Month: April 2013

Published Date 4/30/13 5:49 PM

The OMN is owned by nobody and run by nobody. It is merely a set of Stupidly Simple open standards, open databases and working practices. We are building some hubs to flesh the network out.

What is there at the moment.? Let’s highlight some of the projects:

http://fund.openworlds.info Open funding network – is a place for media activists to get small amounts of cash for their projects and equipment.

http://link.openworlds.info is an open database of links to radical projects. These can be added as an embed on websites to create the interlinking that is so important to the open Internet’s health. This project is federated.

 

http://news.openworlds.info is a newsflash service to widen our networks outside facebook. It is an open data and open access federated network. You can grab an embed for your site sidebar.

 

http://visionon.tv Auto updating quality controlled video embeds with playlists (eg http://globalviews.visionon.tv/embed), drawing from a huge database of radical video. This is a federated network.

 

http://blog.openworlds.info This is the first stage of an open blogging network.

Published Date 4/27/13 9:32 PM

Almost all of Activism is organized on one corporate network and its run by this man

“Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including driling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

http://bit.ly/ZrWLm1 

its the magnitude of the failure of the alternatives that is at issue – for many people the web is facebook – this is now true for almost all activist online organising. The man who controls facebook is an elitist tosspot right winger and controls all this activist organising. What other tools do we have?

UPDATE

Couple of points: FB is a trap, that has been sponge to close the open internet – to take us back to the days of mediated media and communication. The reach is not huge (just do a search to find out how your messages are already filtered) its actually very small for any message that does not further facebook’s advertising/money making plans. Yes, it has revolutionised activism and it has enclosed it and pushed aside all alternatives… inclose and privatises then exploit… its an old story. Facebook like all dotcoms is likely to fail, but it has shifted the web towards closer and the next round of corporate social networking will consolidate this shift. With the open web (and digitization project) we have a once in a century opportunity to reshape our society, we are fucking this up big time

Published Date 4/24/13 10:33 PM

This is two draft’s of a project for the end of the summer

FUNDRAISING FOR THE REAL STORY

Stories grow from the soil, they grow from social/geologic conflicts. Thus an interesting place to start a story is from the mud and dust where it stands. With this in mind we are fundraising to offer new perspectives on an urgent reality. We will walk across Israel for 6 weeks, interviewing people in the communities we pass through. The countries’ perspectives will come from the actual grassroots, from the mud and dust. Traditional media is already covering the story from the top down. Who is covering where it matters?

Visionontv has the track record and expertise to make high quality, immediate reportage available globally. We will be shooting and publishing 3 video interviews a day, 5 days a week (using visionontv’s innovating mobile reporting templates and technology) for a total of nearly 100 interviews. We will build a website to permanently embed these videos as well as syndicating them widely to all contemporary media hosting sites and social networks. We will use visionontv’s auto updating media player to embed the videos widely on appropriate sites around the web. We will work towards having hosting/publishing on partner sites such as (****) in NYC and the (****) in the UK.

We have most of the equipment, time and skills to do this – all we lack is a basic budget.

Budget

£3000 to cover 6 weeks of reporting

Video equipment: £300 (external mic, lenses, solar charging set-up)

Second backup camera phone: £500

Air fare £400 x 2 £800

Insurance £50 x 2 £100

Website £300

Subsistence £100 a week (for both) x 6 £600

Backed support (publicity and social media etc) £100 x2

Contingency £200

Total £3000

The plan would be to fund-raise on Kickstarter and ecwip) and leave the UK in *** 1st. 

The modern world is full of seemingly unsolvable problems. The conflict between Palestine and Israel has been ongoing since the 1940’s and has now reached a deadlock. The are some cultural/media crossovers but at visionontv we have a very B&W view of the conflict.   

On visionontv we have been aggregating together all the best non-traditional media news videos into a stream of contemporary media. In the Israel – Palestine conflicts we have had a huge bias towards news from the Palestine perspective (link) which is obviously the opposite of what you would see on traditional media (link). This mismatch is normal for traditional media but problematic if you are interested in building a new, wider/more balanced contemporary media.

Our wider project at visionontv is to template new media techniques  for journalism (link) This is to counteract the normal new media approach, which is to have hundreds of cameras covering the same spot, few of them distributing their images and very few doing the journalism to put it into perspective.

Stories grow from the soil, they grow from social/geologic conflicts. Thus an interesting place to start a story is from the mud and dust where it stands. With this in mind we are fundraising to try a new template – new technology and old paths. We will walk across the countries involved in the conflict for 6 weeks, interviewing normal people in the communities we pass through – the countries’ perspectives will come from the actual grassroots, from the mud. Traditional media is already covering the story topdown. Who is covering where it matters?

We will be shooting and publishing 3 video interviews a day, 5 days a week (using visionontv’s innovating mobile reporting templates and technology) for a total of nearly 100 interviews. We will build a website to permanently host these videos as well as syndicating them widely to all contemporary media hosting sites and social networks. We will use visionontv’s auto updating open media player to embed the videos widely on appropriate sites around the web. We will work towards having hosting/publishing on partner sites such as **** in NYC and the **** in the UK. 

We have most of the equipment, time and skills to do this all we lack is a basic budget.

Budget £2500 to cover 6 weeks of reporting 

Video equipment £200-  external mic-  lenses – solar charging set-up

Second backup camera phone £500

Air fare  £300 x 2   £600

Insurance £50 x 2 £100 

Website £300

Subsistence £100 a week (for both) x 6 £600

Contingency £200

Total  £2500

The plan would be to fund-raise on Kickstarter and acwip and leave the UK in *** 1st.

Published Date 4/18/13 1:32 PM

Some NOTES

It seems to me that after living through two explosions of protest DIY creativity, the CJB/anti roads movement and the climate camp are the examples am thinking about here. The are some lessons to learn. Both of these movements were “affinity group” driven at their core, that is a smallish groups (or interlocking groups) of friends – trust networks. They then built out into much wider community’s and movements.

Both were successful as long as this core – renewed itself – and rapidly fell apart when the core did not. In the case of the climatecamp the was a failed conhuse attempt to continue the organising in a open – bureaucratic – consensuses based way. Were the CJB flowed into the more political focused anti-globalisation movement – which burned out in the violence of summit hoping before becoming bogged down in the hierarchical infighting of the social forum movement.

Some thoughts:

1) the is an instinct for bureaucratic and hierarchical organising which is to strong to resist if the isn’t a core healthy affinity group in place. Any successful group is likely to end like this if we take the second point into account.

2) Activist culture and affinity group forming has a strong (possibly necessary) tendency to exclusivity by lifestylism. This will exclude much of the diversity that is necessary for real sustainable changing community – be it in age, class, background, gender etc.

3) This puts a very real limit on the possibility of grassroots alternatives with the real people and cultures we are working with now.

4) the flow and use of the digital process may have a way round this by activity streams, self tagging and profiles – but this would have the cost of universal surveillances and transparent working practices – so would be a brave group of radical people to take this path in the face of possible state and corporate repression.

Where are we? Within its limits affinity group organising is fertile ground, but we need to build things out beyond these limits if we want a more humane society based on this grassroots organising. Current people, cultures and working practices do not do this yet ideas for changing this?

Published Date 4/17/13 4:56 PM

It consistently amazed me how activists walked into the trap of corporate social networking. I can understand NGO groups narrowness of focus, its were the funding is. I can understand traditional media’s embracing of Facebook, Twitter and the closed ecosystem of app stores as its a perceived as a “safe” place to run from the crumbling business markets they are part of.

Lets look at each in turn:

Corporate social networking is perfect for the less radical charity’s as the company’s running theses networks wont to be seen to be social responsible and charity’s are the perfect place to be seen to care with out the risk of upsetting sponsors, advertisers and investors.

The more progressive parts of the traditional media, such as the FT have realised the trap they leapt into when building inside Facebook, Twitter etal. And are now back to prioritising building on the open web using HTML5. The less progressive side are now negotiating from a weak postion with these new powerful gatekeepers.

10 years ago Activist media was a worldwide phenomenon, inventing and leading many of the technology and techniques that are now mainstream. But two things happened, firstly they got bogged down in “activist process” and on the other the “lifestyle of geek” open-source culture. These together slowed innovation to a stop, the functionality and reach of such new networks as Facebook and Twitter rendered this moribund activist media less relevant to new generations of activists such as the climatecamp media team. Leaving space for the NGO focus embracing of corporate social media on one hand and the manipulation of traditional media on the other as the main ongoing successful strategy.

Were are we now? I was at the party to cover the celebrate of the death of Margaret Thatcher recently in Trafalgar sq. The were hundreds of cameras both video and stills probably as many people filming and documenting as there party goers or police. But almost no radical media made it online, the was a smattering of wonabe mainstream media such as Vice and Demotix. What interested me was running into all the retired activist and the ones that now work for NGO’s it struck me that the is no continuity, no new radical media, it had almost completely ended. Few small exception’s to this are ourselves (visionontv) and ONN who are both small fish.

As I sead at the time, we as activist’s fucked up in two ways: in wholesale embracing of corporate social media and in the narrowing of activist tec into geek lifestyle. Can we learn from this? Its time to reinvent grassroots bottom up media – its not to late. 

Published Date 4/17/13 12:46 PM

Those we see as trustworthy are Liars, cheats and swindlers. The bankers and bureaucrats at the moment. I think we have always had this backwards view of the world, is it a failure of the education system or a failure of our collective imagination – the needing to belong.

The 20th century has been the century of advertising driven consumerism. The 19th that of the racial mission of empire before that we had the certainty of religious dogma. In each we trusted and were constrained and betrayed.

We have a backwards view of the world today, though today we have potential way out of this (historic?) limitation or perhaps its hard-wired?

Lets test this and see:

The internet is a revolution in per-per connections in everything that can be digitised.

* we can make and distribute powerful, truth, filled media, we have the tools in our pockits and the open internet is still in place to carry this.

* we can build universal access to education, again the old gatekeepers are still currently not blocking this.

* we can make our own political institutions up from the grassroots – this will be harder.

With these we have the possibility of shining light and action on the Liars, cheats and swindlers – and by doing that we have a possibility to know who to trust and if we know that we can make this world of ours a more humane place.

Published Date 4/12/13 11:46 AM

Some more notes:

Not an isolated individual website – many individual websites in a bigger commons. The open internet used to be a such a commons Q. why is this increasingly no longer so and why/what should/can we do about this.

Subject sites linked by affinity sharing activity streams. An open data cauldron OUTSIDE corporate walled gardens. The sites that make up the network are simply ladeals to add ingredients to the soup and pull out tasty content from the common space. We eat. Sharing promoted links to create a human community and a machine network. We end with a functioning visible community outside the walls (but linked into it) of corporate social-media.

How dose it manifest (small practical thoughts)?

For (small) us we need RSS in to work with sites outside our CMS.

– we have to have anufe working sites to start the process

– can use a JavaScript embed from Liferay on other sites in till they implement a native plug-in to do this.

– at the moment wordpress sites can be content creation and display but not core node aggreagters, dropule sites can be core node aggregaters with the right (very) geeky plugins. The are currently no simpale tools for what needs building.

Small practical PROBLEMS

* we do not have a user group to do testing

* Almost complete domination of corporate tools – why build an alternative?

Were are (the very small) we now?

We aren’t doing a project called visionontv we haven’t be doing this for a year or more. We have been trying to build the open media network (OMN). The issue we have is increasingly this is not been what has been happening. Inward Focus is needed.

Looking (some would say stumbling) forwarded:

Next step. The network will be made up of a sidebar giving updates of all parts of the network

* the only way to cross post to other sites is to post to the original site and it will be aggregated.

The new NEWSFLASH will be shared across all sites as will the LINKS site.

Some guidelines for sites (the small we) are building

Original content will be the top bar – logo and site navigation, the [left] central column and the footer.

SO – only the central culume will have updateing site content (rest static or OMN)

EVERY – permanent site we build needs to be like this…

– one off action sites can break this template as they are sub pages off the main site.

DO THIS NOW

While we have live sites, if we leave this till our sites are cold we fail.

ISSUE we face (both small and big we) – People will complain about the design as they don’t understand what it is for. these complaints (and solutions) are not to be headed as they do not understand the project which is to overcome  “stupid individualism” it is a network and networks are process based and always messy.

Using corporate sites such as meetup etc. is ONLY to be done as secondary to the core network site ie. post summary and exerts linking back to the core site. To not understand this is to walk strait back into the place we are moving out of. WHY they are about building a closed and controlled network owned by the corporate world they are our DIRECT COMPATION to what we are trying to do. “we use and abuse” is our motto, it is important not to get caught in there trap. So use them to push the traffic outside them ONLY.

The RSS-in is needed so that sites that “arnt us” can join the network otherwise we are just another dead portal – our project is about avoiding this – this is a no brainer can we get wider co-operation on this.

In the big picture we aren’t a video portal, “visionontv” is just one part of the network and the network isn’t us – we are just planting seedlings – if others do not plant to (bigger) OUR common project we will fail. Leaving the current metaphorical table covered with half empty and dry mouldy soup boles and and in the end the cauldron will be taken away from us. When I look at radical media I see this. Its not a pretty picture and no amount of NGO thinking and action will fix this – the internet came from micro scale DIY culture not the NGO world – the is no resion that it cant be regenerated by this same culture – time to get on with this.

The activist NGO trap – full on social work

The direction of many groups has been to this – and it is fuelled by a deep denial and lots of fog. But the ends in the same place. A place we we all agree we don’t wont to go.

Of course the statagy of sustainability dose not work as NGO’s are not rich anufe to cross subsidise and social action dose not make money (aspesheraly in the digital age).

OUTCOME – The action/production is shut down and the NGO become soft social work which is were the funding is.

With this in mind “micro-capitalisam” and susabilerty are a issue.