Month: November 2012

Published Date 11/8/12 12:58 AM

This was written as a reaction to activist focus on getting traditional media and the growing trap of corporate social media.

Why do activist media?

To do an action and not be able to communicate it is almost not to do the action at all.

* You need a photo of the spanner going into the works

* You need a photo of the campaigners going over the fence.

* You need video of the activist saying why they did it

* You need a picture of the target and the target at work

All these things are needed to communicate why, what and when the thing happened – if they aren’t there then the public affect of the action will be but a fraction of what it could be.

The economic damage of the spanner going into the machine will be real, but the inspiration of the action is in many ways as important as coverage like this is probably the resion/motivation for the current action – and it is only a series of actions that will change society not isolated and invisible single actions. Using media to amplify your message is key to the content of your action.

You could invite mainstream media along

* but they likely won’t come

* they will tell the target and/or the police

* they will not be part of any illegal activity so wont get the shoots they need to tell the story.

* when you are done a editor higher up (in hand with there lawyers) will change the message to be something you will not only be disappointed with but probably furious with – it’s the nature of mainstream media to misrepresent any social change activity that isn’t sanctioned by the mainstream, this is unlikely to change.

Media is key to the message, all media is good media, but some is more useful for radical purpose than others. Lets make DIY work and make our own media.

Published Date 11/6/12 12:50 AM

The confrunce venue was evicted just before the event! so it when’t ahead in hackney instead.

The Media is Dead, Long Live the Media!

May 8th-10th – new media conference on Raven’s Ait Island.

The imminent commercial collapse of mainstream media, and its replacement by PR-driven news, threatens the journalistic integrity and independence necessary for a free scoiety. The next generation could be without the 4th Estate.

<<media crises links and txt>>

And new media has not realized its potential to fill this space.

Old media and new media need to gather together, sharing skills, resources and experience to create the media of the future.

We invite:

Traditional media people

Alt-media people

Media students

DIY culture practitioners

Indymedia people

Documentary filmmakers

Print journalists

Radio journalists

The conference will concentrate on the audio-visual side of media, with space for break-out groups for print, radio and web.

The space: an eco-conference centre on an island in the Thames 20 mins by train from central London.

We have a large hall, a cinema room, and 3 conference rooms. There is basic crash space for 40 people over the weekend. The conference will be run on an “un-conference” format, and will be funded by contributions for the space and meals over the weekend.

The conference is organised by visionOntv (http://visionon.tv) – an undercurrents project (http://undercurrents.org) <<bio>>

To book a place <<make a everbright account>>

To add ideas for the conference, contribute to the wiki or contact training@visionon.tv

The space:

You are very welcome to stay overnight to make the most of your time at the gathering, but we understand if you cannot.

There are three dorms of 6 beds each, and plenty of additional space and mattresses for camping. Please bring a sleeping bag.

A large vegetarian kitchen is available. Gathering participants will be asked to volunteer to create wonderful meals. If you have special dietary needs, please bring food with you.

Outline Agenda

Friday

From 5.00pm – social time

7.00 Dinner + go-round to introduce everybody

8.00 Film screening

Sort out accommodation

Networking

Saturday

9.00am Breakfast

10.00 Workshops

1.00pm Lunch

Afternoon – Workshops

Including practical rapid-turnaround film making

7pm Dinner

8pm Film screening + editing

Sunday

9.00am Breakfast

3 workshops (one practical on island, gardening, tidying etc)

Lunch

Show our finished films

Social time (some people might head home)

Monday

A few people stay to clear up and help with space

Published Date 11/6/12 12:47 AM

This was copied over from the visionontv process page:

This is the process of the visionOntv affinity group so far (an affinity group is a trust network)

 At the core of any affinity group is a core/periphery relationship and a usheraly unspoken way of moving between them.

 At base, the project is DIY for core crew:

 * For simple changes and improvements, just do it. If you think people should know, e-mail them.

 * For major changes (e.g. changing key text on the front-page), run it past people first, including those who may disagree.

 * There should generally be time to put up everything you can as a draft to the wiki page so others can have input. For really big changes, talk to everyone, and call a meeting if people feel it is needed.

 * If someone keeps fucking up and ignoring the process call a meeting.

 * When the project has grown start a weekly online meeting for people to update everyone on what they have been up to. And as a way into the affinity group.

 Do everything you can in public (ONLY stuff that needs to be is ADMIN only)

 If the trust network breaks down, and they do sometimes, then people should do different projects. And by doing well in their project re-build the trust based on common understandings. Trust is built by doing core things that need to be done and lost by talking about doing things or just taking up time and space with no outcome. If anyone is terminally annoying then in the end they will go away – it’s best not to feed the trolls.

References Hamish Campbell left others

Published Date 11/3/12 12:38 AM

DRAFT – thinking about Social networking

OK we need to look agen at what we will use our CMS for – here is a look at the social networking side of it.

Create A network:

– around films

– around filmmakers

– around channels

– around campaigns

– list of filmmakers

– archive of films (tagged database)

– Subjects are channels

– Campaigns are action pages which are based round users/groups – the is a dynamic intro process for users and campaign organizers. It could use a goggle maps and meet up API’s mash-up to create physical groupings around subjects/users. Could be based on twitter use twitter API to create our own interface. Can use open ID to login to all…

 We need to right up some user experiences to help the programmers to visualize what needs to be in our CMS. Can people write up short user experiences like these – need at least 3 from each of you.

User Jane

She heres about VOTV from a friend and watches a few films on the website. She likes what she finds so installs the VOTV app.

 It’s a easy install, after leaving her computer on over night she starts to watch the shows – installing the headmix and global views channel. Based on what she watches – votes up or down in 2 days the CMS asks her if she is interested in a filmmaker (or channel) if she says yes it takes her to that page on the CMS – she has the option to join the groups that are connected to this page (subjects) – the first time she dose this it will ask for her open ID account (will create one if she doesn’t have one). By joining a group it mashes this groups RSS feed into her news on her personal home page and links her as a member.

She can create blog/calendar/wiki etc on her personal page and share these with other groups/users. Ie that is her home page can become a campaign or subject page – each user page can become a social network.

User Jim

 He is a regular user of VOTV and is inspired by the offlineTV show to create a hacklabe in his local town of Swindon to show the best of activist tec films in his local pub on Wednesday night – they have a projector and PA installed and the landlord is friendly and desperate to sell some beer as Wednesday is a very slow night. He creates a new home page from his VOTV page called the “Swindon Geeks Revolt” using the blog to setup intro, contact and about pages and a wiky which members can edit to add film suggestions and subjects for talks. From his VOTV home page he will have a list of all the people who are interested in these subjects in his area – he messages then to invite then to the first meet up – 7 of them join the SGR group so can then message each other directly and add suggestions for futer events to the wiky. One of the group sets up a forum on VOTV around open source software and Linux. Jim advertises the event vie a free tag in the EAS (ethical advertising system) “Swindon + offlineTV” 14 people tern up to learn about umbunto and open office. Next week a screening of “the pirates of silicon valley” is organized.

User Jenny

Is a activist filmmaker who is involved in a tree protest in central oxford – she edits a long wobbly cam 8 min film which she shows to the protesters in the local community centre bar on reggae night. One of the VOTV crew Turnip sees the film and points her to the VOTV help page on how to make a short news report – she cuts the film down to 2 mins and adds some context so that it is accessible to a wider ordnance. This then goes out to 20K people on the grassroots channel on VOTV. From here it is picked up by the US indymedy newsreel program and screened in 20 cities in the US and out to 1 million people vier FSTV satellite broadcasting. She gets e-mails from 20 people who are involved in similar campaigns or who are inspired by the film to act locally. A local group of tree protesters in Oragan show the film in there protest camp vier a solar powered projector and make a film themselves about there campaign – this is then shown on VOTV and screened to the campaigners back in the bar in Oxford. 

User Jake

Jake sees an advert for the bushcraft show in a magazine – he checks out the URL and likes the videos so installs the VOTV player app. He finds some of the more political videos challenging/boring so removes there RSS feeds but likes the nature documenters and the eco consumerism – he uses the open MIRO channel guide to get films on women in beckenys and fast cars. The VOTV CMS gently points him towards more radical solutions to his interests, he finds a group who are protesting agenst the selling off of the local school football fields and gets involved in that campaign – at a meeting he gets chatting to a shiy local primary school teacher and they start dating and get marred. There kids watch VOTV and the family never gets a old corporate broadcast box.

User Jezebel

Is a anthropology student at brooks and is board of student life, she is looking for a date – she hers VOTV social network is the place to find some action, she gos to the website and creates an account – adding a good profile of her interests – this brings up a list of local groups/campaigns and individuals – she starts to message the sexy looking guys from there profiles – she spends a week at the Climate Camp shagging with a deadlocked eco worrer only coming out of her tent to eat vegan food and trough some half empty special brew cans at security late at night. She gos onto be a lawyer at bindmons solicitors after graduating with a first class degree.

Please add some more “use cases” this is the best way to guide programmers to create the CMS that we what rather than telling them exactly what to do at each stage. 

Published Date 11/1/12 1:45 AM

DRAFT

The old-mainstream media used to dominate national, international and local news to such an extent that many voices were unheard and any radical story was systemically distorted.

With the onward march of the digitisation project (see more info LINK) the old-mainstream media is crumbling with the failer of its business model and the lack of any large scale replacement model waiting in the wings. This leaves a space which really needs to be filled.

Why radical media matters, this is a question that has been answered then forgotten repeatedly over the last 20 years.

Undercurrents grew out of a frustration with the limitations of mainstream media and made alternative media accessible to a wide ordnance. By nurturing grass-roots voices and empowering them to tell there “unreported” storeys using the powerful medium of video.

Indymedia grew out of the possibility of technology and created the ability for unmediated malty-media communication through a centralised collective process. That spread the idea of first hand reporting by normal people widely around the world.

Then many failed projects provided top-down solutions to this same problem of how to amplify the voices of the unheard. The is a wide and spreading NGO grave yard of failed “media projects”.

The current meteoritic growth of social networks and there maturing into personal life-streaming has provided a corporate controlled client server centralised solution to the same problem. But the issue of control and ownership is largely hidden from the view of million’s of users. No such project as they are attempting has yet seceded on the open internet and if they were to succeed they would likely have to break the “key open bit” of the internet.

Lets briefly look at what happens next:

More and more “news” becomes personal and falls into the hands of a few dotcom “social media” companies. 

The old media/which used to dominate that survives the “digitisation transition” is increasingly filled with easy and profitable corporate PR rather than the old idea of journalism which it claimed to champion.

The radical alternative is playing very little role currently, this has to change.

What is the problem/solutions?

Good media is hard to make

Distribution networks need to be built and most importantly sustained – media is a flow not isolated individual items, this is (surprisingly) not understood well in the social media age.

Whona-abeys will always take up the openings in media spaces – and there agenda isn’t radical though they will try and wear radical cloths. Its important to not let them set/keep the agenda.

The left/progressive has a strong tendency to be divisive and uncooperative – its important to build this into any project that can be sustained. It always about a diversity of voices not one unified central voice.

Currently the is a “digital hole” in the sustainability this leads to the problem of sustaining media spaces outside the personal or volunteer space. The fading hope of advertising saving the paid media space is unlikely to come true. At its best, Social media sees through Advertising thus rendering it much less affective if it is used to hide/obscure unpleasant truths and to make transparent the empty creation of needs and foles promises that it is based on. It is looking like Advertising is not going to plug the gap in “digital hole”. 

This is what we need to do:

So we have to make something that is hard – easy

we have to build a diversity of sustainable media networks not many failed single sultutions.

we have to keep them open even when the will be strong voices for the one true way, the one authoritative voice dressed as consensus process.

we have to replace advertising as the financial model of in-depth journalism.

And standing in our way actually is very little, the old-mainstream is currently in a rout, the new/whonabeys have little real attractive to offer. And the openness and the tools we need are already close at hand. What are you waiting for “just do it” is the conclusion of how activist organise get to it (:

How do we work LINK to just do it