[New-imc] RE: [Imc-vlaanderen] IMC Belgium and proposed new IMC Vlaanderen

[lize]

Gosh, another roman, I should have known it....

""bad quality" of the IMC.be feature on 11/09."

>>> I was talking about the "bad quality" (according to vlo and guido)
of the imc.VL feature on 11/9. Ask vlo and guido for more details. They
said in IRC they didn't want to link from the imc.be and imc.nl feature
on 11/9 to the imc.vl feature because they didn't like the sentence
"another 11 september is possible" etc..

"I don't say that IMC-activists cannot participate in the
content-producing aspects of an IMC-site, but IMC-activists should in my
opinion be very aware of patterns of expectations that are created
indirectly by their behaviour."

>>> I am very aware of this, that's why I wrote some mails about it on
imc.be-process. Don't tell me you didn't read them because I saw the
url's also on the imc.vl list. In fact I read my words in your words
here.
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-belgium-process/2003-September/
001658.html

"We don't want to transform ourselves to classical research-and-publish
journalists. In the first place IMC is about giving a platform to
ordinary people out of our communities."
"IMC-vl-collective exclusively starts to write articles and features,
take pictures, etc. that BEFORE we know it we end up in a relation
writers-public. It's the platform that counts. Again: that's why we
agreed not to finish the second Cancún-feature."

>>> you shouldn't distinguish imc-activists and ordinary people, not
distinguish public and writers : imc-activists are themselves at the
same time ordinary people, public, writers and platform giving
imc-activists.

>>> It's not because you take the voluntary job to organise the platform
that you stop being a publisher. "not to transform ourselves to
classical research-and-publish journalists" : not the classical
mainstream ones of course, but take e.g. my articles on the g8 process
in genova : no 'classical' research-journalist will write about it. In
my opinion, sometimes it's good to give 'the first move' as an
'imc-activist', it works motivating for others to write about the same
subject too. See for examples my background articles on Cancun and how
many 'non-imc activists' followed me in writing also background
articles. 

>>> " that's why we agreed not to finish the second Cancún-feature." 
I am afraid all the philosophy above looks a bit like an excuse to me.

"If you regret why IMC's cannot coöperate together, join the mailinglist
turlututu has started."
>>> I just did. Sorry, I didn't know of the existence of such a list. I
missed some mails I guess. Pseudopunk although just told me in IRC that
the communication about such a list was made AFTER the creation of the
list.

Okay this is it. I can't answer more books on this.

Bye bye
lize
> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: tuc2002 at fastmail.fm [mailto:tuc2002 at fastmail.fm]
> Verzonden: donderdag 25 september 2003 13:51
> Aan: Imc be Process; imc-vlaanderen at lists.indymedia.org; new-
> imc at lists.indymedia.org; lize at indymedia.be
> Onderwerp: Re: [Imc-vlaanderen] IMC Belgium and proposed new IMC
> Vlaanderen
> 
> 
> Hi Lize,
> Some response from inside the IMC-vl collective.
> 
> 1) We are thinking about the double postings.
> 
> 2) We indeed announced articles on the Cancún-negotiations (two are
still
> on my C-drive, nearly finished ;). The reason why we stopped working
on
> them was because we agreed not to take a lead in the content-posting
on
> the website. After we posted the first two articles we had a
discussion
> in the collective on what work should be done first. We agreed it was
way
> more important to do outreach and self-reviewing at this stage. The
risk
> of doing too much content of the site from the beginning is that we
would
> bolster the classical media producer-consumer division. I guess a lot
of
> us are still thinking on this one. The agreement was that we would
> facilitate feature-making (writing for example a how-to) in the first
> place instead of upholding the "why don't the IMC-boys-and-girls write
> something on X or Y" idea.
> I personally quit writing articles on Cancún because I saw that the
issue
> was important for the collective. And it is. So right now, I don't
think
> content-producing work is the main issue for is.
> I ask myself if it ever can be the main issue for IMC-volunteers, but
> anyway. In the near future we might decide to write features ourselves
> again, after the how-to is online and while starting to do outreach.
> 
> You could have send an e-mail to our collective on the
Cancún-articles.
> We would have had no problem explaining any of the decisions of the
> collective and you would'n need to be let down too much (or get a view
on
> the rationality of some decisions).
> 
> 3) I don't know anything of "bad quality" of the IMC.be feature on
11/09.
> Linking the two features was not collectively discussed. The feature
was
> thus certainly not treated by the collective as a tool in competition
> with IMC.be (how would an unknown testsite compete with IMC.be in the
> fisrt place?). I don't discard the risk that competition is going to
take
> place, but at least this was not the case here. It must have been an
> individual opinion that vlo an guido registrated on IRC and was "blown
> up" to be a collective opinion of all IMC-vl volunteers (probably not
by
> them and not on purpose).
> Look at our mailing-list and read the communication on the feature in
> case. Besides that, why would we mention the work on Cancún on the
IMC.be
> website in our own feature if we planned to compete and not linking
> features and articles???
> 
> 4) There is indeed a lot of different communication going on on the
> IMC-vl mailinglist. That's partly because we only have one list
available
> (I thought the standard for NewIMC's). We are thinking of asking for
> more, so we could for example start our tech- and edito-group lists.
> Besides that, it seems that all eyes are on the IMC-vl collective, and
> only on that collective. That's why we are really afraid to use
private
> mailings and personal mailings too much. Whenever we would do that
(for
> which reason whatsoever), everybody would say we were discussing
things
> in private and no-transparant. Even for the "psychological" e-mails.
One
> result of this is that everything is sent to the IMC-vl mailinglist.
> 
> >>> the decision process about making a new feature seems to be very
slow.
> >>> I think (hope) the collective will learn that when covering news,
it
> is
> >>> very difficult to first have a coverage strategy and a task
division :
> >>> before you agreed on this, the news has become old.
> 
> Indeed this is something we might need to learn. But given my
statements
> above: this is right now not our main problem, since methods can be
> loosely changed in order to be applied faster. We don't want to
transform
> ourselves to classical research-and-publish journalists. In the first
> place IMC is about giving a platform to ordinary people out of our
> communities. If the newswire is from the start monopolized by
(although
> hard-working) professional and fulltime activists, I don't regard IMC
as
> a succes. That resembles in no way the open publishing philosophy. I
> don't say that IMC-activists cannot participate in the
content-producing
> aspects of an IMC-site, but IMC-activists should in my opinion be very
> aware of patterns of expectations that are created indirectly by their
> behaviour.
> The risk exists that, in the case that the IMC-vl-collective
exclusively
> starts to write articles and features, take pictures, etc. that BEFORE
we
> know it we end up in a relation writers-public. It's the platform that
> counts. Again: that's why we agreed not to finish the second
> Cancún-feature.
> 
> 5) You didn't read in our report on the meeting last sunday that we
were
> going to ask for an IMC-url. I explained it in a personal mail to
Guido,
> but I see he didn't take the chance of explaining it in his reply to
your
> mail. IMC-vl is a testsite, and we have today set the url
www.imc-vl.org
> and www.indymedia-vlaanderen.org in action. We are not going to apply
for
> an official IMC-url. That is not possible, which is totally
> understandable in my opinion.
> 
> 6) If you regret why IMC's cannot coöperate together, join the
> mailinglist turlututu has started. It was created especially for
> coöperation between Belgian IMC's. Up to today, the following people
did
> subscribe themselves:
> freeallcows at hotmail.com
> joeri at indymedia.org
> klaasysebaert at hotmail.com
> tuc2002 at fastmail.fm
> turlututu at indymedia.org
> yannindy at yahoo.fr
> laurentnelen at skynet.be
> 
> Feel free to join it. As you see, no-one from the IMC-be collective is
> subscribed yet.
> 
> 
> 7) "A lot of discussion among the imc.vl members is what most energy
is
> spilled on now."
> To be honest, I think it would be a bigger problem if a new collective
> didn't "spend its time" on discussing what to do and where to go. I
think
> that is what is expected from the NewIMC process in the first place:
to
> get a better view of where you stand and what your role as a
collective
> should be. Otherwise it might be a little too late...
> We are thus still discussing the project. And since we are expecting a
> follow-up on the IMC-wvl en liège proposal (where does it stay, for
god's
> sake ;) the furture will bring more and more discussions. As long as
> everybody tries to improve the situation and stays somewhat rational
and
> constructive, I guess this self-reviewing stage is not a bad thing for
> Belgian IMC's...
> 
> 
> Hopefully I could explain some of our decisions through this e-mail.
> Again, feel free to communicate with us (be it through our
mailinglist,
> the coöperation mailinglist, IRC, our even the forum).
> 
> greetings,
> TUc
> from the IMC-vl collective, but writing in his own name.
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 21:27:28 +0200, "lize" <lize at indymedia.be> said:
> > Hey,
> >
> > Almost 1 month has passed since I' ve sent out my last mail about my
> > view/my report on the proceeding of the proposed new IMC Vlaanderen.
> > http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/new-imc/2003-August/004187.html
> > http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/new-imc/2003-August/004300.html
> >
> > The new imc.vl collective has organized some open meetings and
finally
> > opened an open maillinglist for all communication.
> >
> > ** the testsite **
> > newswire : The site is getting more known and some postings are
done. A
> > lot of postings are double (also posted on imc.be or imc.wvl), which
I
> > regret, but still imc.be bashing articles are banned, which seems
very
> > positive to me.
> > features : a background feature on Cancun was made and from the next
5
> > features 3 were posted by the imc.wvl collective (all 3 also posted
on
> > imc.be). the other 2 features were made by the imc.vl collective.
> >
> > **undone, double and competing work**
> > My original enthousiasm about an extra (although separately working)
> > Indymedia workforce in Belgium is slowing down again.
> > - Except from 2 or 3 background articles no covering was done of the
> > protests of Cancun at the imc.vl site, although some members
announced
> > to do this.
> > - On 11 september a feature was made with kind of the same info at
the
> > imc.be feature, but talking to guido (imc.be) and vlo (imc.nl) in
irc
> > they were not in favour of linking to the 11 september imc.vl
feature
> > because they considered it 'bad quality' (e.g. the sentence :
'another
> > 11 september is possible' !??) It looks a lot like this feature was
made
> > in a spirit of "let's compete with imc.be and try to do better". Of
> > course this isn't the right spirit and only creates double work and
> > energy spilling.
> >
> > **imc-vlaanderen list**
> > the communication is now open and done through a mailinglist.
> > http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-vlaanderen/
> > - The list is made for process and edito work, but contains a lot of
> > 'psychological' and 'therapeutic' mails between the members of the
> > collective. My estimation is 3 out of 5 mails are not really about
> > decision making, which makes this list look more like
> > 'let's-help-ourselve-list' than a list of a collective preparing
> > themselves to get approved by global as a new IMC.
> > - the decision process about making a new feature seems to be very
slow.
> > I think (hope) the collective will learn that when covering news, it
is
> > very difficult to first have a coverage strategy and a task division
:
> > before you agreed on this, the news has become old.
> >
> > **approval by global**
> > I dunno about the final procedure to be recognized as a new IMC but
I
> > read in the report of the imc.vl meeting that they are planning to
go
> > 'online', to make flyers, to do mega outreach, to have an Indymedia
url
> > etc. before the Bombspotting action of 25th October 2003. In fact I
> > don't read in their report any feedback on how the recognition
process
> > with global is going on.
> >
> > **My view**
> > Of course I am still convinced that we need extra Indymedia
activists in
> > Belgium. I regret deeply both collectives cannot work together. But
at
> > this point, it looks to me like the main motivation of imc.vl is 'to
> > compete' with imc.be although I don't see a lot of energy spilled on
> > thorough covering. A lot of discussion among the imc.vl members is
what
> > most energy is spilled on now.
> >
> > The competing imc situation in Belgium is a very sad situation and
I'm
> > afraid it will only get worse. The proud of both collectives is
> > enormous. At the bombspotting action, the two collectives will be
> > fysically present and will be 'competing' each other in front of all
the
> > peace activists. We are ridiculous.
> >
> > Regards,
> > lize
> >
> >
> --
> 
>   tuc2002 at fastmail.fm
> 
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