Hamish Campbell

A look at some of the current alt/radical media projects

Novra media

These guys are some of the most intelligent “idiots” I know. They produce good content and they produce a lot of it.

* FANTASTIC CONTENT

* HARD WORKING

* OLD, BROKEN AND DANGURUES NEW/OLD MEDIA ASPIRATIONS

You can see them trying to build themselves into the new Guardian/Buzzfeed/***media. The root problem am hoping is the limited understanding/interest of the open web due to them having built there careers inside the #dotcons of Twitter and Facebook etc. In this the is hope for these guys.

Realmedia

The now “old” upstarts who keep getting it wrong by building something that might have been the thing to do if they had done it 10 years ago and most importantly as a open network rather than a closed portal.

* REFUSE TO LISTEN

* FUNDING DRAIN

Hard to say if the is hope for them.

The Canary

The tabloid of left alt-media, my thought is that am glade some one is doing these and its not me :)

* GOOD CLICK BAITING

* EXCELLENT OUTREACH

* HAVE HAD A TENDENCY TO BE ON THE EDGE OF FAKENEWS

* STILL MAINSTREAM MEDIA FACING

Now these guys would be valuable as part of a Open Media Network (OMN) partnering up to work as outreach for the more content soled groups. Its a nobrainer and not to far away from the funding model as a bigger alt means a bigger them, more revenue – everyone wins.

The fact that they are now linking after each story gives hope.

Built by the social media generation so little real understanding of the open web and limited interest in being part of the open world. Is this an unsolvable problem?

RealNews

The granddaddy of the current alt/grassroots media, they are a niche publisher of trade union grassroots news. Good content that all the other groups should LINKING to and share BUT CURRENTLY DO NOT, this sums up the issue with current “alt” media.

With a bit of investment they should be at the centre of a OMN

* HARD-WORKING AND GOOD CONTENT

* TECHNOLOGY BACKWARD

* GETTING A BIT LONG IN THE TOOTH

Am going to take a little time to try and help them out if they need/except help.

Radical film network

Has been taken over by a bunch of career building academics. There events have been so pointless that I have never been to one of them, and, I was around at the setup. I have been one of the most prolific radical/alt/grassroots film-makers of the last 20 years its odd that isn’t it, that am alienated from something calling it self “the radical film network”.

* THEY LINK

* POINTLESS

* LIBERAL FUNDING DRAIN

Outcome – CHANGE THE NAME to #fashernista film makers and academic career building network

The Media Fund

Grew out of realmedia and share many of its NGO facing blindness. Good and needed project if it can refocus on 4#opens and the linking of alt-media.

OMN

A open standereds based network

* THEY LINK

* #4OPENS PROJECT

 

visionOntv

Still worthwile as a video part of a network but pointless with out this wider linking project.

* THEY LINK

* "KINDA" #4opens project

 

 

Stupid individualism and the visionOntv CJ video templates.

Our templates for video journalism are designed to simplify and empower normal people to make coherent video news pieces using the tools they already have. They are successful at this if people fallow the template's – it says this at the end of most of them. The issue that creates failure is a standard one for the possibility of an alternative “stupid individualism”.

Our shared western society is based on a hegemonic false senses of individualism, were the reality is largely faceless bland conformity thinly covered by a surface of lifestyle fashion. This is the bases of consumer capitalism our “wealth” is built on. The current world view atomises any possibility of building an alternative and shows up as a block in most attempts to build one. The disparity of wealth on the surface and poverty of the underlying human condition (some more hippy types would call this “spirit”) is striking to many thinking and feeling people.

Our templates boil down more than 30 years of experience of awarded wining fast turn around video journalism to a A4 cartoon sheet. The instructions are clear and complete, if you fallow these, after a few attempts you will likely have mastered the bases of audio visual story telling and from this point of basic mastery opens a whole world of creativity and real genuine “individualism” of the less stupid kind.

Over the last 10-20 years of teaching few actually get this far and we know this because we have trained thousands of citizen journalist over hundreds of workshops at both undercurrents and visionOntv. Why? I would put into view my old friend/foe “stupid individualism” as the explanation (though would admit the are technical challenges as well).

The impotence of the template is more in what it doesn’t say. The is much more information in the omissions, this is how it fits on a A4 with pictures. It distils what does work and explains this. And leves out much that people do by default that dues not work.

Simply, people do not fallow the template, often they do not even pick them up and read them, they then go onto do what THEY think is video making, they do all the bits that the template purposely omits and very few of the bits in them, the result is almost always a dis empowering mess. This is the same outcome with all groups we work with.

We live in an individualist society, were we are all “empowered individuals”. The problem is evident in that this is our empowerment is an almost all an illusion, we are all dis-empowered individuals with egos let lose on dispoling mode. We think we are empowered because everything around us that works is on bureaucratic auto pilot, we don’t actually have to create anything original and lack the base skills to so when the rare option comes round.

Our templates are such a rear opportunity, if you can take your mind out of dispoleing mode and fallow the instructions – the first step and a rare hopeful sign for us as trainers is a budding CJ actually checking the steps on the paper template as they go though the filming.

This is a example of “stupid individualism” a block on many parts of building an alternative.

Some background http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

DRAFT

In the 19^th century we had a fight between the conservatives vs fundamentalist liberalism fighting/feeding inhuman industrial growth which lead to a human backlash in the 20^th century of social democracy – that is a mediated democracy to push humanan growth (progressive liberalism). The late 20^th century neo-libreal (fundamentalist liberals) pushed us back into a 19^th century world view which has brought with it the balenceing ideas of conservatism of trump and brixet.

 

The idea is to do it different. Socialism and ecolagisam spring to mind. If we can bring the progressive liberals back it can open the space for these other world views. If conservatism takes over then we have the revaluation of “communism” as a balance as Neo-liberalism is a inhuman deadend that we should not be repeat.

 

The conservatives (trump) and the radicals are both pissing on liberals for good resions. Though it might turn out that a renewed progressive liberalism (Corben etc.) might be the best path. Pee in moderation can be a good fertiliser :)

 

For a view of neo-liberal dealing with a political created ecological disaster this podcast is a good direct reminder http://irishhistorypodcast.ie/podcast-directory/famine/

Our current groups doing alt/grassroots media are to limited in there idea of what media could/should be. The is either a naivety or a dishonesty to all the current grassroots/alt media. They act and think they can be “big media” with out controlling the distribution of there content in any real way. This is in no way unusual the mainstream media is continually making this very same mistake. All of them rely on the the #dotcons which nowadays is largely the Facebook algorithm for the there content distribution.

 

Our current grassroots/alt media have web sites so already have one foot in the openweb, but non of their sites prominently link in any meaningful way to each other. They do podcasts so anther foot in the open web, but all their effort for outreach is inside the #silos such as Apple itunes etc. it's hard to directly blame them, though we should and will, for this sorry state.

 

So why are we here? On the one hand we have the #fashernista embrace of the #dotcons which most of the current crew built there careers inside. On the other we have the suicidal embrace of #encryptionists complexity and parallel “standardisation” into a pointless/shrinking in to nothingness alt-tech ghetto were our alt-geeks are.

 

With these issues in mind I have been outreaching to these groups for the last year, and building real working openweb linking tech as part of the #OMN project. This currently is not been getting far past their naivety/self interest/career focused thinking. Fair anufe if that is as far as there imagination/aspiration goes, but this is a clear problem for working alt/progressive/left media that urgently needs to be addressed. I will keep outreaching, if you wont to help with this outreach get in touch.

 

 

They link to meany alt-media crews at the end of each story which is nice, but no links on front page yet.

 

They have no links on the front page to alt media crews. They used to have a linking page inside there site, now I cannot find it? If anyone can find links can they send me a URL please. They are looking like going backwords to a more tredtional 20th centery view of what media is?

 

 

They have no links on the front page to other alt-media crews and I cannot find any links inside their site. They have source links in there story's which is not much of a step. This is a clear a failer in alt/grassroots media turms. 

DRAFT (please comment)

 

Building up alt/grassroots media would be nice to get a reply :)

 

NovaraMedia

The Canary

Reel Media

Real News

 

Hi guys,

 

Good to get a reply about this project from you.

 

OMN is a network of Open Media Sites. Its a push to #reboot the openweb that most “value” you currently use has been built upon in the last 20 years. Your careers were built on the destruction of the digital commons its time to pay this back. The cost to your career is light and the openweb can and should be run in parallel to your current use of the #dotcon distribution.

 

The currency (value) of the web is the link without linking content (no matter how good) has little/no value online and will likely not be seen offline.

 

Left wing and progressive sites DO NOT LINK and share content with each other. This leads them to have little or no value outside the bubble/echo chambers. And we are surprised and depressed when we keep looseing, there is nothing surprising about this, but there is something depressing about it.

 

Why is the OMN different to all the other activist tech failed projects.

 

The top 5:

 

1) It's based on the #4opens, meaning it doesn't have the buy-in (sell out) issue of NGO's and dotcons and can spread as wildly as the original world wide web (www) if people start to use/build it out.

 

2) It's KISS, that is simple and standards based, so open to be built-out in unseen directions and open to wide creativity. It galvanises and empowers openweb projects.

 

3) It's not under the control of one group and is a “universal/standard based so can build and link many niches to link and thus build a real alternative.

 

4) It solidifies a morality of co-operation and trust rather than fear and compation. Its left wing rather than right wing. All current projects are products of right wing thinking in structure and expectations.

 

5) It gives the tech/grassroots #fashionista's something useful to do and promote at their events. Its hard to express the pointlessness of all the current alt-tech.

 

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reply from one of the alt-media/grassroots groups

 

Aren't “existing” doing this anyway, linking all media groups together? Afraid I'm not techie enough to understand what OMN is, how it's different, or any of the points you've made, but I'm happy to go along with what everyone else decides if it can be explained in plain English!

----------------------------

 

We have done some "user story’s" https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/OMN/wiki/user-storys hope this helps get away from the tech :)

 

This is a part list of current working roll-out https://github.com/tomspost/OMN/wiki your content already appears as links on all these sites as you post it.

 

All current successful projects are networks or in the case of the #dotcon social networks (closed) sudo networks.

 

Currently the OMN is the only bud of a network we have in place in the alt/progressive.

 

What dues the OMN mean for the your org

 

Nothing has to change in what you do if you don’t want to do more.

 

To be part of the network you add a easy OMN sidebar/section/page to your existing site with the content flow you are interested in from any OMN site. You control what appears on your site.

 

At the moment the is just the one/first that covers the best of grassroots media from a UK and a bit of globle news focus so use that one http://omn.openworlds.info:8080

 

That’s it, you can do more if you like but don’t have to.

 

What this means is that your site will link and share content with other grassroots/alt media sites on there sidebar/section/pages.

 

Your content as you publish it on your site will appear (you do not have to do anything for this to work) on many other OMN sidebars/sections/pages on other sites and blogs.

 

It will play a role in “aggregating” the viewership of alt-media, everyone gains from this.

-----------------------------

 

What we are talking about is building expanding distribution outside Facebook/twitter. You can, and should continue to use Facebook etc. what the OMN dues is start to build independent and horizontal alternative that run/expands in parallel, its working now and easy to use.

 

Am more than happy to help set-up the embeds in your website, will likely take 20 min.

 

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Just in case you are worried about security of your site all scripting is striped from the articles and links and the embed is a standard plug-in that comes from the dotcon markets that 1000's of people have been using for years with out any issues.

 

Its mature and safe tech that just works.

 

-------------------------------------------

 

Ps. if this outreach duse not work its looking like time for a bit of a kicking.... phwww..... crap.

 

 

Making History

* is the open actavist/grassroots archiveing project that "Resistance Exhibition" is the UK flow.

* Travelling open commons / archiving project     

* boating europe (outline the trip)

* Applying for Lush central funding, with match funding / organizing from local Lush shops         

* 8 venues over 2 years in 5-8 Europen countrys

* partner with local groups in each city (students, campaigning groups/ngo and Radical Grassroots) these will facilitate venue and outreach/publicity at each city/festival.

* Updateing the existing texts and pictures from Resistance UK exhibition and repack into A2 printed laminates to start the expo.

* This will be complemented with local physical objects ( banners, stickers, flyers, gas masks..) and original audio/video stories. 
         
* Equipment needed: scanner / video capturing laptop / 5 x mp3 recorders / LED projecter/ budget for printing / Part-time pay for 2 people 6/8 month of work / running costs (trasport, electricity, Internet...)

* Outcome: unique collection of original material from across European countriesuploaded and stored in a open distributed repository.

Making History.

Building up alt/grassroots media would be nice to get a reply :)

 

Hi guys,

 

Good to get a reply about this project from you.

 

OMN is a network of Open Media Sites.

 

The currency (value) of the web is the link without linking content (no matter how good) it has little/no value online and will likely not be seen offline.

 

Left wing and progressive sites DO NOT LINK and share content with each other. This leads them to have little or no value outside the bubble/echo chambers. And we are surprised and depressed when we always loose, there is nothing surprising about this, but there is something depressing about it.

 

Why is the OMN different to all the other activist tech failed projects.

The top 5:

 

1) It's based on the #4opens, meaning it doesn't have the buy-in issue of NGO's and dotcons and can spread as wildly as the original WWW if people start to use it/build it out.

 

2) It's KISS, that is simple and standards based, so open to be built-out in unseen directions and open to wide creativity.

 

3) It's not under the control of one group and is a universal in its subject matter, so can build and link many niches to link a real alternative.

 

4) It solidifies a morality of co-operation and trust rather than fear and compation.

 

5) It gives the tech/grassroots #fashionista's something useful to do and promote at their events.

 

------------------------------------------

reply

Hi Hamish,

 

Aren't Real Media doing this anyway, linking all media groups together? Afraid I'm not techie enough to understand what OMN is, how it's different, or any of the points you've made, but I'm happy to go along with what everyone else decides if it can be explained in plain English!

 

XXXX

----------------------------

 

 

Hi XXXX,

 

We have done some "user story’s" https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/OMN/wiki/user-storys hope this helps get away from the tech :)

 

This is a part list of current working roll-out https://github.com/tomspost/OMN/wiki your content already appears as links on all these sites as you post it.

 

The realmedia site/project is version of the visionontv project we were fund-raising and trying to build 10 years ago. Fine for the silo it is but the world has moved on.

 

All current successful projects are networks or in the case of the #dotcon social networks (closed) sudo networks.

 

Currently the OMN is the only bud of a network we have in place in the alt/progressive.

 

What dues the OMN mean for the XXXX

 

Nothing has to change in what you do if you don’t want to do more.

 

To be part of the network you add a easy OMN sidebar/section/page to your existing site with the content flow you are interested in from any OMN site.

 

At the moment the is just the one/first that covers the best of grassroots media from a UK focus so use that one http://omn.openworlds.info:8080

 

That’s it, you can do more if you like but don’t have to.

 

What this means is that your site will link and share content with other grassroots/alt media sites on there sidebar/section/pages.

 

Your content as you publish it on your site will appear (you do not have to do anything for this to work) on many other OMN sidebars/sections/pages on other sites and blogs.

-----------------------------

 

XXXX

 

What we are talking about is building huge distribution outside Facebook. You can, and should continue to use Facebook etc. what the OMN dues is start to build independent and horizontal alternative that runs/expands in parallel, its working now.

 

Am more than happy to help set-up the embed in your wordpress site, will take 20 min.

 

Be the first of the 4 alt/grassroots media sites to take the step ;)

 

------------------------------------------

 

Just in case you are worried about security of your site all scripting is striped from the articles and links and the embed is a standard plug-in that comes from the wordpress market that 1000's of people have been using for years with out any issues.

 

Its mature and safe tech that just works.

 

-------------------------------------------

I have been talking about the fashernisatas for the last few years, its an idea/group that I have been struggling to work with my whole time in the alt/grassroots. So what is a #fahernista?  
A group of individuals who value/push there own individual advancement over the needs of the croup and community, generally they do not realise or see that they are doing this. This has the end affect of diluting and killing off possible alternatives and selling “grassroots” to NGO's and corporatist agenda’s.  #fashernista takeing over projects in hand with the geek problem's has lead to endless dead-ends in all alt/grassroots tech. Most recently this has manifested in encrypt everything, bitcoin/blockchain ect. this is a dead end.

The #OMN linking project is basic tech that I have been working on for more than 10 years, in past times the has been more interesting tech/social problems in alt/grassroots media to work on so linking has taken a back seat as its basic stuff. At this stage we only have the basics left. Lets take a first step linking alt/grassroots producers, and build tools to push this into a  #rebooted open web to start the needed move out of the #dotcon ghetto's. Lets try as hard as we can to avoid #fahernisa take over of this basic #reboot. #fahernista will set-up parallel projects, raise parallel funding, push these into the traditional media and dominate the #dotcon conversation. Non of this inevitable pointless #fahernista noise should distract from the basics, as it will just flash bang and fad into nothing. Keep the basics going, linking, building. In the long term the rest is noise, distraction, for the conspiracy minded its our very own “false flag”.

Hummm... how to spot drift into the #fahernisat agenda?

The is a strong anti-dote in the #4opens

 

How to move on with alt/grassroots media producers linking to each other? Currently the shamelessly do not do this, even though they have repeatedly stated they do over the last 5 years.

1) Keep private messaging them on steps they can take, this works to an extent, as asked them to add more tags to their posts and they “broke” the User Interface on the #OMN software we are using by adding lots more – which is a good problem to have :)

2) Publicly talk to them as a alt/grassroots media group in blog post and their social media – this currently has little affect.

3) Talk to them in public as producer groups – this has had a limited affect with some of the groups, will try this more.

4) Public talk to them as individual's, this will generally get a private response and little action just words so far.

5) Name them as groups who do not link/share in public, this might be needed for some of the groups.

6) Name them as individuals within the producer groups and push for linking directly to them in public, name and point to the individual that this is a clear #fail a last stage.

Its a shame that this escalation is needed - linking is a clear path to success on the web – the right-wing blogs/producers do this, its a blank faced #fail that the left/progressive do not now and generally never have.

“Make the world you wont to see” LINKING is a strong path to this.

Looking for helpful/happy people to crowed source the active conversation to make this happen.

Lets start with these groups.

NovaraMedia

The Canary

Reel Media

Real News

 

The OMN will allow you to find good quality alt\grassroots content. It’s a way of getting distribution outside Facebook and Twitter to push-up the use of the open web. It's a stupidly simple social project using existing basic web technologies.

The OMN is an open network so we call each of the sites “nodes” as they are small parts of the wider World Wide Web (WWW). Openworlds is the first node/site of the network, currently with links to 10 embeds on sites as an initial soft roll out. We are aiming to expand this out up to 100 sites over the summer for the hard launch.

If you have a web site and want to play a part in this “soft roll out” go to openworlds

Step 1: If you are interested in only some subjects or groups, click on group tags (with @ in front) and/or subject tags. You can choose as many as you like and then only these will show up in your river embed. Then click the RSS link.

Step 2: Take the URL of the RSS feed, in the new window that opens. Go to your CMS/site/blog and install a RSS display/widget and add the RSS URL to it. You can use the formatting options to change the number of items and what info to display to make it look nice.

That’s it for now, your site is now a part of a open alt/grassroots media network. Playing a role in linking and cooperating to build a progressive worldview empowering people to build a better world.