[imc-italy] [per il meeting] facilitazione

[durito]

2006/11/12, durito <durito at gmail.com>:
> Tentativo di facilitazione del centinaio di mail seguite all'annuncio
> di Jeff che ha deciso di interrompere il servizio di hosting per
> indymedia.

mi hanno scritto da infoshop.org mandandomi una traduzione in inglese
della facilitazione dicendo che vorrebbero pubblicarla.

gia' che c'e' potremmo sfruttarla anche noi, magari mandandola alle
liste internazionali. potrebbe essere utile per altri imc e portare
qualche nuovo contributo alla nostra discussione. (io intanto ho
suggerito a loro di intervenire)
ve la giro.

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CURRENT SITUATION
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we find ourselves without a server and without the resources to pay
for one. What are the technical and economical aspects that need to be
taken into consideration?

THE CHOICE OF SERVER
-the server needs to be put in a place that gives us a garauntee or
trust (we've seen previous cases of sequestering, etc)
-for legal reasons it's preferable to find it outside Italy.

one proposal is the Online Policy Group (link) that hosts indy san
francisco and seems to give the neccessary garauntees.
(http://www.onlinepolicy.org) would be useful to hear from other
national nodes to find out who they are using for hosting and
coordinate with other "evicted" IMCs to see how they're organizing.

BANDWIDTH
-The utilized bandwith(wasted) now on indy italy is 1,4 terabytes a month
-to get an idea of what we're wasting, see:
link

MONEY
-we don't have a euro
-for our needs the hosting costs would be somewhere within the tens of
thousands of euros a year.
[...]

there was a proposal to ask jeff to continue to provide hosting,
promising to not involve him in questions of process, but to many it
wouldn't be wise to even ask.

many people expressed the need for a few techies to explain the
possible practical solutions in a way to free the field of fantastical
proposals and think about something concrete.

VARIOUS REFLECTIONS
there have emerged various reflections on the current state of
indymedia, on what it is, what it was, and what it could be in the
future. The question at the bottom of this: close shop (maybe thinking
of a new project) or be reborn?

a summery:
indymedia isn't seen as a point of reference, as a necessity of the
movement. There isn't anymore that subjectivity that needed indymedia
as a tool, nor that those who wanted it to be a tool for focalizing a
community.
Today there is a near total absence of project-making and indymedia
has survived independently with the energies and with the willingness
of those who make it, this has brought with it a de-responsibilization
in respect to the initial project.

Currently on the web there exists a huge quantity of information, are
we interested? How do we interact with this information? The next role
of indymedia could be that of aggregating all of that information that
is confictual, independent, and critical.
Indy wasn't the media of the movement, it wasn't a blog, it wasn't a
PR agency, it wasn't Web 2.0, it wasn't MySpace. It was all these
things and completely the opposite. We treated it badly, not ever
understanding it's real revolutionary potential to overthrow systems
of media, not political ones. What could it be now?

##Open Publishing as it is doesn't work. Indymedia worked well when it
there was a social and political movement that did it, that produced
it...now (at least in all of Italy) there are few of us and we
continually are guilty of accusing comrades that day after day work on
the ground. Maybe it was the fault of Open Publishing that didn't
"work" on the ground as a source of information from the grassroots
(dal basso), and we perhaps "unconsiously expected and waited" from
those who posted "news," but apart from those who were from our world
(social centers and all those who gravitate around the "movement of
movements") we didn't develop information from the grassroots.

70% of posts on indymedia are reposts from mainstream media, 20% are
communiques from the movement, 10% are stupid posts from weirdo
trolls. It wasn't but it became a sad bulletin board for the movement
on which people left way too much space for ranting and nothing for
the production of social relations (not to mention the lack of
information).

The Consensus Method is shit. Or better, "the italian version" of the
consensus method! Who the fuck has really applied the consensus method
on the lists? Have we ever seen a real work of facilitation, etc...?

Indymedia is a fundamental tool even if it doesn't always work. This,
however, isn't a limit of Indymedia, it's a limit of the movement.
It's the movement that's infighting, shitty, asocial, alienating all
too often. As we know it goes in alternating phases: growth and
decline, it gets bigger then smaller again, winnings and losings,
triumph and suffering. It's natural. We need to arrive at a
realization that if we close we loose the only media that is fluid:
uncontrolled space, unguided, unselected, uncommanded, and more than
anything in constant evolution.

We need to get back on the road, to explain what Indymedia is, how you
do it, and why we chose to do it like this. There won't be any
technical innovations that will make a new Indymedia (also that, but
it won't lead everything else) but it will be a new approach we'll
have to talk about and remake an informational process with people,
before anything we'll have to discuss the tool and how to use it and
how to be independent media in 2006. Who remembers the example of the
media centers? That's it, those were good examples of the
socialization of indymedia: a technical tool that is also a point of
convergence of content and people.

PROPOSALS
these are the proposals for the survival and rebirth (if they exist)
of Indymedia Italia

-self-financing
-redimensioning indymedia
-decentering the project
-technical solutions


SELF-FINANCING
an obligatory step if we want to keep Indymedia alive.
As said above, we need to understand if other individuals or realities
exist already who are available to finance the project.
If we could communicate effectively our intentions and our needs we
could probably, with a few initiatives (tabling, meetings, big events)
nd the money. But who would be willing now to make a donation, would
they be willing again in the future? Or would Indymedia survive only
for a few months or years? We need to organize a financing that can
last for the long term. This would come about only if we put the tool
back in the hands of people. Asking for money because WE need to make
Indymedia doesn't make sense, we need to make it so that it's THEY
once again that need to make Indymedia as a communication tool from
the grassroots. We could easily decide to give it a year, beyond which
we make a recap of the situation and we evaluate it in concrete terms
that which we've been able/not able to do.

METHOD:
-prepare a splash screen that rests up a long time and in organize
furiously in the meantime.
-ask to Soci di Remedia (for those that don't know: Remedia is an
association created in the old days to round-up donations) and ask
them what they plan to do.
-bring out the old material (tee-shirts, cds, posters, and all the
rest) and begin tabling to finance future initiatives.

Let's forget about managing money with the same schizophrenia with
which one manages the publication of a feature. We can't do it, both
from the legal point of view (the balance of an association is kept in
order, you absolutely do not screw around with that) and for the
responsibility that we have for the money we've received.

REDIMENSIONING

Indymedia has become a huge elefant also because in our heads is
always the idea that we are larger than life. Not necessarily from the
political point of view, but in the way we communicate on the site.

With self-financing in front of us, one possibility to reduce costs
would be to thin out the site and consume less bandwidth.

POSSIBIILITY
-Work on the big images and the video that are published for example
cancelling them from the posts that are hidden.
-Propose more restrictive limits on the dimensions of published files
-apply the policy in a more strict way to eliminate all the crap
(attentive to not widen the scope too broadly and censure)
-Have someone else host the heavy files (New Global Vision, using torrents)
-Initiate a block of comments when they become useless and boring.
-Login for posting on the newswire (a non-optimal solutions other IMCs
have tried)
-minimal graphics on site (a text-only version, etc)

DECENTERING

The proposals are fundamentally two:

-Dissolution of italy as a "central nerve," passageway to the local
nodes (with the consequent responsibility for local nodes to find
their own resources) who would see how to put up a functional system
of aggregation and central coordination.
-"Federation of Thematic Affinity Groups" Each workgroup for issues
(that could be general or local themes) and try to share the
shareable. We could also think about a technical structure based on
the R* plan of Autistici/Inventati. Indymedia could be a series of
"federated blogs" with the same graphic (or not) under the brand of
(((i))). The "common" site could remain a collection of RSS feeds from
the blogs to the central page and as a newswire the RSS feeds of the
comment posts on the thematic blogs. Maybe leaving the shared
calander, that would be shared "oppositely" (that is, the RSS feeds
would be shown on all the federation blogs). This would make the
bandwidth distributed but the content shared.

IN FAVOR
-indymedia has become impossible to manage between 100 or more persons
between admins and those list subscribers.
-could push those who use the local newswire in a passive way to take
up the job of giving life to the various local nodes in crisis
-closing the dead local nodes would save resources, if nobody is
working on them it's not necessary they live
-relations on the ground would grow, including more people, more trust
and project making with who would re-launch the project
-who made indymedia would be further made responsible in an acritical
and superficial way
-there isn't enough energy available to re-think and re-organize all
of indymedia on a national level.

AGAINST
-if the same people do it, I don't see how the things could get
better. Risk of localization of the current dynamics.
-in a few months, one of the (few) notes could build itself up to be
the "de facto" substitute of italy.indymedia and would bear the same
burden as current situation, meaning we would be back to square one.
-many of the local nodes are in crisis, a solution of this kind could
make them disappear, taking away a resource to who uses the local
newswire even if they don't administer them.
-disappearance or localization of the thematic categories
-it would signal substantially the end of the indymedia project and
the beginning of new projects.
-if you close the local nodes instead of helping them, it would be
impossible to create relations in those zones.
-what would stop a node from constructing relations in the area, to
organize initiatives in their territory, if they don't take part in a
national project?
-there would be a saving on resources only if the local nodes were
left to die, otherwise there would be only more sites for which there
would be a bigger request of bandwidth and database dimensions.
-one of the roles of indy is to be the glue between situations and
analysis from all parts of Italy, something impossible divided in
local nodes.
-how would the questions of national and international presence be answered?