[Imc-uk-process] Minutes of the ESF IMC Network Meeting 28 Feb

[Brett Hennig]

These are available here and below:

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkEsfNetworkMeetingMinutes28Feb04

cheers
brett

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Minutes of the ESF IMC Network Meeting 

    Minutes of the ESF IMC Network Meeting 
    Website 
    Media Centre 
    World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) 
    Democratise the ESF proposal 
    Babels (UK) 
    Involvement and/or Entryism 
    Communication Forum 
    Consume the ESF 

Saturday February 28th 2004, 12-5pm London. 

8 people attended, of which two were completely new to
IMC (they were friends, and left early). Of the other
six, 1 was from London, 3
from Oxford and 2 from Cambridge. 

At the start an overview of the ESF process from
pre-Paris to the present was given. Reports were then
heard back from Oxford (many
months ago decided to get involved and try to provide
media centre), Cambridge (a debate about
official/unofficial involvement resulted in
unofficial being chosen) and London (some people sick
of it but many keen to get involved to some extent).
Then the agenda was decided and
discussed as below. 

Website 

There is an unoffical website at esf2004.net. We could
try to force the official site to be open. A letter
was sent from the French web
providers to democratise_esf list. If opening up fails
we could: use imc as news source, syndicate a news
column on esf2004.net, could use
fse-esf.org if they change domain name. [At the
organising committee meeting on Sunday it was made
clear that they would use Poptel to do
all web work] 

Media Centre 

We could: draft a groovy proposal, discuss it at the
IMC European summer camp in Greece (?), start
collecting second hand hardware for
later donation to grassroots groups (problems:
collection and storage), do radio
interviews/broadcasts. 

World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) 

We could: organise a parallel conference/or try to get
it inside the official program. But it must impact
outside the communications groups,
and have broad participation in organising it. We
would like to hear more from people participating. 

Democratise the ESF proposal 

Urge the process list to consult with IMCs and
hopefully sign it. (put in a link to it!) 

Babels (UK) 

Babels is a translation network connected to the Paris
website group. It would be good to come up with a
holistic communications proposal
that dealt with the process from
seminars->translations->web streaming (for example) as
part of a Communication Forum. People should try
to meet with Babels at the European Assembly next
weekend. 

Involvement and/or Entryism 

Discussion of methods of getting inside, getting
information out (this seems to be happening now but
will it continue?), then having a fringe
event (inside the ESF process but organised as
autonomously as possible). This led to the main idea
of a: 

Communication Forum 

Organise a complete proposal with many groups to
present to the program group. Firstly try to get IMC
UK agreement to this (quite a
discussion took place if this was necessary/at all
possible). Get other groups involved (e.g. Commedia,
WHO ELSE WAS MENTIONED?),
make a precise detailed proposal, make it a self
organising forum. Include the translation streaming,
media centre, WSIS forums from above.
Continue the network after the ESF by getting people
to sign up to email lists or otherwise. 

Consume the ESF 

Since individuals cannot participate in the process
and they want us to behave as mere consumers, then
consume it. Treat the ESF as a means
to an end (e.g. network meetings, maximise
networking).
 

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