the January 24-26 Romania IMC meeting included:
...

Great!

> Discussion during the meeting focused on the kind of content that would go
> on the site. We agreed to have the standard Indymedia coverage (local
> campaigns, demonstrations, police and media abuse, translations of
> international news).  

i think this sounds more like a mission statement, what you would
*hope* people to put on the site, rather than a real decision. 

Maybe people will provide the content they promised, but the more 
difficult decision is to decide on an editorial policy, i.e. what's
the specific process of deciding on what articles/comments to *hide*?

As i said above, there was never any editorial decision at IMC PL to
focus on anti-war stuff, and probably only a small fraction comes from
people who've been active in getting the collective going. IMHO, most
comes from people who've been sitting around watching, judging whether
we're really as open and non-hierarchical as we claim to be, and who
happen to feel that the theme is a priority.

> But also and in addition the site will include:
...

Having more creative stuff is certainly welcome :). Art is part of 
resistance. 

> After the meeting:
> 
> 1. We set up a provisional mailinglist for the editorial group (we are now
> 15) who will produce the site, add content and provide tech support &
> maintenance. We will set up another more public list for circulating news,
> information, announcements, discussions, etc ...

Just to clarify: i would suggest that both the mailing list for the
editorial group and the public list 

- be open to anyone who wishes to subscribe and participate
- have public archives

 
> 3. We created a quick html sample page for the Indymedia Romania website
> (just as a first step for editors to discuss ideas of design and possible
> content). The tech group is deciding between software options (between
> Active & Slashcode) - actually, the bigger debate in the group now is that

Since you don't like homogeneity ;), and you're interested in design,
if you have some French speakers, i would suggest you check out the
French sites, which use SPIP:

http://nice.indymedia.org  (http://lille.indymedia.org  similar format)

http://paris-indymedia.ouvaton.org/   (link down right at the moment,
will become  http://paris.indymedia.org  soon)

There are help pages on the TWiki (in French):
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcNice#DEVELOPPEMENTS_

L'exception française... ;)

> the free software rule, acknowledging its advantages, has the immediate
> effect of slowing us down considerably & centralizing the website
> production in Cluj since no one else has access to a PC running on Linux.

As long as Window$ is installed first, it's possible to install Linux
as a second operating system and have both running on the same PC:

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+Windows-HOWTO/

Of course, you should probably get the agreement of the PC owner first ;) ...

If you install linux first, and then window$, the risk is that window$
will damage the linux installation; linux is tolerant of intolerance ;).

 
> We are now:
> -waiting for our newimc request to be approved by Indymedia :)

It sounds like that in the balance between form and content, your
collective is more in favour of form than typical Indy collectives.

i don't see anything wrong with this, but i think it would be reasonable
that you structure your group openly and non-hierarchically so that 
those participants more interested in content are able to fully 
participate.

Please look carefully through

http://newimc.indymedia.org
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/NewImcPageImprovements

for the next steps in the process, especially
"NEW IMC PROCESS - HOW IT WORKS"

This is not an attempt to homogenise you ;), just a list of hints
based on experience of existing IMCs.

You've clearly done steps 1., 2., 3. and 5., and plan to do 4.

So it looks like steps 6. and 7. are next...!


> -waiting for editors to suggest additional content for the website
> -asking more people to collaborate by contributing material/news from
> their cities
> -recruiting subscribers for the public discussion mailinglist

Could i suggest that you make it clear that *people* and *subscribers*
should be encouraged to contribute and participate fully in the editorial
process, that you're not trying to make one group of "insiders" and another
of "the public"?  i think this is what you mean, but the way it's written
it could be misinterpreted.

This is not purely from an ethical point of view, it's also practical.

People from oppressed groups are simply more likely to contribute if
they feel they have equal control of the site than if they feel like
outsiders. And given the open culture of Indymedia, people's feelings
are not likely to be too far from the reality.
 

So apart from the outreach question and clarification of "editors" vs
"the public", i think the forming IMC Romania collective is probably
ready to go through steps 6. and 7.  Please remember that you're quite
welcome to go through these steps creatively. The IMC network is
experimental and any new style of organising you go through is likely
to provide inspiration to other IMC collectives...

pozdrawiam
boud

PS: If i can quote your own words ;) to you:
http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors2/richardsontext2.html

> ... initiatives to provide infrastructure, improved access, means of
> communication and exchange to people who for economic and political
> reasons are lacking these means. These modes of production and
> exchange are not primarily constituted by being directed against an
> enemy; the content is not determined in advance through a
> preconceived opposition, but left to be shaped by its producers.

IMHO, this is more or less what Indymedia is about - but with the
additional condition that those "lacking these means" should also be
able to fully participate in the decision-making and organising and
editorial decision-making of the medium itself, not just as producers.

> Indymedia's own anarcho-communist position, raised to the level of a
> universal truth.

;) 

There's no requirement for "anarcho-communist" perspectives to be
represented in an Indymedia collective, as long it's non-hierarchical,
open and inviting to the proletariat ;), open and inviting to the
bourgeoisie, and even open to post-structuralists and situationists
who defy both deconstruction and construction and can't be situated
anywhere, but in a way that none of these groups (or individuals) end
up dominating and taking non-consensual decisions...