[Imc-alternatives] irc meeting next sunday the 23rd?

[Jay]

Hi Robbt,

At 11/18/2008, you wrote:
>What time?
>
>I'll be filming a memorial to an media activist during the afternoon. So if
>we could make it a noon or 10:00am meeting EST, that would make it 5:00pm
>or 3:00pm GMT, but West Coast US people it would be 3:00 in the morning for
>Australians. So maybe that wouldn't work out great. Where are most people ?
>And what time would be best for those in Oceania ?

I think we're spread around the globe, which makes things 
tricky.  Nick is on the west coast of the U.S., Josh and I are in 
Philly, Josef if in Europe, Strypey and Dave F. are in Oceania, and 
everyone else is somewhere else.  Robbt, where are you?

I work this Sunday morning actually can't do the 10am or noon time, 
but could do a later night Sunday thing.  10pm Eastern time would be 
ideal for me, actually.


>Anyways, as far as progress goes. I haven't really touched it except to try
>to get people on board and mess with random settings. I think a meeting
>would be good.
>
>I setup recaptcha but that might not be compatible with true anonymous
>publishing as it uses a third party service with an API from our site, so
>we might want to use something else. The drupal based text captchas seem
>pretty easily defeated by bots these days though, so it's up for
>discussion.
>
>I mean the site is ready to go as far as publishing content.
>
>I guess my main concern regarding this project is that there isn't really
>anybody motivated to publish using it, there are already a lot of sites
>dedicated to this type of content at this point, without interlinking more
>with the IMC network as a whole what will make it useful.

I feel as if it's kind of an "if we build it they will come" 
situation.  If we have a site that aggregates content in a meaningful 
way and empowers people to organize in a focused way around it, I 
think we'll be providing something exciting.

>Really the only
>way to build an audience is to aggregate/link to other content and gain
>interest that way, and if you get enough people focused on your site you
>can link to original content. At least that is the formula I see most
>successful blogs like boingboing and others take.

That sounds about right.  That's the model that works well for blogs, 
and I think it could work well for us.


>Also the whole idea that we are building something to just get it up with
>the intention of switching it to a as of writing undeveloped system makes
>me less focused on this.

My sense is that this drupal version will be our site for a long 
while.  The imc-cms group seems to be inching forward, but unless 
there are any huge advances, I don't forsee our building an 
alternatives imc site using the new infrastructure for a long 
time.  I know that still means "temporary," but I'm starting to think 
"temporary" means a number of years, rather than a number of months.

>I'm just not sure what our design goals for this
>draft our. The newswire with open-publishing is up using the taxonomy
>developed previously. I guess we could drive traffic to our site using the
>Cities list, especially if we get included on it, but at this point I'm not
>sure that there is enough on the site to do this.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm finishing a big project in the 
next few weeks, then I have my "big project" calendar free for 
several months.  I plan to be very active posting content then, and 
also developing reciprocal links etc.

I know one person posting content doesn't amount to much, and if 
that's the way things stay for months on end then that will be an 
indication that we've missed the boat .  But, I think having content 
up will provide the foundation for other people to get 
involved.  Plus, I think our real excitement will be the addition of 
the knowledge base and networking
functions, which really would put us into uncharted territory as far 
as knowing whether people out there will get excited about what we're 
offering.


>I heard from Nick who wanted access but I'm not capable of giving out
>access at this point, and there is a lot of work needed to convert even a
>CSS mock-up to a drupal theme, which I could possibly help with, but I'm
>pretty sure it would seen very arcane to a graphic designer with no drupal
>background.

I do feel as if we need the site to look good if we're going to have 
people other than us post content.  I think we'll all feel confident 
reaching out to other sites if ours looks great.  So I do think we 
need to get the design in place before we go out into the world 
screaming "look at us!!"

Nick and I have been in touch and he says he'll have clear time to 
work on this starting in mid-December when his school semester 
ends.  It may be a tricky thing to put the theme together based upon 
Nick's design, but I feel as if it would make the project 
exponentially more likely to succeed.


>So that's my thoughts for the moment. I'd be happy to talk on IRC with
>people if we can figure out a time that I'm able to make.

Let's see if this Sunday can work for anyone else.  If not, let's 
really make the next Sunday happen, then pick a fixed time so 
everyone will be able to plan ahead to be available at that moment 
each Sunday.  (I usually need a couple weeks lead time nowadays to 
clear my calendar for a meeting.)  Having a fixed time worked with 
the design meetings, though we did take a few weeks to get the first 
meeting scheduled, which seems to be repeating itself now.

Jay




>On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:04:10 -0500, Jay <jay at fundamentalchange.net> wrote:
> > Hi imc-alternatives,
> >
> > I'm guessing from lack of response that people aren't itching for an
> > irc meeting this upcoming Sunday (the 16th).  I've heard reports of
> > work on the site happening behind the scenes though, so there has
> > been hforward progress.  Maybe we could bring the behind the scenes
> > work to the front of the scenes and meet next Sunday the 23rd to touch
> > base?
> >
> > Nick, any design updates?
> >
> > Robbt and Josh, any Drupal updates?
> >
> > Strypey or anyone, any more thoughts on taxonomy or editorial policy?
> >
> > Me, any idea how annoying I'm being nagging everyone else for updates?
> > Jay
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Imc-alternatives at lists.indymedia.org
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>
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