[Imc-alternatives] New Z site

[Jay]

Hi everyone,

At 7/12/2007, Aaron Kreider wrote:
>http://www.zmag.org/ztour.htm
>
>They're still working on it.
>
>Aaron

The relationship between Z and Indymedia has been interesting from 
the beginning.  Actually, a lot of Indymedia's early organizers were 
part of Z Media Institute sessions in the mid-'90s, which I believe 
had a lot to do with independent media coming together the way it 
did.  All along we've been organizing somewhat in conjunction, 
somewhat in parallel.

Certainly, to the extent we can, I'd love to see us weave the 
Alternatives IMC project into Z's projects.  I looked around the tour 
site a little to find some information about the developers and the 
code but couldn't find it.  Can someone who has located that post 
that link?  Are they developing their own Drupal-based social 
networking software?  That would be important information to 
know.  (one of my difficulties with Znet from the beginning has 
always been information overload, which kind of burns my brain every 
time I visit the site, often causing me to check out.)

Just to remind everyone, though we've been talking a lot about social 
networking for activists, our goal here continues to be less the 
"social" and more the "networking."  Any social networking tools we 
add to our site should be put there to serve the purpose of activists 
doing actual real-life work together.  The tools that may be useful 
for individuals and organizations who want to connect with each other 
to do activist work together -- specifically, in our case, with a 
focus on creating alternatives -- may overlap greatly with generaly 
social networking software, but they're not exactly the same 
thing.  So, if Z or anyone else creates the as-yet-elusive "activist 
myspace," that could absolutely complement what we're doing, and 
possibly allow us to operate on similar platforms sharing resources 
and whatnot, but in and of itself it probably won't satisfy the 
specific needs of alternatives-builders who want to work together.

Jay