[imc-sheffield] Fwd: infograffiti - Can you help us?

[infograffiti]

Hey guys,

We saw your blog on activistnetwork.org.uk and were hoping you might be
interested in helping us do what we are doin. I hope you'll forgive me for
not writing a totally personal email but I am really busy at the moment
trying to get the word out. This is a similar email to the one which we went
to Noam Chomsky, who responded saying that the project was interesting,
promising and ambitious. To cut to the chase we need peoples help, we need
you to be a bit mischievous and help us  distribute forward thinking
messages. Anyway, heres the email......( P.S, since it was written for Noam
Chomsky it explains things you may already be familiar with, in which case
jog on to the juicy bits)

" The Internet community has a been partaking in a growing trend for around
5 or 6 years - social networking. It basically means that users edit
webpages by their content, if it is good the page "moves up", if it is bad
the page "moves down". Pages with the highest rank have are seen by more
people, and pages with lower ranks are seen by less people. It basically
means that good well researched content makes headway, and anything which is
bad goes no-where. The social networkers act as a filter for good content.
The content can be anything from artwork to news, music or film. The
important thing is that it is edited, some sort of quality control is added
- all of which is controlled totally by a large community of social
networkers (millions of people worldwide).

Some examples of these social networking sites are digg.com, reddit.com,
del.icio.us, stumbleupon, etc etc etc, the list goes on.

This in is itself is a sort of alternative media, for the people who use it
they generally sidestep the mainstream press and edit and discuss the news
themselves with the help of millions of others worldwide. The problem
however, is that it is a private club. You highlighted the problem perfectly
when you said,

         " this, I expect, is pretty far from my range of competence."

The MAJORITY of people do not know how to use this service, the majority of
people are happy to watch content on their televisions which is provided for
them, and the majority of people do not even know that this "social
networking" goes on. There needs to be a bridge between the work that is
done by social networkers (finding and editing good "content" - be it news,
film or otherwise) and your everyday average Joe.

The problem we face is once again global media dominance. The cost of a
printing press is high, and the logistics of distribution is very difficult.
However, it soon struck me that the social networking community is
significant in size, it covers a large proportion of the globe, and most
people in this community have CD burners. Is this then the largest printing
press the world has ever seen, a printing press which has yet to be ticked
into action?

Infograffiti.org <http://infograffiti.org/> is a service which is going to
utilise the potential of all of these CD burners - we already have people in
many of the major cities of the world ready and excited to do just that.
Infograffiti.org <http://infograffiti.org/> is a website much like any of
the other social networking websites with content submitted by and voted for
by the community -  the difference is that all of our content is video - in
documentary, short film and music format.  Our content is  to be video and
documentary which we feel should have been shown on the mainstream press but
hasn't. Where the media has failed our nations we aim to fill the gap with
informative documentary that users would never normally see. The content is
the sort of content which is too hot to handle for the mainstream press.

Crucially we will release a monthly "episode" on CD which will be able to
play on any DVD player worldwide. To distribute the CD worldwide we simply
allow all of our users to download to their computer the "CD Image". They
then burn this to CD as many times as they like (we recommend 15 times),
stick on our label which says:

"Congratulations You've Found an Infograffiti -  Put me in your DVD player"

They then go out into their city leaving the CD at bus stops, in cafe's, in
books at libraries, on park benches and in elevators. We encourage our users
to get creative.

The amazing thing is, that 1 week before we have even launched our website
we already have 50 people worldwide, in cities such as New York, Los
Angeles, London, Manchester, Melbourne, Vancouver, Chiang Mai, Bangkok,
Edinburgh, etc etc etc, who are very excited to do this. We already have
some video content to go on our first episode, which is of very high
quality, and we have interest from some big websites. We also predict that
each episode will cause our readership to grow, since the lucky people who
find the CD's are actively  encouraged to copy them and pass them on to
their friends - who we then hope will come to our website and edit and
submit content.

In much the same way that the trend of leaving books at bus stops caught on
and spread, we are predicting that this trend of leaving infograffiti CD's -
playable on a DVD player - will spread worldwide also, but this time much
quicker because we have an organized central hub, and an organized episode
system.

I was very excited to hear from you about this project, because if I hadn't
have read your book I don't think this idea would have developed. The
internet has given us the power to distribute our own media and edit it
ourselves. "We don't need whores, mercinaries and liars, we can do this
ourselves."

If the project is still unclear I would be more than happy to explain it
further, I just hope that if it is a little clearer you could comment on the
idea for us, since your authority on the subject of media control would help
us significantly. If you like the idea please let us know, any feedback is
greatly appreciated.

Phil Harper

http://www.infografitti.org

Thanks for reading, and if you are interested in helping out in anyway, then
you can email me back or call me directly on

0775904035
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