The left Stop the rot and start the composting

Published Date 3/2/17 7:37 PM

Its not the people we should be angry at for the current Brixet/Trump mess, it is the small/tiny number of people who pushed neo-liberal polices through for the last 30 years, probably a few thousand.

The people rebelled, yes, they could have rebelled to the left or the right, they rebelled to the right as the right were more competent in the face of the lefts divisions and general uselessness. Be angry with these few and make friends with the majority who decide our future.

And the left stop this divided uselessness, we need a left reboot, keep it KISS currently few “ideas” on the left are worth much. A good first step for the left is for groups to link to each other and share media and events, work out KISS “liberal” diversity of tactics and co-operate.

Stop the rot and start the composting.

Building a alt grassrots media network

Published Date 2/21/17 6:10 PM

The OMN rollout is a 10 step process

  1. Rollout a single node to link alt media and share content to 100 sites.

  2. More

  3. More

  4. More

  5. Rollout full social taging flows and start the offline backup, start to move away from the dotcons.

  6. More

  7. More

  8. More

  9. More

  10. The openweb grows into the semantic web, the dotcons become history.

 

Time scale

* This could take a year with support and full on effort

* 2 years with interest and some geek commitment

* 5 years with active BLOCKING and geek’s turning away and doing something “better”.

* It will FAIL if the alt/grassroots groups don’t links to each other and each tries/pushes to be the “one” ie if we strive for the same dotcon working in alt/grassroots media.

“Be the change you want to see”

History of the visionOntv project

The original project was offlinetv and was a online network to setup screenings to bring people together and cross fertilize different radical campaigning groups. I was pushing it as “open” rebooting of the failing undercurrents video activism project.

Before this I had been making a meager living doing screenings by fundraising vie the copyleft ruffcuts video CD project. With the transitioning from dialup to broadband internet speed the was a possibility to move the the distribution of screening quality video to the spreading peer2peer web.As you will continue to see thought my narration here my core thinking changes little.

The first dotcon (enclosures) boom had bust, the web was still a health open network through the “open” pioneers were being pushed out by more mainstream fahernisata people, these people were being snapped up by the next wave of dotcon funding so the clock was ticking on the next boom (and attempt as enclosing the web for control and profit).

Fashernisa´s were all over the open web, conferences, events, media. Geeks were developing open standards – each one unlinked/incompatible with the next it was a “fun” time for “open”. This flowering of geek culture had its fashernista side, the were 100 applications for zipping files or FTP and no easy to use open tools – the geek problem.

P from undercurrents got involved to do the funding side, a lot of “brainstorming” was done. During this time we see a “splitting” of the project. It was obvious that streaming video – that is a technology for watching video real time without having a local copy was going to grow to dominate the next dotcon boom and the fashionistas were buying into this big time. This is a client server technology – from one to many – its old (traditional) media distribution. At the same time the was a subculture flowering or peer2peer technology being used for “free content” this was a “native” open web technology.

The “splitting” was around a miscommunication/misunderstanding of what was going to happen in the next 5 years. And “funding” pushed this in a bad way, it was easy to talk to funders about “online video” it was fahernista mainstream. Few had any thought to the “cost” of jumping on the #dotconS fahernista wave. And in time the rise of the #dotcons from the second boom that was rising for all to see.

The “brainstorming” lead to the project being renamed visionOntv – just for the funding and outreach – much easier to get funding. Why would anyone be interested in offlinetv and peer2peer technologies all the value was about “owning” online space. That is enclosing the commons was unthinkingly embraced as a good thing – a touch on controlfreekery.

This simple change was the first step to the project losing direction and failing.

How to do ethical aggregation and news flow displays

Published Date 2/15/17 12:13 PM

The is an issue of fast flowing (lower quality) news sites dominating over slower flowing (quality) sites on short 5/10 story sidebars on the #OMN

To get round this the are a number of options:

  1. We only show one item (the latest) from each feed in embed RSS feed flows. This will mean that some content is “skipped” on high flow sites and some stays around for longer in low flow sites.

But for this to work in nodes (sites/hubs) with lots of source feeds we will need a rolling group RSS polling update system say 5 or 10 feeds at a time, divided into the total polling time frame.

So a site has 30 feeds polling ones per hour than it will divide this into 3 groups of 10 feeds and pole these in turns ever 20 min so that the feeds are undated ones per hour but in 3 different groups so that the is a turn over of content for the feed for option 1) to maximize slower site flows getting linked to in the #OMN

  1. A second option that we do now on the node dispay iis we randomize the content in site flow feeds, this will give a wider view of older content and will even out faster/slower feed flows to bring diversity. But you wont get time based “news”.

  2. What we do now, we show content in liner order, however due to the way that RSS polling works the updates will be in groups and faster updating sites will dominate over slower updating sites. This is far from satisfactory, as it rewords sites that “game” the system by scatter gun publishing publishing lower quality content.

http://omn.openworlds.info

Power Politics of the undead left

Published Date 2/1/17 2:07 PM

I have found memories of fighting the Power Politics of the “undead left” during the London Social Forum many years ago – lots of knotted strings of organic garlic around the top “taking the power table” to highlight the uncomfortable “undead left´s” grasping for power.

Then the ad hock crew taking away the top table altogether during the lunch break and arranging all the chairs in a circle. Their faces were a delight, coming back after lunch and it kinda/might have worked… but the splits of “not thought of here” took over and the undead were permissioned to take back the space at the next meeting.

The ESF movement faded and now is a shadow – no alt was built.

The use of cultural myths and traditions will mediate and disempower “power politics” but it’s a chicken and an egg to get these embedded in groups that are already ensnared in “power politics”.

The rainbow gatherings used to work this way till they were “disrupted” by the digital shift and capture by the #dotcons now the gatherings themselves are broken due in part by being organized through #failbook

The #OMN could fail from the same issue. The myths and traditions are in place PGA and #4opens. But the project does not have deep roots to weather the inrush of success. And on the other hand will likely not last the slow growth needed for the roots to dig deep.

Starting/Doing the “Risistence Expo project is unsettling for the same resion.

Power polatics and the race gender card

Published Date 1/31/17 12:50 PM

Deal with issues, allowing them to be pushed under the carpet has a cost.

The are real issues round gender/race politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics Then the is a the sad and bad playing of the race/gender “card” that is sometimes used when real issues become stressful.

This happen to me a year ago at the Good Social Centre in Dalston. The was a “monster” dominating process by talking over everyone with a steady flow of power politics. I was confronting him about this at a project meeting.

Activists strangely tend to have issues with direct action when it happens in there community’s, they sat around looking from one “monster” to the other “monster (me)” making no judgement between the two. In the end he played the Asian “race card” and that was the end of that.

He terrorized and wrecked the space for a year before he was final excluded from space meetings. Sad and bad…

Yes playing the race/gender card can highlight a real issue but sometimes its just more power politics. And if the issue is down to power politics in the first place then this is likely the second not the first reason the “race/gender” card is used to block.

In the case above it turned out that he was a mentally ill, druggie, control freek, with a MBA in bullshit. Sadly he did have real talents, that were key to the project if he could have been helped/supported out of the nasty power politics. This was only fully understood a year latter after he was excluded from the meetings.

Ps. Truth is good, he could have played the “mental illness” card, every one would have agreed and helped him.

Trust and Media Flows

Published Date 1/30/17 11:25 AM

Am thinking trust needs to be brought back into media. We have been trained like Pavlov dogs to push out stuff on the #dotcons as articles catch our fleeting interest.

The are so many agendas pushing news – who is pushing it becomes as important as whats in it. We need to hold back on click bait – find a source of news we/you “trust” and push that.

If we/your not part of the solution you/we are part of the problem, “click bait” pushing is the/a problem. Trusted (new) media sources a/the solution.

Rebooting Alt Grassroots Media

The OMN Beta is a subset of the full open project.

Its a just the linking part. A first step to the data soup and open per2per network.

A single node will facilitate existing alt/grassroots media projects to link to each other. This will hopefully, partly overcome the #geekproblem to brining in talented developers to roll the rest out in a open way.

If this is blocked and stalls (possibility) the is away the evil of “funding” but its a many edged tool that cuts in all to predicable ways.

The BETA will roll out

Implemented
* Basic content flows by tag

Coming Soon
* Basic video player flow embed by tag
* Basic audio embed flow by tag

* Basic “blog/site/project list flow” by tag
* Basic “personal” grouping/flow by tag

Many of the existing radical alt/grassroots media sites (PGA hallmarks, #4opens) will be feed into the network (opt out) and all of the sites invited to become a active parts of the OMN by embedding sections/sidebars.

For the geeks http://omn.openworlds.info:8080

Moveing through past blocking in activism

Published Date 1/19/17 11:53 AM

can be hard to keep “bureaucratic” thinking out of activist organizing. We do have ongoing adhock strategys that work fine, but, these have issues with scaling.

This is an unresolved and un-looked at.

Open can help:

We have a bit of friction going on, lets all try and reduce this by being clear on who is doing what.

Am taking the lead on the “**** ****” the *** *** part of the project in general.

For the **** *** am taking on **** ****.

If you have input into these areas, its good to run it past me, as we all work in different ways, which is a good thing 🙂

(optional) What roles are the rest of you taking on?

OMN user storys A Writers Blog

Published Date 1/12/17 11:18 PM

Tabs Blog

Tabs is a writer and journalist who in the past was published in major newspapers. She writes opinion pieces based on current news events.

She keeps her hand in by writing pieces for her blog. She then posts her blog on facebook. Some of her friends share her pieces. Her blog reaches between twenty to a hundred people, mainly her friends.

Tabs knows one of the developers of the Open Media Network. He adds her feed from her blog to the OMN so that when she publishes a new piece the sidebars of all the blogs that are interested in her work are alerted. All someone has to do is click on the link and they will be taken to her site so they can read the new blog post. At the same time her blog will be copied and stored on OMN servers, or noids, so that a backup is always available.

As time goes on more people sees Tabs blog on the sidebar on their blogs. Her viewing figures double over a couple of months. So she decides to reciprocate and adds a sidebar to her blog and links to some other blogs she likes.

She is now a part of the OMN. A number of prominent sites feature her blog and the number of people looking at her blog increase dramatically and keeps growing as the network expands.

Thanks JH