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 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.
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.
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
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?
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
Published Date 1/12/17 7:10 PM
Its interesting for a moment to look at the potential affect on radical media phone apps of the OMN.
Native “publish” from your phone “share this” to any node of the OMN and to many individual sites/blogs will work “out of the box” on any smart phone app that implements the OMN standards as its inherently a read/write network.
Any site can have an app on a mobile phone using the OMN – just add the tags of your site and a feed and your content will appear in an (own branded) standardized OMN app. Site can use this as a publishing gateway to there site from a mobile if they like.
On the subject of us all publishing to #dotcons, as EC say “Cos convenience and the software works” is why we publish to the #dotcons rather than our own “broken” sites. Its a step to a revolution to get round this problem.
Published Date 1/12/17 6:24 PM
Its interesting to think for a moment about how widely posts on the #openweb and #failbook are seen. On #failbook an average post on my time line might be seen/read by 10 people and a dog, a good shared post a few hundred people. On my blog an average post would be a few hundred people and a good post 10,000’s of people maybe more. its easy to forget that #failbook is a #dotcon in real terms not just in idealogical arguments. The value is on the #openweb – how have people forgotten this?
EC “Cos convenience and the software works”
Yep thats why am pushing the #OMN so the is a space to do something about this.
Comments please and could do with some help to turn it into a coherent doc for outreach.
Many people ask what is the Open Media Network (OMN)
For activists it might be useful to see it as a rebooting of a “indymedia” project from were it should have been 5 years ago when it died.
A #4opens bounded network motivated by the PGA hallmarks.
At a basic level, Publish once and your article appears in many places linking back to your site/blog.
User stories
Link to um (LINK)
Tech
Its Many websites and a few aggregaters sharing a common open “data soup” built with people to people (trust) based tagging.
From this human community/data network many “new” radical powerful things can grow.
Its builds KISS from the legacy web (RSS) and moves us into the per2per semantic web (GNU social)
Thought (LINK)
Licensing – #4opens
What is ethical aggregation?
Its networking other peoples content in a respectful way to build a network wide anufe to start to compete with the failing #dotcons
* Sections/sidebars of OMN links should be prominently displayed on each members site, preferably on every page if small.
* There should be no no-follow tags on valid links to member sites.
* The content is read (by link) on the original host site, comments are made on the original host site.
* This behaviour can be different for apps were the full content could be read in app. This should be agreed by both partys (can have a opt out tag for this as with many other parts of the network)
* The original source (RSS feed site) is always shown under the content title as a live link
* (Optional) the tags should be visible under the full article
* For apps no adverts should be placed next to CC non commercial full content (with out agreement), fine to have ads on a page next to links.
* A OMN badge is (optional) next to the link section and/or on the site about page – this can LINK to the OMN aggregate that the site gets its data flow from OR to the OMN project site.
If you haven’t realized yet the aggregating hubs/nodes are the new “indymedia” sites
* These can be by subject, country, region or city etc.
* Much of the “centralizing” parts of the IMC network are no longer needed as this is inherently a “open” project, rather than a centralizing project. Sites that would like to see them selves as IMC can of course follow these “unneeded” parts if they desire – this will lead to a “natural” grouping of IMC focused sites with in the “open data soup”.
* Existing indymedia sites can continue “outside” the network as their content can be brought in via RSS if sites are interested in it. Just to repeat nobody has to do anything.
* Posting is generally via individual site/blogs, but can be through existent portal/silos like indymedia or existing group sites such as https://www.opendemocracy.net if users prefer to publish on them.
The function of “nodes” will organically grow
* Publishing sites are the source of content these will likely just input a RSS feed up to the next level.
* Aggregating site, these are subjects, locality etc they will take in feeds from publishing sites and output (trusted) quality feeds to the next level.
* News/link portals will be regional, national, big subject sites, these will mostly get their trusted feeds from aggregating (middle) sites and a few trusted publishing sites.
As you can see from this publishing is the hardiest job as you need to create the content, second is aggregation as the is much work quality controlling and adding semantic data (tags) to the flow of content.
The easeast to setup and run are the “top” sites to add value to these will be more of a challenge. One way could be to create articles of linking overviews covering stores from the flows – this content can of course be feed back into the lower sites.
Every thing links to everything else.
What do these “nodes” do to be part of the OMN?
* They host flows of content based on tags from other OMN sites on subject that interest them.
* This content is brought in vier RSS from external sites and by atompub from OMN sites.
* They can tag/retag this flow of objects to direct it to other nodes/site sidebars.
* Other sites can get taged based flows (with embed codes if needed) from there chosen “nodes”
* (Optionally) they can archive this content if they like.
KISS meta-taging
This will seem stupid to many geeks, lets use simple text “twitter” tags to do the categorization of data objects in the OMN flow.
* @ before a tag means a person, that is, a RSS object with an enclosure that is a file contenting a open “contact” format file.
* # before tag is means a bookmark link to a site, the title will be the link.
(optional) Need a “symbol” for video, audio, photo etc.
These objects are tagged just like any other object and are stored/flow through the network just like text articles.
(optional) Can try having a different publish pages for each format that automatically add these tags?
It would be normal to create a new format to for each part of the OMN and geeks/fashernistas have done this over many times over the last 10 years.
Its KISS “stupid” for good, empowering, “normal” people to work on and create new products/services/connections in a “data common soup”
Geek talk – The future of OMN content flows
What has power is the non branded, non owned, KISS implementation of the #OMN that its not part of the “geek problem” and only tangentially connected to the #fashernista agenda’s.
Move to mobile is key for real growth of atl/grassroots media. This is relatively easy as the will be a “open data pool” of semantically enriched content to dip into for quality new, video and audio content flow for building apps. But content is not king in this case, what has real power is the ability to publish direct from mobiles photos, video, audio and text direct to a node of the OMN (this could also be your source, blog/site/portal) in this we empower a move away from “journalism” on the #dotcons and back onto the “openweb”.
Get people (CMS’s) to publish in “markup” (as well at html/corporate silos formats) so that content can be loaded/displayed natively on aggregating sites/apps in the formating of the aggregate site/app and display cross site comments – all from the original host. In this we are not only sharing links we are sharing content and discussion across the OMN.
There is nothing original in this all the #dotcons are doing this already and the are many open standards (mark-up being one) that allow this. The originality is in the “just doing it” and the KISS implementation of this push.
I don’t see this as radical, though I see the outcome as revolutionary.