A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
Published Date 9/30/11 10:43 AM
Everyone understands the role of “gatekeepers” in traditional media. I want to look at how there are very similar issues with radical and progressive media. Most blocking and authoritarianism in activist organising is not conscious, rather its roots lie in psychological traits rather than ideological thinking. Everyone might be a professed horizontalist, but some are clearly not acting in the accordance with the way they think/speak.
An example of this is when the are two clear points of view, both valid and valuable, in a group. Typically, the horizontalist view is blocked procedurally until there is no time left in the process. Then the more vertical view is pushed through at the last moment to “save the process”. The outcome is very bad feeling between the groups/indiviuals and the more (dysfunctional) authoritarian view is implemented. This is problematic as it gives a clear signal to everyone involved that progressive ways of working cannot work, which feedbacks to the next process and left/progressive project stagnates.
In general, building radical media needs to have no gatekeepers to the overall structure (just like that hugely successful progressive, horizontalist project, the internet). We need ideas of how we can work our way out of this progressive cul-de-sac and we need them soon. It seems to me that progressive organising is based on trust, and authoritarian organising is based on a need for control (and the distrust that this breeds). So does the answer lie in leaving enough time for trust-building in progressive organising as a core part of the process?
A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
Published Date 9/28/11 10:06 AM
Richard’s Proposal for making the interactive site live
I’d like to thank everyone for their comments and suggestions on the site thus far, which we have either implemented or explained why not. I want to point up here a potential very serious problem with the process for the site going live. I’m sure that everyone is acting in the best will, so my fears over this will not be justified.
For this site to have any chance of success it needs to go live asap, now that there are only 4 weeks left until the RMC. (The original date for completion was September 1st, but there were delays over consensus to go ahead at all). In my considered and very strongly-held opinion, if it were to drag on, say, to Thursday of next week, the opportunity would be largely lost, and all our work wasted (work which has for instance kept me awake all of tonight). So I’m trying to predict obstacles to the site going live, and gently remove them.
*** has asked for an umpire of the process, and no one has volunteered. Is an umpire really necessary? What we need, surely, is a really simple and rapid process. *** asked for all the texts to be in for review. This will simply never be the case for a site such as this, as the expansion of the site will go on after the conference has finished. When I get the chance (I’m going to be on a plane for 12 hours) I will fill in what has been called “conference guidelines”, which is actually a necessary short statement on how off-topic posts will be deleted etc, trolls banned etc with a link to the static site mission statement.
I propose the following as a process: as the technical check is done and the site’s stability has been approved, I would propose the site goes live, as long as: 1. Unfinished pages are clearly labelled “under construction”, as I have begun to do. 2. There is no text on the site which is either misleading or nonsense.
The background to this proposal is my earlier opinion stated on the wiki that the risks to the RMC from this site have been greatly exaggerated, and its value seriously underestimated. ******** described this statement as the crux. I hope it is now clear from the version of the site online that the site presents minimal risks to the RMC’s reputation.
If the above proposal is not accepted, I think we have a very serious risk of the consequent delays destroying this project utterly, which I personally and professionally would be gutted by, and left wondering how on earth this happened. It really does hang in the balance right now.
After going live we would need two things: 1) the emails of all the speakers to invite them to post on the pages of their sessions. This should happen once the template for the workshop pages is completed and run by one member of the organising group who is neither of us and who has the time to do it. ****** and Hamish met yesterday to sort out this template. 2) The ticket holders’ details so that they can be signed up to the site and emailed with invitation to participate. This should only be done once the text of that email gas been reviewed, with its clear option for people to unsubscribe, for those who do not wish to partjcipate and for those activists who do not wish to be on the net at all. Once again, if an “opt in” rather than “Opt out” proposal is made, this is the equivalent of saying the site should not go ahead, because it would be completely stymied. I suggest that we pass this email text by at least one of the members from Peace News members of the organising group, who best understand activists’ concerns.
Meanwhile we look forward today to the rest of *** and all of ******* feedback, which we will again rapidly implement or explain why not / suggest an alternative. And also feedback from anyone else who has the time.
Very best wishes to all.
Richard
Published Date 9/28/11 9:28 AM
Hi Everyone
I’m writing to reflect a bit on the process we currently have for making a website appropriate for the RMC, an interactive website which genuinely builds radical media. This proposal also reflects, to be honest, my great anxiety about it. My position comes from the fact I really care that this conference produces concrete and measurable results in building radical media. My passionate position for proposing an interactive website comes from the following:
1) I have been to an awful lot of conferences where interaction between participants relies on the happenstance of meeting someone in the corridor and exchanging a business card. The first problem with this is the individualistic and random nature of it, which is surely inadequate for those of us that believe in collective ways of working. The second is that it favours existing power structures, where one person’s contribution automatically counts for more than another’s because of their pre-existing status. Thirdly, it doesn’t achieve measurable outcomes.
2) It would be absolutely futile to set up a conference on that basis, where subscribers were unable to organize themselves before, during and after the conference, in a horizontal way. Modern media conferences do not organize themselves in that way. See this important conference in New York: http://contactcon.com/
3) That therefore the current site http://radicalmediaconference.org was to be a pro-tem site which would allow time for the development of a proper interactive site.
4) We have worked very hard to produce an exemplar of a such an interactive site, which is here:http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/
This website replicates the functionality and look & feel of the current wordpress site, and adds interactivity
This interactivity is grouped into three simple categories:
1. Ask a Question (Give an Answer / Join a Discussion)
This is for participants to ask questions and give answers to EACH OTHER, not to “organizers” of the conference! The text accompanying this page will make this very obvious (it doesn’t yet!). This uses the standard web community called a forum.
Sample question:
“Is anyone willing to subtitle videos? I know French and Portuguese.
Response: I speak Arabic, and have some time to do that, yes.
Response: OK I have set up a wiki page for people to leave their details (linked), and booked a time and space for us to talk about it at the conference (linked).”
2. Get Organized
This uses wiki pages for people to introduce themselves to each other, to organize meetups at the conference, to book an open space, and to work on radical media projects.
3. Radical Media Projects
Links to all radical media projects which sign up. This info is then an automatically-updating resource, easily embeddable on radical media projects’ websites.
There will be comprehensive help files for people to be able to organize this themselves.
Technical aspects
There are a number of things that need to be sorted out before launch – see here: http://visionon.tv/web/rebelliousmediaconference/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Website These changes are important, and all of them will be achieved before a deadline of 27th August. Please read the link above, and tell us what else should be improved.
5) The timetable for the development of this site has long been established: it would be discussed at the meeting on 17th August with a view to full implementation on 1st September. We remain absolutely committed to the completion of that schedule, which we see as both necessary and practical. The demonstration of this mock-up is to allow discussion and feedback before the 17th August meeting. Subject to its acceptance, the site will be visible as fully functioning by 27th August, ready for review before going live on 1st September.
After going live, the forums will need moderating, the wikis will need a “fairy”, and participants will need help and guidance. Richard, Hamish and Marc Barto are committed to this work. I propose that administrators of the site should be all members of the organising group plus visionOntv’s Marc Barto, so that he can moderate and offer help, a role he already carries out for visionOntv. Other administrators should only be proposed and consensed. Content on the front page should be drafted, emailed out then posted after “a period of time” for amendments. Maybe we should have “super-admins” of the site – I would propose Mil and Gabriel – who can post immediately to the frontpage, for urgent announcements. Feedback welcome.
6) Budget
£400
There is £200 left out of the original £500 of the RMC website budget. This would be spent on design / css work. Then the matching £200 funding from visionOntv pays for the server costs for 3 months, over the busiest part of the conference, when it is needed. Traffic will carry on beyond that, but not at critical levels, so this will be enough.
7) There is a debate between substitution of the current site against merely adding interactivity to it. I would like to say that, in my opinion, the development of the current site was useful, in that it looked nice, and we only had to copy its content and its functionality. There is no sense in which this work is wasted. The vital point is this: if the current site remains as the portal to information on the RMC, it will be extremely prejudicial to the essential new functionality. If we did this we would lose a massive amount of interactive functionality (comments on blog posts going elsewhere, activity streams not functioning, division of the google juice = less visibility of the conference on the web). To achieve our goal we simply must have a switch-over to the new site on September 1st. I am very interested to hear any comments, and any counter-proposals, and the reasons for them.
Best wishes
Richard Hering, Hamish Campbell
Published Date 9/21/11 5:23 AM
(Psychology) an obsessive need to be in control of what is happening http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_freak This has been an issue with many groups and individuals I have been involved with in activist organising.
It was key to the decline of the http://indymedia.org.uk project and the ossification the climate camp process and static nature of the climate camp website http://climatecamp.org.uk My most destructive experience of this till recently was the organising of the London European Social Forum, and the central role of the SWP and Ken Livingston’s office in this. Currently I am involved in the organizing of the http://rebelliousmediaconference.org and I would like to highlight how this process is being damaged by Control Freakery during the on going process.
RMC (Peacenews) process and “pushing the agenda”
During the first meeting I attended a single speaker talked continuously for ¾ of the meeting, constantly expressing the lack of time and the need to move on – this is called “pushing the agenda”.
Taking charge of the minutes – and constantly not reporting the views in the record of people who do not fit into this pushed agenda.
Packing and controlling the agenda of each meeting, then pushing through this agenda, leaving no time or space for differing views.
Then when the inevitable rebellion happens blocking this procedurally in till it becomes irrelevant to the outcome of the project. Nitpicking might be a good way of describing this blocking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromanagement is used as weapon to stop productive open organising and to shut down process outside of the “pushed agenda”.
Its hard to put your finger on what is wrong at the start of this process but as you go along it is soon made clear that it is a deep intolerance, a lack of trust and narrowness of vision that verges on stupidity.
As one of the core organisers of the RMC conference highlighted it is very hard to change this behaver, some back ground reading on the problems http://www.ec-online.net/knowledge/articles/control.html
Issues that make this behaver more of a problem:
* Lack of solidarity among the organising group
* Unbalance of knowledge of the core differencet approaches in the RMC this has manifested as lack of understanding of technological change.
…
A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
A river that needs crossing political and tech blogs – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over- complexity
My videos are on these two youtube channels visionontv 3,832,876 views and undercurrents 22,689,976 views
Published Date 9/11/11 9:00 PM
FEEDBACK#
> GENERAL
> How do you navigate back to the top page from the sub-pages? > You can’t always navigate between the pages: eg. from http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/discuss/-/message_boards/view_message/137952 I can’t press the “organise” button (a green arrow comes up instead)
hamish: There are some minor issues with navigation which will be fixed by a process of user feedback. The major issues you highlight are actually only issues in the admin interface so are not urgent to fix – normal users (non admins) use the top menu buttons functions.
> not clear what the relationship is between:
http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/organise
and
http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/getorganised
Hamish: this is an issue with the 2 sites design, normally the organise page would be the home page – but as the home page is on a different website… The organise page is the introduction page and the getorganised page is the action page. This issue would be mediated by merging the two sites, till then we are stuck with an overly complex setup.
Hamish: all pages are by default visible to everyone, BUT you have to be a member to edit a wiki page. The current exception to this will be the members page which will only be viewable by logged in members as we will not bring in the full functionality of this page till after we have signed up the members – currently the site is focused on organising
Hamish: this functionality will be added, current we are focusing on usability and organizing
Hamish: there will be extensive interlinking inside the site in reaction to user action – this will bring all the widely used pages into prominent visabilerty
> PROGRAMME
Some people may want to browse the entire programme (ie. the titles, speakers & descriptions) on one page, in the same way that one might flip through a printed programme. I think we should accommodate this, as well as having the individual web-pages (which will also include the lists of resources, feedback from participants etc…)
hamish: that’s a good idea, and we can implement it – but for now we are keeping the user experience as simple as possible, so will add this functionality to the site after the program has been added – its very easy to implement, but the issue is more about user interface (UI) and how it fits together, we will have a much better idea about this when we have the program in place.
> INFO
This button doesn’t currently lead anywhere
hamish: it links to the old site
> MEDIA
How will media items be listed on eg. http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/video?
Hamish: in a number of ways, the most basic will be an auto updating show player with a playlist of items (this will have an embed code so can be placed on any website)
Is the plan to embed media for each session on that sessions individual page?
hamish: yes each session page will be configured with all the media items, links, resources and a user/organiser wiki page. The session pages can be active, running upto, during and after the conference.
> DISCUSS
Hamish: that’s a good point, we need a clear statement that the site uses an “open security modele” and link to what this means.
> OUTCOMES
Not sure that “outcomes” is a good term to use, as their are lots of potential outcomes for the Conference that aren’t listed here. Maybe “take action” (though we might want to include some more “active” actions if we do this). The main text on http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/outcomesneeds to be redrafted and agreed so that (a) it explains where folk can easily access the info they need to follow through on the “outcome” in question; and (b) it doesn’t look as though we’re talking down to people.
hamish: outcomes is the wording used in the RMC process, This is simply a draft page the outcomes were circulated for feedback to the list, if needed we can temporarily hide this page till it is further filled in – or just have a prominent DRAFT heading which is more web02
How does http://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/outcomes relate tohttp://live.rebelliousmediaconference.org/getorganised/-/wiki/Main/Outcomes ?
hamish: the first is a static page (which only admins can edit) the second is an open wiki which participants can add to
We need to draft and agree texts fo the buttons on the LHS.
hamish: not sure what this means?
> MEET-UPS
hamish: prominent interlinking by user interaction will make the important pages more visible, we will adust after some user feedback to make shore the is a good balance
Hamish: this should be available soon
Hamish: as has been outlined the majority of the work will fall to hamish, richard and marc, though everyone with admin access – all members of the organising group who ask can take part if they want to.
hamish: they will be published on the RMC mail out and on social networks