[Imc-oxford] minutes 27/09/04 + minireport of FFair meeting

[owen at riseup.net]

Here are minutes of our last meeting. Also, to update you all, we
had a meeting Wed to talk about Fresher's Fair but ended up talking
mostly about OSAN stuff, since there were no non-OSAN people
there :P But one thing that did come out of it was that the
indymedia stall should be distinct from the OSAN one, because
indymedia really needs new people and if it is just a side thing
of OSAN, we may give out plenty of leaflets promoting the site
but won't probably get many active volunteers.

Owen the evil mobile phone mast

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Minutes of oxford indymedia meeting
Monday 27th Sept

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[There were 4 of us at the meeting (Eileen, Hamish, Jack and Owen).
Minutes by Owen. Feel free to improve or correct mistakes :)  ]


AGENDA
-screening (10th Oct)
-funding for a projector
-Fresher's Fair stall
-Outreach/Newswire issues
-possible redesign of the website

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1. FILM SCREENING - 10th OCT - RUFFCUTS LAUNCH

-Hannah might have posted some blurb for a flyer to the email list. Hamish
 will check, and if necessary, write something himself.

-Jack will design the flyer.

-Hamish will sort out some stills from the films and send them to Jack for
 the flyer

-Hamish suggests the following lineup:
1. Campsfield (lollypop?) film
2. Gay pride films
3. Cheeky Apocalypse (climate change)
4. The latest 'Lord of the Rings' spoof (part 2, re the US elections).

-we could target publicity at single issue groups - campsfield/asylum,
 gay pride, climate change, etc

-Jack will try and get Mark to print the flyers because we may not be able
 to afford to pay Green Print to do it.

-We can use the undercurrents projector.

-Hamish will sort out all the gear except the soundsystem.

[ SOMEBODY NEEDS TO SORT OUT A SOUNDSYSTEM (possibly Richard?) ]

-Last time the room was full, with very little publicity; it could be
 too small this time. Should we book the upstairs room (capacity about 150,
 costs £60ish) instead of downstairs (capacity about 75, costs £30ish)?

-We could've squeezed some more people in last time.

-Let's stick with that room for now.

-Eileen will distribute some flyers/posters.

[We decided we need 100 A3 posters and 200 A4 flyers.]

-Owen (and Richard?) will distribute posters.

[Someone remembered someone volunteering to flyer the northgate hall but
 we don't know who and they aren't here.]

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2. FUNDING BID FOR THE PROJECTOR

[We have about £200 in the bank. A decent projector probably costs
£700-£800. There is a good possibility of getting money from Oxford
City Council, and also from the money OCSET have been given, if
the projector in some sense formed part of the social centre]

-We all thought it was a good idea to apply for the OCC money and buy a new
 projector with it, since it seemed likely we would get it and there
 don't seem to be strings attached.

-We need to handover a constitution or statement of aims, finances,
 answer some questions etc.

-various other video funds are also needed

-we need a 'commitee' [ie working group] to sort out the OCC bid:
 Richard (since he's been dealing with some of the people involved already)
 Hamish
 Eileen

-Eileen has already done a statement of our accounts.

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3. FRESHER'S FAIR - 5TH-7TH OCT

-There is a cheque for Vincent to re-imburse him for the
 (deposit/booking fee?) on the stall.

-Setup is on Tues 5th, the fair is Wed and Th 6th and 7th.

-There is a meeting to plan for fresher's fair, Wed 29th, 7pm, Magd MCR.

-We have leaflets.

-Owen will write a 'how to publish' guide and we'll make 200 copies
 for the stall.

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4. OUTREACH - GETTING MORE PEOPLE TO POST ON THE NEWSWIRE

-The newswire is pretty slow.

-People are trying to post stuff but are sometimes doing it in strange ways,
 eg sending huge picture files to the email list.

[We chat for awhile about issues surrounding the East Oxford Community
Centre]

-How about a feature on the EOCC stuff?

-Eileen and Richard have been working hard prodding people from
 other groups to post stuff and doing it on their behalf too. People have
 at least got into the habit of sending Eileen info when they have an event.

-We need to find ways of showing people how to post.

-The site could be cached on a laptop and taken to meetings
 for demonstrations.

-Another good tactic is to pass a laptop round at a meeting and
 give everyone the chance to write something about what the meeting
 is about for them. Then you have the makings of an article which you
 can post and they are likely to check the site themselves to see it.

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5. REDESIGN OF THE WEBSITE

-This ties into what we were just talking about; redesign of the
 site doubles as outreach.

-The site isn't bad as things go; do we have the energy to change it?

-It's cluttered and needs sorting.

-It has a very busy, dry style.

-Cambridge IMC have changed their site, it's nice now, uncluttered. We could
 still keep the same colour scheme.

-Suggestion: we make nice big icons to highlight the livelier topics,
 (eg see UK frontpage) and shove links to the dead ones on a static page
 which you can get to via a 'more topics' link.

-Suggestion: Each (of the highlighted) Oxford topic pages could have its own
 banner and short URL redirecting to it. These topic pages could
 be publicised in their own right (eg oxculture.indymedia.org.uk)
 and feature as a gateway page to the whole of indymedia.

[We all seemed to think these were good ideas.]

-Suggestion: We approach other Oxford groups and ask them if they want
 a indymedia newsbox on their website. This would work via an RSS feed
 and show the latest newswire items in whichever topics they were
 interested in as a link to the article on Oxford indymedia. At the
 same time we ask if some people from their group would be willing to
 look after that topic page eg a peace group could look after the
 anti-militarism topic page. This would be great for outreach
 and farming out work.

[Again, we thought it was a good idea. There were some reservations at
first:]

-We need to be cautious of topic pages becomes private fiefdoms
 of particular groups / organisations.

-They'll just be individuals in the editorial collective, as equals to
 the rest of us, but with a particular speciality.

-If they abuse it other admins will react and we'll be able to discuss
 it then.

-It's really important they get a sense of ownership for it to work.

-We need to explain clearly to them that the topic page is not
 just for their news, or only for views they agree with, but a
 community resource for everyone.

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6. TECHIE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ABOVE

-Owen and Vincent can do HTML/Mir stuff.

-Hamish will design some graphics (eg topic buttons) and welcomes
 any help with that.

-Someone probably needs to enable RSS feeds.

-After the tech stuff is done we can start approaching groups.

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