[Imc-g8-2005] G8 Review time - dispatch

[clara]

hi,
there was also a report from Stirling which I linked on the wiki page as
well. http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkG8

greetings
clara



clara wrote:
> hi,
> 
> ekes wrote:
> 
>>I've started a review bit on the organising wiki
>>http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkG8
>>I believe there are others writing up ideas from their experiences.
> 
> 
> some review from me as well, and I'll also add it to the wiki
> http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcUkG8 . I also have some feedback
> for the input tool, but if I understood it correctly, Occam will be at
> WTH this weekend, so I might just as well talk with him directly.
> 
> greetings
> clara
> -------------------------------------------
> 
> "Indymedia Dispatch. Hello?"
> or How I got stuck in the IMC and enjoyed it.
> 
> When I came up to Scotland I planned to to help the Indymedia volunteers
> from the UK with the IMC and the dispatch, but also to go out take part
> in some action and do some video filming. Somehow I had assumed I would
> be able to leave Edinburgh at least once. Of course, some of the
> infrastructure for that fell through: the satelite truck decided to stay
> in the Stirling camp site, and another bus that was meant to drive
> around never made it to Scotland. However, staying in the IMC building,
> even sleeping there a few nights, and working together with all the
> people there were a great experience. Running a dispatch system that was
> as fast as we could type and with people in different countries, videos
> made on the spot and screened in the IMC, people helping us when needed.
> My only regret is, that I never really managed to some of the great food
> that the Forest cafe downstairs prepared.
> 
> To start from the beginning. After some travel problems, I ended up on
> the Dissent! train from London: several hundred activists in a chartered
> train... a workshop with "Stop the G8 tactics" in one of the carriages,
>  a meeting of samba bands in another, people walking through the train
> with flyers and bust card with legal info. One could have done probably
> more such workshops and info events in the 6 hour train ride, but then
> again last-minute preparations were probably hectic enough for
> everybody. (And of course, the smokers took over the train to fast that
> I had a headache after only half of the trip...)
> 
> When we arrived in Edinburgh, I expected the usual set up: a room too
> small for all the gear, full of cigarette smoke and coffee cups. What I
> found instead was an old curch. A big, light room with a lot of wood,
> high ceilings and two balkonies. Smoke free, alcohol free, and just
> above a nice bar with great organic beer where people could socialize
> instead of around the computers. Space enough for some 20 computers for
> general use, several computers as picture desk, space for the video
> group on the former pulpit, enough tables for laptops, a big dispatch
> table and some couches. I know, people worked hard to prepare a room in
> the basement for dispatch or for any other working group that would have
> wanted some more space or privacy, but everybody decided to stay in the
> big room, and in the end that seem to be a wise decision. People coming
> in with photo cameras found direct help and card readers; especially in
> the evenings the video group was clearly visible working and - as the
> days went by - they burnt CDs and DVDs with all the videos made to take
> along and/or to screen at the camp sites.
> 
> The only group rather invisible was the radio group, located on one of
> the balkonies, hidden behind thick curtains to provide some sound
> proofing. For whatever reason the radio didn't seem to be broadcasted in
> the IMC itself but apparently they produced some good pieces. Since we
> were all in one room, one or the other techie always seem to be around
> when needed, fixing problems or setting up an additional wireless
> connection from one of the university buildings down the street with
> what the council called "an unsafe structure on the roof". Moving a
> wireless antenna and the roles of lead that held it in place at night on
> an old church roof is an experience for itself, but certainly worth the
> view. Other people were constantly available to answer questions and to
> point people into the right directions.
> 
> Besides the IMC in Edinburgh, there was a second space in the
> Convergence Centre in Glasgow, and a third one running of a satelite
> truck and a tent in the eco-camp in Stirling. Glasgow was alltogether
> more quiet, but from Stirling we got a constant flow of information,
> about the actions happening there and about the state of police controls
> in front of the camp.
> 
> The anti-G8 mobilisation had called for a whole week of different
> actions with different intensity in different cities so those of us
> running the IMC found ourselves with ever changing hectic and a bit more
> quite days, but somehow never with enough time. I wanted to go out on
> the streets, but there always seemed on or the other thing that needed
> doing, and time and again going out for a coffee meant leaving the
> people running the welcome desk stuck on that table for another hour.
> I'm glad that I at least once got out on the streets, to see the Clown
> Army in action and to do reporting from there.
> 
> The welcome desk is probably the one most un-media activist task of an
> IMC: A table to block the access to the stairs to the IMC upstairs, to
> make sure that we were not overrun by people who just wanted to check
> their emails, to keep corporate journalists out, and to give general
> explanations. Time and again, we were looking for people to take over,
> threatening them that we would have to close the whole space in 10
> minutes if nobody was willing to guard the door. In the end we always
> found somebody, and quite often people who were not involved with
> Indymedia (so far), but it meant a constant task to look for people and
> to explain to them.
> 
> Strangely enough the attitude from IMCistas from other IMCs towards the
> space and the people who ran it was rather mixed. Some came up to us,
> introduced themselves and helped were they could: making cables,
> answering the dispatch phone or calling in. Others however seem to use
> the whole space as a service to them without need to interact with us.
> Once in a while, I saw a posting coming up from an IMCista whose name I
> recognised and wondered whether s/he had just been in the room.
> Especially those who had a bigger event in their own place should know
> enough to at least ask. Often enough, other activists see Indymedia as a
> service, but other IMCistas shouldn't take the work of a local
> collective for granted.
> 
> It took a while to sort out the dispatch system, but when it worked, it
> was a great example of an international collaboration and of a mix of
> technologies; its design was driven by the immediate needs of those on
> the ground in Edinburgh. It was also an example of why to keep things
> simple. Somebody had developed a special software, but when dispatching
> started on Saturday morning it became obvious that the system was too
> "umstaendlich" and to slow for the speed in which dispatching is done.
> We tried it anyway, if only to give feedback on it later, but - as so
> often - software for specific tasks as Indymedia has them needs a close
> interactions between the activists writing and using it, and for a
> dispatch software that fits our needs it is good to see that the
> software developer actually took part in some of the dispatch.
> 
> It also once more became obvious that mailing lists before an event are
> a good organizing tool, but that one should never expect that those
> people who show up in the end actually have followed the list and are
> willing to to everything as planned by others before. Any info that is
> not available when one enters the actual IMC space will just be lost,
> and even if it's available it's likely to be changed depending on the
> real situation on the ground. Clear poster about which computers are for
> the picture desk, which table should be kept free for those needing
> access to special electricity plugs, or which IRC channels to use,
> however did the trick.
> 
> After some initial problems we worked things out and the dispatch system
> as it was running on Wednesday, the main day of the anti-G8 protestes
> with street blockades and the march to Gleneagles, included at least 17
> people in Edinburgh and in at least 4 other countries, not counting
> those that called in. It was an excellent example of international
> collaboration and a mix of technologies - keeping things simple and
> "outsourcing" those tasks that don't need local presences to IMCistas
> around the world.
> Looking back at what has been written on numerous wiki pages about
> dispatch systems in other European mobilisations, it seems that we come
> back to the same basic issues every time, but sometimes with different
> setups and software. Some might call it re-inventing the wheel. On the
> other hand: if different people start with a somewhat fresh mind and
> still come to the same setup, then that's a good indication that this
> setup works fine and is not only used because it's always done that way.
> Using different software to do the same thing is probably redundant, but
> redundancy is one of the strength of Indymedia. The more different
> software, hardware and mode of communicaiton we use, the more likely we
> are to continue even if some of that fails or is shut down. And maybe
> it's necessary to re-invent the wheel because it also empowers those
> people who come to a moblisation and develop things based on the actual
> situation, resources available, and on existing knowledge. Most of us
> will certainly be able to set up a dispatch system from scratch now
> because we understand the underlying concept, not the software.
> 
> Starting at 3:50 in the morning on the first day of the G8 2005, we got
> phone calls and SMS messages about the Beacons of Dissent, clashes with
> riot cops when people tried to leave the Stirling camp sites, street
> blockades on the A9, choaches stopped on their way to Gleneagles,
> spontanous demonstrations in Edinburgh, and finally the security fence
> at the Gleneagles hotel being breached and more cops being flown in by
> army helicopters.
> 
> The general dispatch system is simple. We got info in from phone calls
> (and a few sms's) either by people who go out to with the aim to call in
> or by other callers who got the dispatch number from the thousands of
> flyers we had copied. Later in the day, postings with reports and photos
> appeared on the website. Callers also reported life on the radio. We got
> phone calls on three official numbers, on our private phones, by (photo)
> SMSs on the newswire, by people walking into the IMC space, and even by
> people in the IMCs who were called by friends and passed their phones on
> to us. We would have missed those people and calls if we would have
> moved down to the basement, so even when it got hectic it was good that
> we stayed there and that people actually saw what we were doing.
> 
> Reporting from the streets is sometimes not as simple as it sounds. How
> many people are there really? Is that a police helicopter? On which
> street are we right now? Was somebody 'just' arrested or beaten up? Has
> the police attacked, or do they just look like they will any moment?
> Stories change when you repeat what somebody else told you, and the same
> event can look totally different from another angle. Add different
> native languages to it, unfamilarity with the location, or local details
> that might explain the situation, and rumours can spread easily.
> Confirmation of the incoming info becomes necessary. So unless we had a
> caller who we trusted to give correct numbers and locations, all info
> coming in that way was considered "unconfirmed" until we had at least
> two independent reports from the same event. Only confirmed news were
> supposed to go out. Sometimes two phone calls would come in with the
> same info at the same time, but at other times it could take a while to
> figure out for example whether callers were talking about the same
> blockade, or whether there two. Sometimes we called people on the street
> or the legal team to hear what they knew. It's tempting to produce a
> minute-by-minute timeline of events, but on the other hand, no
> information is so important that it couldn't wait another 10 minutes -
> especially not when those who read it are not directly on the spot
> anyway. Minute-to-minute timelines also run into the danger of just
> being a list of numbers of police cars and arrests. Better take some
> time and also ask about the atmosphere or texts on banners.
> 
> So, news would come from different sources and those of us sitting
> around the dispatch table would just type them into a special (closed)
> IRC channel, classifying it as confirmed or unconfirmed. Naturally, that
> would be full of abbrevations, half sentences and rather creative
> spellings of Scotish names. We then asked some other IMCistas who were
> not in Edinburgh but somewhere in Belgium, Switzerland or wherever to
> make sense out of it: to check whether different reports confirmed each
> other, and to formulate that into clear sentences, stating location and
> time, or to ask when they felt information was missing. With the hectic
> in the space, it was good to know that there were some people in a
> different place who could concentrate on this task. (And thanks to the
> google and mulimaps sites giving detailed maps and streetnames to
> however might need them.) Confirmed information was then posted in
> another channel where only those posting the news could speak. The
> result was an open channel that only contained a timeline of confirmed
> events: open to everybody writing timeline articles, doing radio or just
> wanting to know what's going on, but without the general chit-chat that
> arises on such events. (We had another general channel for everybody
> from around the world who wanted to discuss and socialise, and when
> times were really quiet we tried to give some input there as well.)
> 
> Sometimes confirmation was straight forward, sometimes it needed some
> clarifications in the first IRC channel, and sometimes when things got
> unclear we could fall back onto a list of phone numbers to ask for
> additional info, including the legal and medical teams and the
> organizers of specific events.
> 
> Especially on Wednesday, when we run an continous dispatch system for at
> least 17 hours, we coverd different actions at different locations, so
> we made 3 different posting for the different timelines from it, with
> one person responsible for each. It's a good feeling that you can tell
> everybody who walks into the space and wants info, to check the newswire
> because that contains everything we knew up to the last few minutes. It
> felt even better when we once more could say "Don't trust the corporate
> media" because we had direct info from the GR organizers that the march
> was going ahead while for example BBC broadcasted the police statement
> that the march was cancelled.
> 
> Dispatch systems rely on people using it, fast exchange of information
> and trust between the people doing it at that moment. We got good and
> diverse reports for actions in Edinburgh (for example for the Carnival
> of Full Enjoyment) and the March on Gleneagles, when quite a few
> dedicated IMCistas were out on the streets and coming back to the IMC
> space later. On the other hand we got little information from the road
> blockades near Stirling; maybe because people were not so aware of the
> phone numbers, maybe because it is still easier to report about
> something you see then from an action that you do yourself, maybe
> because people didn't have their mobile phones with them or where out of
> reach. Maybe we also lacked a good dispatcher on the Stirling camp site.
> Only a few days later I learnt that there were notes being posted in the
> camp, stating which roads were blocked for how long. With that
> information either given to us by phone or IRC, or posted on the
> newswire, our timelines and features could have shown much stronger that
> the A9 was successfully blocked for hours, causing delegates and staff
> to be late.
> 
> The 'input' system was clearly not up for the speed with which we worked
> at times, but since it was the first time it was used, there is room for
> improvement. In this case, we decided to stick to IRC as the simplest
> working tool even as it has some flaws. It is such a simple tool that,
> throughout the day, we had new people joining the dispatch table and
> just started working even when a few of them had no experience with IRC.
> We showed them the IRC client on whichever laptop was free at that
> moment, explained them how to change their nick and then the only thing
> necessary was to answer the phone and type things into the channel.
> Simple and straight forward. But even as explanations are short it
> always take time to give them, and the time and effort to keep things
> running smoothly should not be underestimated. It's a balance to strike:
> do we want at group of dispatch experts on a sophisticated special
> sytem, or a system using rough technologies (and maybe quiet some extra
> typing and copy-pasting) in which absolute new-comers can be included or
> which users can continue if necessary if a server or location goes down?
> 
> Another piece of software came up when nobody was really expecting it.
> On the evening before the G8 officailly started, some software was
> included by two IMCistas from Spain to post photos and videos directly
> from mobile phones. Not many people knew about it during Wednesday
> actions, but nevertheless we got a picture of the Beacons of Dissent
> burning on the hills above Gleneagles long before those who lit them
> made their hours-long walk back.
> 
> Of course we had disagreements about a couple of issues, especially
> about (how to decide) how to do things, and who should have access to
> the channel with unconfirmed news. As said earlier, in a situation where
> there are several solutions for the same problem, it should be down to
> the people on the ground to take those decisions, because they see how
> the situation is, whether they prefer people to talk to them directly,
> whether they deal with people who pick up things fast or need a lot of
> explanations etc. No system will ever be perfect, but after years of
> doing this at different mobilisations and with different groups of
> people we seem to come down to a few basics.
> 
> About access to unconfirmed info: these anti-G8 protests were without
> the kind of dramatic events we know from Genoa and Evian, so in the end
> unconfirmed information that could turn into life of its own wasn't so
> much of an issue. Still there were examples of what can happen. A
> comment under one of the features claimed falsely that a child had been
> injured in Stirling, and additional comments were running wild before
> any of us had the time to even look at the site. That's the kind of info
> I would like to have confirmed before I post it on the site, because the
> relationship between local residents and a camp of protestors can easily
> turn nasty. Once we saw it, we checked with the medics and the local
> police and where able to hide it. Another strange rumour was started
> through one of the radio stations. Apparently somebody from a local
> radio station somewhere in Europe called somebody they knew in the
> Stirling camp on Thursday, the day of the bombings in London, and got
> something like "all actions here are cancelled, except from a silent
> vigil by the clowns." Somehow that turned into a statement that all
> anti-G8 actions were cancelled due to the bombings. I only heard that
> because I took a moment to check with my local IMC and they were just
> writing up a new feature with that info. In fact, most actions in
> Stirling were cancelled because the police's stop-and-searches at the
> camp entrance made it more then difficult to leave in bigger numbers,
> and also because several hundred people were in police custody anyway.
> Yet again, if such an info would have come into the dispatch system, we
> would have checked on it and then posted a confirmed and more accurate news.
> 
> However, there was some diagreement about whether a dispatch system
> needs a closed channel or whether we were even allowed to have it. Of
> course, Indymedia is based a lot on openness and transparency but that's
> another issue. On the one hand, especially when things get hectic
> callers will come with unclear information, with rumours, or maybe even
> with dis-information. As a dispatch team, I think, we have the
> obligation not to start rumours, not to heat up situations based on
> false information but to give not an objective picture of what is going
> on, but nevertheless a somewhat true (or confirmed) overview. If we want
> Indymedia as a source of "passionate and subjective telling of the
> truth", we need to take a step back and not send every story out the
> moment it comes in, not about a child hurt in Stirling, not about
> exagerated numbers. I don't want a timeline or a feature where people
> look at it and say: "Oh, that's Indymedia. Only half of it is probably
> true." By giving ourselves time and a closed space to confirm our info
> before we post it in publich IRC channels, newswires and radio
> programmes, we produce a much stronger story.
> Having a closed confirmation channel also means we can work with more
> openness to our fellow dispatchers. Because it is closed I can type into
> the channel who gave me that info, or who I will call  to confirm it. We
> can talk freely if we are unsure about a situation, about how to
> formulate something, or about what to do with info that appears to be
> rather dodgy.
> I didn't know everybody personally in that channel, but among the core
> group of dispatchers there were enough personal connections with those
> in other locations to have a strong trust about our work. Maybe that's
> another essence of a good dispatch system: a team of strong dispatchers
> and a web of trust between them; trust that they would have a good
> judgement of what is confirmed and what not, trust that they stay calm,
> trust that they don't have other motives but to get out good and
> trustworhty news.
> Having a closed channel only for active dispatchers also meant that we
> also knew how many there were of us, and that (nearly) everybody in it
> could spring to action when needed. No unclear situation about who's
> working and who's just listening, so when numbers appeared to get to low
> we knew to go out and once more actively find more people in the space
> and in the Indymedia network to join us.
> And even when we had a closed channel: we managed to include people in
> the IMC space and IMCistas from around the globe into working together,
> people who help answering the phones and making the timelines, people
> who were willing to put other things aside just because we needed
> somebody at that moment, people who made sense out of our notes, and
> people who took our timelines and main articles and turned them into a
> feature summarizing the events of a day while others added new links to
> the features of previous days, or roamed all other Indymedia sites in
> search for solidarity actions in other countries.
> 
> In fact, there are even more tasks that could have been done by others,
> like finding appropriate photos to add to the timeline. Too late we
> thougth about picking a few articles and asking some IMCista somewhere
> to lay them out in a two page flyer that we could have handed out at the
> camps and info points. Maybe we could have set up a better information
> system with the legal, medic and trauma team instead of repeatedly
> phoning them up. Maybe we could have asked good and fast writers before
> the events started so that they knew we would need others to write up
> the features.
> But nevertheless, I never thought that I would look at a 17 hours shift
> of phones, IRC and timelines, and think that i actually enjoyed doing
> it. And none of it would have been possible without all the other people
> who contributed their parts going out from those out on the street
> giving us detailed reports, to somebody who provided us with tea and
> sandwiches throughout the day, and without whom I simply wouldn't have
> made it to the evening.
> 
> Using so many different media, and so many people in different places to
> give an instant picture of what was going on is a powerful tool. Maybe
> such a detailed timeline was not necessary for these events, but in
> other situations it certainly is. And while you are doing it, you won't
> know whether such details will be needed afterwards. Sometimes it is,
> sometimes it isn't.
> But in any case there was a lot of information:  information for the
> activists on the streets, for those who want differenr and more direct
> news then the corporate media can provide, for those at home doing
> solidarity actions when necessary, or for those who need to be able to
> reconstruct the events later.
> 
> When it started, Indymedia was technically a new thing. Now - especially
> with all the blogs - direct posting on a website is state of the art.
> Images taken from the protestors side instead of from behind the police
> lines are now a common thing, and as the BBC news from the bombings in
> London show: even videos made with mobile phones are material that can
> be used. But Indymedia's strong points will remain the large number of
> people to put time and effort into setting things up and keep them
> running; the redundance that makes our networks strong; the
> international collaboration where space not matters, or where it even
> can be an added bonus to have people in safe and quiet places in other
> countries and continents; the time and space to play around with hard
> and software, writing new code as we go along, for applications that
> might sometimes might be just what we needed or sometimes appear rather
> pointless to others, but that will find their way into our pool of
> resources and pop up again when it's needed. A network of activists that
> is based on political ideas as well as on personal contacts. The ability
> to give us and others space and power to describe the world as we see
> it. And the collaboration and solidarity of so many people globally that
> make me feel that I have spend hours and days in the IMC space, only
> been out on the street once and not being able take part in any of the
> actions myself - and to still think it was worth it, that I enjoyed it,
> and that I will do it again.
> 
> Clara
> Amsterdam, July 2005
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