[Imc-g8-2005] Stats, figures and reports of indymedia at G8

[mini mouse]

At 1:00 pm +0100 2/8/05, Planet Mail wrote:
>PHOTO DESK - how many images went through the photo desk?

Best estimate at the time was 5-6000

>(how many of these btw are not published?)

Not known.  The drives had to be emptied a couple of times because of 
the volume, and only the low res versions were saved, although every 
user had the opportunity to write off their work to CD.

>Does someone want to do a short write up about how it worked and experiences?

I wrote this for the wiki, but can't seem to get a password sorted 
out. So here it is:

The photodesk set up was a promising start, with around 5-6000 
pictures being downloaded, edited, archived and (a selection) 
published. Many of these came from the "other side" of police lines 
and would not have seen the light of day AT THE TIME without these 
facilities.

It best fulfilled its function of allowing lo-spec snappers to come 
off the street and publish their pictures. A droplet for resizing 
pictures to fit better on the newswire seems to have been successful 
- many of the archived pictures that came from the machines appear to 
have been processed by it.

However a self help workflow that I'd devised to work via a webpage 
quickly became irrelevant as more experienced people made up their 
own rules whilst novices sought help from photographers who'd based 
themselves nearby.

Whilst most high end photographers had their own laptops, the picture 
desk was also used by a mid range group with 6Mpx cameras (Nikon 
D70s) and 2gB memory cards. In these cases the (6 year old) machines 
and peripherals were too slow to facilitate downloading, editing and 
processing which caused a lot of frustration.

We were also hindered by not being able to get card readers of a 
sufficient vintage to marry with these computers, meaning one machine 
was frequently used just to copy cards over the (very slow) LAN to 
the others. Without the help of a couple of laptops & readers from 
Cambridge IMCers we'd have been stuffed.

I underestimated the level of cameras people would be using, next 
time round (with the speed of development) it'll be even worse. So 
for a picture desk to work properly we'd definitely need to add some 
faster machines.

Finally the picture library is running successfully at

http://w3.buz.org:88

but because the "self-help workflow" got abandoned very few people 
uploaded to it during the G8. To work properly uploads need to be 
done and keyworded by the photographer at the time. Hopefully we can 
address this over a period of time.