Indymedia global gathering

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Indymedia global gathering

People on the imc-scotland-contact mailing list will have received this message. I think it is worth discussing any ideas we could take to this meeting. Also since group decision-making does not exist at the moment, I can't think of any way of replying collectively...

If they do video conferencing that would be great, since I personally am not a jet-setting activist type.

Hello!
This is Jay from the Philadelphia IMC. I've become list admin, with Elisa from Brasil, of a new global indymedia list that will provide information about upcoming global indymedia face-to-face gatherings currently being discussed on the imc-communication@lists.indymedia.org list.

The basic idea is to mark the 10th anniversary of the founding of Indymedia, coming up in late November/early December 2009, with a global gathering or a coinciding series of gatherings that would be a place for people to discuss where indymedia goes from here -- what still works and should be emphasized, what doesn't work and should be fixed, and what doesn't work, never has and never will. There is currently discussion about whether the gatherings should be at the end of 2009, in early 2010, or if they should happen at all.

You are getting this e-mail because you have been active in global indymedia, are a list admin of a local IMC list or are some other general contact for a local IMC. This is not a discussion list -- this list is under full moderation and will just be used for the very infrequent but specifically relevant announcement.

I am writing to find out if this is the best e-mail address for you or your IMC collective. If so, great. Please pass any relevant e-mails along to your IMC. If not, and if you'd like to change your subscription to this list, please do through http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-global-meetings.

Thank you very much!

Jay

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Comments

Re: Indymedia global gathering

By Jon B, submitted on Fri, 22/05/2009 - 11:28

I think we have more than enough to do, focussing on local scottish news, and we dont even do that very well. Our focus at this stage should be local, not global, in my opinion, and from that point of view global gatherings are not useful.

I think a f2f gathering would be a waste of time, and money given that flights cost the earth. A video conference would be more feasable.

Perhaps a proposal to send to the global list is that the focus for IMC's should be on local political, social, and environmental stuff - rather than spending time and effort on a global scale.

Indymedia is extremely underused at the grass-roots: so a suggestion to other IMC's could be that there should be a pragmatic inclusion of non-anarchist groups, greens and socialists for example.

Re: Indymedia global gathering

By TomM, submitted on Fri, 22/05/2009 - 11:52

Jon B wrote:
Perhaps a proposal to send to the global list is that the focus for IMC's should be on local political, social, and environmental stuff - rather than spending time and effort on a global scale.

Yes yes very true. We need to concentrate on getting stuff worth reading at the local level.

However, supposing we still care about the idea of a global indymedia network, there are some problems at the global level that need looking at. They won't take attention from the local level since what i'm going to suggest takes computer-techy work and not journalism:

http://www.indymedia.org is horribly out of date and must be replaced. We should replace it with a site that automatically imports whole featured stories from regional Indymedia groups. Each regional group will have a log-in to the global site, which they can use to promote their best featured stores onto the global front page.

This and user-submitted translations are all possible with drupal and open-source community developed modules; we don't need to spend time on programming work. We could vastly improve on the global indymedia site with what I estimate would be no more than a month of one person's work. The only hurdle is momentum and conservatism.