[Imc-alternatives] Activists Networks and Indymedia

[Aaron Kreider]

I also posted this on the wiki.

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/ActivismNetwork


Activist Networks: How to Build an Interlocking Local Activist Networks 
to Expand upon the Indymedia Mission


What is the website?
www.CampusActivism.org – campus version.
www.ActivismNetwork.org – general version.
www.ActivismNetwork.org/developers/ - developers site. Code download.

Who is behind it?
Aaron Kreider. A former student activist who left grad school to work on 
this, and has done over 90% of the work. It isn’t directly linked to any 
specific organization, though we’re happy to work with fellow travelers.

Who funds it?
Currently it is funded by some very small ad-revenues and Aaron is 
paying the rest (and is looking for part-time consulting jobs in php/mysql).

When did it start?
I’ve wanted to do an online database since 1997 – to help organizers. In 
the summer of 2001, I learnt about php/mysql and came up with the idea 
of doing this site. The main example, CampusActivism.org, launched in 
April 2002 (roughly the same time Friendster came out). The source code 
was released in June 2002. The main point is that I’ve been working on 
it for five to six years – the project is very stable, and self-financed.

How many people use it?
The main site, www.campusactivism.org, is visited by between 1500-4500 
users/day (admittedly many of them don’t stick around). Currently it 
lists over 1500 groups, 3500 people, 450 resources, 1500 events (most 
have already happened), and approximately 70,000 resources have been 
downloaded.

What is the current state of project activity?
It is as active as it ever was. Recently I’ve been focussing on 
restructuring the code to make it easier for other developers (as well 
as myself) to change it, so the functionality hasn’t been expanding. 
Also, I’m becoming more interested in networking with other 
organizations, and less focussed on programming.


The niche: What is an activist network? How does it differ from a social 
network?
The primary goal is to promote activism. Socializing will happen as a 
byproduct of that goal. MySpace’s and Facebook’s goal is to make money, 
and thus they entice you to waste your time to maximize the number of 
ads that you view (and click on). Socializing plays a critical role in 
activism, but a lot of the socializing is best done when you are working 
on the same campaign as another person, or in-person (not online) 
through meetings, conferences, protests, conference calls, personal 
calls, and other in-person events.

I’m trying to get the basics done right. Having simple things like an 
events calendar, a group directory, and a resources directory – are 
valuable tools for activists that should be at the core of our 
definition of online activism. It makes sense to get the simpler things 
working and used by a lot of people, before we try to figure out more 
advanced ways of networking.


Integrating your IMC with social movement/social movement organizations
This software is useful for integrating your IMC with social movements. 
It supports an expansive role for the IMC that includes serving as an 
organizing hub – providing local activists with the tools to be more 
effective. IMCs are ideal for this due to their existing web-presence, 
their technical skills, their multi-issue constituency, the existing IMC 
international network, and because many IMCs have already taken on the 
role of being a hub. You cannot have a progressive independent media 
without social movements. Getting social movement organizations working 
together and thriving will help your IMC.

What are data silos? How does Activism Network avoid being a data silo?
Our system goes beyond being free software to implementing free data. 
We’re the only organization that has opened up our data to work with 
others... we’re just waiting for other organizations/systems to do the 
same. We share our data using web services (NuSOAP). You can write a 
short php script that asks our site for a list of anti-war groups in an 
area, resources about organizing ranked by popularity, or almost 
anything else that you can do at our main site – AND then have the 
results appear on your own website. You can write your own client to do 
this, or use the one that we provide.


Why should we use this software, instead of creating another? What 
alternatives are there?
I’ve been working on this software for over five years. It works. 
Thousands of people regularly use it. It is constantly improving. There 
are alternatives, but no other open source project is this advanced. An 
example of an alternative is the new site WiserEarth 
(www.wiserearth.org, they say they will release their software soon). 
Even assuming that WiserEarth releases its software, they aren’t using 
web-services and thus it cannot be used to create a network of sites 
that share data (they might do this in the future – but it’s hard to 
predict) – and sharing data is critical.


What form of moderation is used? Who is the moderator and what are the 
standards?
I currently moderate incoming content once a week for grammar, 
capitalization, proper categorization, viruses, and to ensure that it 
belongs (broadly speaking) to the left half of the political spectrum 
(moderate democrats, liberals, greens, progressives, socialists, 
anarchists, etc).

In the future, I’d be happy to decentralize the moderation tasks. For 
instance, a volunteer could be responsible for moderating content that 
comes from their area.


What would it look like on an IMC site?
You could implement the Activism Network as a section of your site, 
customizing it, inter-weaving it with the rest of the site (by using 
inter-linking, name branding, a customized logo, changing some of the 
descriptive text, etc).


How does it fit in with the Alternatives-IMC theme?
The resources part of the Activism Network is most relevant to the 
Alternatives-IMC theme with its goal of distributing leaflets, essays, 
case studies, posters, and other materials that relate to building 
positive alternatives. This system will help individuals and 
organizations that want to increase their material distribution, as well 
as provide a way of organizing the materials, and serve as a central 
repository. The events calendar and groups directory would also help by 
promoting events and groups focussing on alternatives.


Building a User Base – The Power of an Email Newsletter
Activism Network has an existing email newsletter that sends out 
upcoming events (targeted by geography) and a list of new resources 
every two weeks. About half of the users opt-in to subscribe. This could 
be combined with a list of news headlines from your local IMC that would 
link back to your site. Building up an email list of several hundred to 
several thousand people will increase the use of your IMC, and provide a 
base for fundraising appeals.


How would events fit in? Eg. If you wanted your events to appear on both 
Activism Network and a Drupal or another Content-Management System (CMS)?
Events are perhaps the biggest overlap between the functionality of the 
existing IMC software packages and Activism Network. This is something 
we need to work on. We plan to support the iCal event standard, so 
events could be exported from Activism Network into other systems.

How would it fit with a CMS like Drupal?
We could implement a simultaneous log-in system, so that the user would 
log-in to Drupal and Activism Network at the same time. And when they 
create a user, it would create one on both systems. Currently the 
ability to fit-in to Drupal is limited as Activism Network uses web 
services as a critical part of the system. I think that it would be very 
difficult to modify and maintain Drupal to use web services. Drupal 
works fine for a single site, but it doesn’t work so well for a 
server/client system that is designed to support multiple sites with 
information stored in a common central database (like Activism Network).

CMS-Independence: An Advantage for Building an International Network
IMC sites run different software. Any given CMS (whether an IMC one, 
Drupal, etc), has only a limited range of use by IMC sites. By having 
the software be independent, it can be easily added to any existing IMC 
site (or other site, like that of an organization). Activism Network is 
decent software, but what makes is really powerful is the number of 
users. The inconveniences of it not working directly with your CMS is 
worth it, in exchange for being part of the only distributed activist 
network – with, ideally, dozens (or more) of instances. The network 
provides dynamic content. The content is the fun part.


What Support do you offer for Internationalization?
Activism Network can be easily translated into other languages by using 
a simple program that shows you a string of text in English, and then 
you type in the translation (we’re using PoEdit). Non-techy translators 
should be able to handle this easily. We also have international 
geocoding using a database of 3 million world cities to translate 
international locations into a longitude and latitude (for mapping and 
facilitating geographical based searches). One of the uses for this 
software is to create a network for your country (that could be part of 
the general network, or its own network).


Can you add XXX feature?
Sure we’d love to. In practice, we’ve got a long list of features that 
we want to implement. However, we’re making steady progress on them, and 
take all user recommendations seriously. If several people independently 
make the same recommendation then it is even higher priority.

Can I get involved in this project?
I’d love to see people getting involved in this project!!! We need 
testers, people to give us ideas/feedback, and developers.



Possible Types of IMC Implementations

1. National IMC Sites
Choose your country in the installation process and you will get a site 
featuring events, people, and groups that are from your country -- as 
well as a small number of international events and groups. With a little 
more work you can translate the software into your language.


2. State/Regional IMC Sites
If your site is for a state, then you can easily just choose a state. If 
your area covers multiple states or only a part of a state (like the 
western half of a state) then you can approximate it by picking a center 
point and a radius. So you are picking a circle that best matches your 
area.

Then you get people, groups, events from that area - and any 
people/groups/events from the nation that your state is in, and a small 
number of international groups and events.


3. City IMC Sites
Pick a city and state in the installation process, or a zip code and 
radius.

Then you get the people, groups, events from that area - plus any 
state-level groups and events, plus any national groups and events, plus 
any international groups and events.

One of the main advantages of doing a local or state installation is 
that Local Events will appear in your calendar. Otherwise local event 
events don't show up in the national calendar, because it would be too 
overwhelming.

4. Other
You could implement it as an issue, network, or campaign-based network.