[Imc-alternatives] notes from Thursday web meeting

[Jay]

Hi everyone,

On Thursday a few of us in Philly had a really productive meeting to 
talk about PhillyIMC and alternatives IMC developments.  We basically 
followed the agenda from 
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/LaunchMeetingAgenda.

INTRODUCTIONS
Jay, David Z, Aaron C. and Aaron K.

BROAD VISION
Jay gives brief overview of how the PhillyIMC and Alternatives 
projects are planning to work together.  First, the PhillyIMC will 
work, with help from alternatives-IMC and indymedia drupal 
development people, to finish their transition to a drupal-based 
traditional IMC site.  Then, the alternatives team will use that 
basic installation as a basis for adding community-building tools 
that will make the alternatives site special.

WHERE WE ARE NOW
The PhillyIMC is about 75% done with its transition to Drupal.  The 
staging version is at: http://www.spondubone.net/drupal-5.1/.  There 
is a things to do list of remaining modules to add and problems to 
solve, as well as a list of accomplishments: 
http://phillymedia.wikispaces.com/Drupal.  The PhillyIMC's server, 
Vox, is in perilous shape and we're ultimately looking for reliable 
hosting, either with an IMC server or a safe commercial one.

The AlternativesIMC has some people signed up for the launch team and 
a number of supporters out there but hasn't done much yet in the 
realm of developing code.  We do have an offer of hosting from Axxs.org.

TECHNOLOGIES
We didn't talk too much about the specifics of each social networking 
package the alternatives IMC is considering partnering with, but we 
did chat about specific quesitons we need to ask about this 
software.  Aaron K. fleshed out some of these thoughts and just 
posted them the imc-alternatives list: 
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-alternatives/2007-July/0720-tz.html 
(thanks Aaron)

PRACTICAL NEXT STEPS
The PhillyIMC still has a goal to finish it's site rebuild by the end 
of the summer.  David is going to contact PhillyIMC web guy and 
drupal "expert," Doug, to figure out his availability in August and 
pin him down for a face to face meeting.  Between now and then, Aaron 
C. will work on all the parts of the site he can do himself.  We will 
also circulste the to-do list among indymedia drupal developers to 
identify solutions to current questions.

The Alternatives IMC team will really hone its wish list and figure 
out what features we need to have on the site.  We will also begin 
working on site navigation and design, concurrent with working on 
code/backend questions.

The Alternatives IMC team will talk about setting up a regular weekly 
"check-in" point, likely a fixed time for any of us to gather each 
week via IRC, to check-in about our progress.  We will post weekly 
progress reports to the alternatives IMC list.

Thanks for a good meeting.