[Imc-communication] Fwd: Building the IMC-Kenya team]

[Amy]

Hi imc-communications,

this note is from Stef99 who is doing volunteer coordination for 
imc-kenya. is this a good list to forward this along to? please let stef 
know if you have other suggestions for where to send it.

best,
amy
(philly/la/us)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Building the IMC-Kenya team
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:32:55 -0500
From: 99 <beleza at speakeasy.net>
To: imc-sf-active at lists.indymedia.org,  imc-sfa-servers at lists.indymedia.org

Hi, sf-active and sfa-servers!

I'm Steph99, a volunteer from Philadelphia who was on the Prometheus/IMC
crew in Nairobi last January for the WSF and Indymedia convergence.  I
was pointed here by Ryan and I've chatted with a couple people on IRC
already.

You might know that IMC-Kenya was sort of initiated about a year ago but
the website was frozen because of lack of local people to support it.
It's been revived since the presidential election and the resulting
upheaval and it's got articles flowing through the center frame and the
open newswire.  There's an interim team of maybe 5 people who are
actively working on different aspects of supporting the people in
Nairobi, and I'm kind of taking on tech volunteer coordination.  I'm
learning sf-active now and we've made some improvements and fixes,
though there's still lots to fix.  We've gotten wonderful ad hoc support
from the usual suspects, and that is super appreciated.

However, we're looking for a larger and more permanent team to support
IMC-Kenya on the web.  They have a lot of local journalism talent but
they need things like a nicer design, sf-active tweaks (the features are
not set up right, and I'm trying to sort it out), and I guess just
people to call on to get their editorial content on a healthy and pretty
site.  They may also need someone who can help them with any hosting
changes they might want to make in the future.  There's no immediate
need to change CMS's or hosting, but that might change someday.  For
example, Drupal seems to have the most going on with SMS gateway APIs
and stuff.  There's a lot of interest in making it easy for people to
use cell phones for indie journalism, but hopefully a host/cms change
won't be needed until after the big imc cms projects are in production.

So far, we have a few people to do these things, but everyone's
overcommitted, of course.  I've taken on a chunk of stuff over the past
couple weeks and really enjoyed it, but my availability is about to take
a nosedive, unfortunately.  We need a couple people who can really act
as primary contacts for the Kenya team, and kind of be committed to them
for a while.  I plan to stick around in some capacity for the long haul
because I'm totally in love with our friends in Kenya, so I'll be able
to give information and suggestions for a long time, but if I don't
mostly replace myself and get a sustainable team lined up for at least
the next 4 months, they might be short-changed on support.  Inside the
IMC network is obviously the best and correct place to ask for this
support.  There seems to be a lot of energy for it, so it's time to just
put the right people in touch with each other.

Let me know if you're up for it...post to imc-kenya at lists.indymedia.org,
write me back at this address, or ping me at steph99 on irc.  I've been
in #tech, #sf-active and #sfkids.  Also, feel free to forward this around.

Thanks/asante/gracias/obrigada/etc!
steph