[Imc-communication] Accuracies

[Robbt]

On 11/20/08 6:36 AM, skep wrote:
> reven at riseup.net wrote:
>    
>> Meanwhile, the network is FALLING APART...
>>
>> ...
>> How do we STRENGTHEN OUR COMMUNICATIONS?????????????
>>
>>      
>
> I think you are right about the "falling apart network"..the network
> isn't a real network anymore (or ever was?). Besides technical issues it
> was clear that many imc's don't know about the various sub working
> groups, like imc-finance, new-cms ect. and we have to ask why that is.
> The global communication between the indymedia nodes relies almost only
> on IRC (which many don't use) or lists like these (imc-communication or
> imc-process), which many imc's don't watch regularly or even are
> subscribed to.
>
> As it was mentioned in IRC today in a sidenote..the status of the imc
> contact database and its front/back-end is bad. But contact.indy could
> be the glue to hold the "network" together. I'm sure many imc's don't
> even know about the current discussion here on imc-communication so a
> tool where working groups ect. could inform the network via email could
> help. As far as I know there is a contact-email for each imc (as they
> went through the new imc process with this email address) in the contact
> database. Why not use this? There is no way to force each imc to have
> people subscribed to imc-communication or imc-process, although this
> would solve many problems. Anyway..what I meant to say is, that I missed
> a working information flow in the years I was active in indymedia work.
> I learned about many (important) things just by accident or being an
> irc-nerd ;), but that can't be a solution. There are so many working
> groups in the network, but to get information about their current
> work/status you often have to subscribe to their email lists and often
> you didn't even know about the existence about these groups. Would be
> nice to have some form of a (weekly/monthly/whatever) network newsletter
>    so that every imc gets an overview about things happen in the
> "network", but I guess thats the idea behind this list..but doesn't seem
> to work.
>
> So to sum up..either there will be ways to enhance the information flow
> in the network or people should loose their idea of indymedia beeing a
> network at all, but only a bunch of _very_ losely connected nodes where
> only the "brand" indymedia hold them together.
>
> ps. not sure if that above makes sense at all..either way...have a nice
> day :-)
>
>
> skep
> _______________________________________________
> IMC-communication mailing list
> IMC-communication at lists.indymedia.org
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-communication
>    


I think this is a great and necessary idea.
We need to find out who is still around in IMC land and who needs 
technical assistance and inform people how to participate.
A network wide newsletter would be useful, but even just a attempt to 
contact every IMC and find out if there is still an active collective 
behind it would be a good first start.

I know that on IMC-Tech MarkB said he was supposed to rewrite the 
contact database but never got around to it, perhaps working to 
rewrite/improve it might be a good first step.
It could be made into something similar to Crabgrass/Facebook where each 
IMC could receive messages that are encrypted and/or a notice forwarded 
to their e-mail address and it could also be a point to revamp 
volunteer.indymedia.org. There could also be a profile highlighting the 
different specialties/focuses/media produced by them (hopefully 
implemented via RSS feeds from their site). We talked about this at our 
Imc Caucaus at the Allied Media Conference over the Summer and most 
people thought improving communications was essential.

There are a lot of people out there who'd be interested in 
participating/starting an IMC but they don't know how or have tried and 
ran into the long confusing process and gave up (I've spoken to a few 
collectives and this happened to ColumbusIMC before we took steps to 
really try to get accepted into the network).

Robbt