[imc-liverpool] Fw: Indy network meeting

[Maria Ng (News From Nowhere Bookshop)]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <cactus at aktivix.org>
To: <maria at newsfromnowhere.org.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2010 9:02 PM
Subject: Indy network meeting


Hello Maria

We had the network meeting at the weekend - not sure if you are
getting the minutes (are you on the contact list?)

But this is what was decided in short:

* we affirmed we are a network of collectives.
* we agreed to the London proposal with some minor amendments but left
out tech requirements and email ettiquitte provisions to speed decision
* we agreed to switch to drupal agrigator as soon as possible -
redirecting uk.indymedia.org and indymedia.org.uk domains
* we agreed to prepare 'virtual' collective proposal
* we agreed to discuss proposal proposal from northern
* we started a MIR admin accountability working group

Below are the minutes in a bit more detail (to stay off open lists
until they are agreed)

Hope that keeps you up to date - the effect to Liverpool will be the
change of the UK front page - your features will be aggregated there
as usual - but will be more mixed up with all regional/local features.
As Liverpool is a small collective we want to encourage imc's near you
to help you out.

Northern are full of energy and close by - and can easily come over
and either upgrade to the new Hyperactive (see: London / Notts /
Northern) which is easy to maintain and has more options like you can
decide if newswire posts have comments, or allow the poster to chose.
You can make events a central part of the site as you seem to want
now, we have found this good in London. And you can have only promoted
postings on your front page, which keeps the quality up... I know you
have said you are a bit stretched for time there but we really want
Liverpool to grow so just ask what help you need.

We would also like Liverpool to have delegates on the UK process /
discuss /legal and contact lists - just so you know what is going on.

cheers tony
One of london imc




Indymedia network meeting

Saturday, 17th July 2010

these notes to be sent to contact list and individuals for review before
being published.

We did confirm that the network meeting is empowered to make decisions
for all of the UK network. The concern was brought up that not every
volunteer and collective can make it to the meeting. We will try and
include people who can not make it to the meeting as best as we can. It
is decided to announce each item of the agenda on IRC as it is
introduced, so that people can input, but not transcript to whole
meeting. At the end of each point, the decisions made are also written
into IRC.

Saturday after lunch there were 24 volunteers at the meeting, including
only 4 women.
1. Ways forward - proposals from groups
1.1 Floating Collective

Oxford took on coordinating a working group to write an articulated
proposal like London has done and will present to the rest of the
network. This floating collective will be in charge of wire for uk and
whatever region not covered by local collectives.

Oxfords proposal for a floating collective:
it has the same status in the network as all other collectives
it maintains it's own newswire, that is syndicated to the aggregator,
but does not include content from areas covered by existing local
collectives.
anyone can join
it should go through the New-IMC process
it will have face to face meetings

We did confirm that all present are open to the proposal and no-one is
blocking the idea.

1.2 UK process proposals

Bristol, Northern England and London proposals go in the same direction
and compliment each other. Working on the London proposal and trying to
get consensus in all points. The proposal is amended on the wiki during
this meeting.

The following version found consensus (3 stand-asides): ? new version to
be put up on docs and linked here

Two points (marked in italics) are still pending:
Dealing with our digital divide: there was no decision which mailing
lists these rules apply to
Technical requirements: the last point: ?No Indymedia website or server
can record and persist IP addresses.? is still under debate


2. Legal issues
notes from this section will be sent to the imc-uk-legal list.


Sunday, 18th July 2010
3. aggregation and syndication

Drupal and Mir aggregators are presented. Acknowledging that the
circumstances are not ideal with many absences among them the Mir
developer, we agree to make a decision today - with 1 stand-aside.

Both proposals (Mir and Drupal) were tested for consensus and the Drupal
proposal got full consensus with no blocks or stand-asides.

With the Drupal aggregator, the current mir site still exists, but only
the subsections are shown when you click the different articles pulled
from the mir site. The mir site itself has a different url, but
uk.indymedia.org and indymedia.org.uk point to the aggregated site. The
UK newswire would appear in the same space on the front page of the
aggregated site alongside the local newswires.


Amendments for the Drupal proposal:

There should only be titles with direct links on newswires, but the
abstracted could be pulled in for features and promoted content.
We want some way to create special features for large mobilisations,
that are not automatically replaced by the latest regional feature.
There were two suggestions for how to achieve this:
Create logins and some level of editorial functionality to make a
feature ?stick on top?
Create a special moderations status / content type on local sites (like
the startpage special on Mir) for which feeds are pulled on top of the
aggregator frontpage
Audio content should be supported better, this will happen once there is
better support of audio content on local sites.
The UK wire will be pulled in together with the local collective wires
at the bottom or the page. The heading for this newswire, i.e. its
title/name, to be decided at a later stage as people were unhappy with
calling it 'UK'.
We will need to discuss how the individual wires are organised.
Suggestions included: random, rotation, alphabetical, activity
The UK banner will be changed to say 'United Kollectives' instead of UK.
We will call for the help of a designer on the aggregator and local
sites to help with the look of the aggregator.

With the aggregator, the current mir site still exists, but only the
subsections are shown when you click the different articles pulled from
the mir site.

It was pointed out that there is need for a new server for the
aggregator, the funds for a server in the UK account can be used to buy one.

Work on the aggregator will be an ongoing project, and we want to keep
adapting it to our needs.

There also was a presentation of a proposal for a pre-publish page, for
the aggregator, linking to the local publish pages and the publish page
for the UK or 'other' wire, including a map with information on each
collective.

4. Lists

We agree to close down the following lists:

imc-uk, imc-uk-proposals, imc-uk-evidence, imc-uk-usability,
imc-uk-outreach, imc-licence, imc-uk-network

The process list is is for delegates, and stays open and public. For
things like, minutes, proposals and amendments, any one can subscribe
but emails can only be sent from from collective email addresses.

To replace the uk-imc-netowork list, we will create imc-uk-discuss for
general discussion. Only people who are actively involved can subscribe
and archives are private. To subscribe you need to be a member of or
supported by a collective.

Legal list to have at least 2 delegates from each collective and to
decide on additions.

Contact list is important to have at least a delegate from each
collective and it is for collectives only. Delegates should forward
emails to their collectives.

There was the general suggestion to display the list-owner address as
admin contact instead of personal email addresses.

5. Mir logins

letyourlifesign has asked for their login to be reinstated. Passed with
9 stand-asides, nearly half the meeting. There was some concern about
accountability of Mir admins, there will be a working group dealing with
this and looking at improving the current process.

6. Proposal for a process for proposals

The proposal was presented but no decision was made. It will be
presented again to the imc-uk-process listand if no blocks and only
friendly amendments are made before next network meeting, this proposed
process for proposals can be applied. See proposal at:
https://we.riseup.net/imc-northern+collective/imc-process-list

7. Future events


Climate Camp in Edinburgh: Imc Scotland has asked for support
EDL march in Bradford (August 28th): Imc Northern England is asking for
help (both physical and online)

other events:

Climate Camp Wales
NoBorders Camp Brussles
Hacktionlab


8. Next meeting

The next network meeting will be hosted by Imc Northern England and held
in November 2010 at the 1in12 (Leeds)

Issues we will need to discuss:

proposal for floating collective
IP addresses / security in general

We also want to make space for some knowledge sharing, talking about our
different experiences and practices.


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