[Imc-wales] Meeting in Cardiff Sat 7th July

[ana]

Hi Kelvin and all:

I'm sorry my non-attendance leaves some training in limbo, but then, if
you specify what kind of training you would need, it would also help the
rest of the people who are going, specially those who may be providing
the training. Please do not think of indymedia as some organisation that
"provides" or "organises" things "for" you. By being on this list you
are making yourself part of the group on an equal basis and you're
committing to have your input as well.

I know it can be daunting at the beginning and this meeting is part of
the process of making it not so daunting. Anyway, to the point: if you
know "nothing", just say so and people will go with the clear idea that
there is some one who needs help from the very beginning; if you have
used the site before and have difficulties in something in particular,
then say that. But just "training ..." I hope you get the idea.

Kelvin Mason wrote:
>
> Sorry to be a bit negative, I would love to just get on with writing ,
> submitting and publishing news on our site... 

Ok i'm gonna try to explain this - "our site" is the indymedia uk site,
it is there already, and prepared to have your news. (if you think of a
indymedia wales without the existing uk site, you're on the wrong list
... ) Ok, there is no where where you can "tick" wales at the moment,
that's a technicality that is easily asked for in the features list and
which can be implemented now; in the meantime, you can publish, make
clear what region/city it refers to, and make a note of the url or
article id, and then when the wales "tick" is available, you can just go
via admin side and tick it.

So, not having this group rolling is no excuse to not publishing things
on uk indymedia. This group (maybe you would need to correct me if i'm
wrong) is/will be only for the collective administration of a wales wire
and a wales middle column (already introducing some jargon, but people
who have already attended my training can explain all this ... hopefully
;-) ) as well as contributing to the uk middle column and cleaning of
the uk wire ; the individual "posting" in the newswire of news, is up to
the individual/s and does not depend on what this group may or may not do.

In fact, if you do want to contribute to the uk middle column and/or
other administration, you can always subscribe yourself to the uk
features list - which, again, is highly recommendable.
> Whether there's a meeting or
> not, if there's anything I can do to speed the process of getting to that
> stage, I'm up for it.
>   

Well, suggest your agenda items yourself if you feel it's not being done :-)

I don't want to "direct" your meeting from the distance, but an idea for
the "training" would be to make it clear for people that the indymedia
page (and every web page that works with a content management system, in
this case mir, i.e. a page where you get a form and you fill it and all
the formatting and colours are already there made for you) is based on a
database. the items of the database are the articles in the wire, and
that database is shared between the different indymedias within the uk,
and the uk page itself. it is very important that people understand
this; it is the basis for work, without understanding this, it is
difficult to understand most of the other things happening in indymedia.

so as a shared database and resources, the work needs to be shared as
well; meaning, it will be hoped that people within this list will be
contributing in the imc uk features list. For people who, additionally,
have administration access with a password, I think it is generally
accepted that it is a "requirement" to be in the imc uk features list.

And another thing that may be useful for the meeting- when we have
organised uk-wide meetings (as in, self-organised, as no one organises
anything for any body else), we have prepared for agendas etc. using
wiki and also having preliminary meetings on irc in order to prepare the
agenda for instance. Both agenda and logistic things like accomodation
and travelling can be prepared in irc and/or wiki. I know it can be too
advanced for people who are new to all this orgy of technology (we'll
all been there, believe me, i haven't been an expert since birth), but
it gives you ideas also for skill sharing.

Anyway, good luck in the meeting; if you have internet connection, I
will try to be connected as well on irc in case you have some doubt
during the meeting that you need to solve. but also remember that there
are people on irc.indymedia.org channel #uk most of the time, 24/7.

all the best

ana