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.
 

Published Date 4/8/13 7:11 PM

Idea for a project for next winter.

I have been making activist films for 20 years well over 100 short radical actavist 3-10 minit news reports on many different campaigns. 

Tell the stories of video activism by my films – list all films then get key people who were in the campaigns (preferably in the video) to tell there motivation for being on the action/each film. Take all this footage to an abondond village on a Spanish island for 3 months next winter and edit it on solar power.

Its relatively simple and don’t have to work with anyone but me to get it done, which makes it easer (:

Published Date 4/2/13 3:29 PM

DRAFT

Looking at the activist groups I have been involved with. It’s interesting to try and record my view of what happened and why it happened. Though as most people will have internalised a different view to my this can be painful for thought who lived through this history. This rises the question of is this a useful thing to do?

“Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it”  George Santayana

The is deferentially a problem of circler behaver in media activism and wider issues:

* Problem of liberal views of activist history

* Problem of activist memory hole – our web resources are transient and the backups disappear. The mentality of activists tends to be “we invented this – this is new – we are the first”

* Academics will work with authoritative sources – this is inherently biased

* …

Published Date 4/1/13 6:04 PM

Lets get positive for a moment What has worked in Alt/radical media?

DRAFT – looking at two contrasting successful activist media strategys.

When indymedia started in 2000 in the UK undercurrents the radical news organisation I was working for had played a role in its founding running a ALPHA build of the server code that the IMC sites were built on in 1999 at the reclaim the streets party in the city of London. A number of the undercurrents crew were involved in the group that setup in the UK IMC site and had its first outing at mayday 2001?

I used the site to upload images and videos on the day. I intaly had my doubts that such a radical experiment in OPEN publishing could work – so was a supporter and user of the IMC project before I became more fully involved – going so far as to found a regional IMC in Oxford. Soon after setting up in London the IMC project exploded around the world leading to the setting up of over 30-40 global sites and numerous IMC projects such as video, radio and print newspapers. Before blogs (and social media) the self publishing idea was a huge global success, oftern rivaling tredtional media on the audiance of the events it covered.

Climatecamp media team were a very nice bunch of people who successfully shaped and shifted traditional media coverage of climate issues in the UK (and around the world) . Rather than spend energy building there own media they focused on playing the traditional media and were very skilled at doing it – most have since gorn onto full time work doing the same for prominent NGO’s.

So we have two differing but equal successful strategy for radical media, activists can and do do real affective radical media.

Published Date 3/31/13 8:24 PM

Open media networking

The data cauldron with configurer your own ladle tools.

Hubs/nodes – RSS item in and out ver tag for full participating sites 

Consumers/producers – native plug-ins and JS embeds for displaying and existing RSS out for source sites.

All data in and all data out – by trust, the users built the connections (which leads to paths to excellence)

Its application/platform agnostic.

The base is the hallmarks of ethical aggregation and opendata and (preferably) using openlicensing.

Published Date 3/28/13 3:42 PM

This is a NOTES for a DRAFT of a long post on history of progressive media over the last 25 years.

I have been working on subjects of technology and social change for over 20 years. It all started while I was at university and coming up to my final MA dissertation.

I was involved in live studio produced streaming internet TV in the early days “pirate TV” at undercurrents.

LIST the projects (many of them are linked from my old blogspot)

Around 15 years ago it became obverse that we had a looming crises in the funding and relevance of traditional media and a flowering of the possibility of a more open contemporary media by the internet.

I started to plan a project to fill this gap and build a better media. It started out called “offlineTV” as it was a internet distribution of the video from a prier CD-ROM based project “ruffcuts” the idea was to make the distribution of video by the web work in a simple and horizontal way. The consumption of this media was to happen offline at public screenings rather than on the web it self as the early web was still not a good place for reasonable quality video viewing.

Funding for this was not forthcoming… at the time as the was a general rejection of the scale of the upcoming digital transition crises in the traditional media ecosystem. I built a no-budgit version of the project bases on the applications built by the PCF a web server called Broadcast Masion (for torrents and RSS) and a offline torrent client, original based on azurease before moving to the miro client that PCF built. At this stage more people came on-board and we received some small funding to build a custom version of Miro client (making it less geeky). As we started to actually implement the project we came across the fundamental flaw in the possibility of a good outcome. The Miro client was customised 6 months after we decided to do this and by then the version of the software had moved on so we were working with out of date buggy code that could not be supported – it proved to be a dead end.

The main problem we faced was inertia – in the internet technology world things change very fast thus tasks have to be abstracted into big ideas, medium term goles and short sprints. The long term goles have to be simply recorded and change very little – there job is to keep the focus sharp on the medium turn goals so that the sprints are focused and worthwhile. The medium term goles have to be looked at at least every 3 months to keep them relevant. The short sprints should be just that short and preferably time constrained – otherwise the is a strong danger of them drifting into becoming the medium term goles and then settling into replacing the big ideas leaving the project itself barren and irrelevant. This has happened repeatedly in the visionontv project.

We found a opensource corporate CMS that was built with the DIY ethos of open collaboration and most impotently was built with open industrial standereds rather than transient fashionable activist technology. With this we built the hashed together the first version of our proposed site and looked to get the key missing technology created

* RSS in and out by tag

* A universal media player based on RSS as a feed language.

Then the is a open mindset based on co-operation and building a common wealth that is important.

Creative taging – some work practice notes

How its CORE to the project that you push aside something you don’t like in the information flow. Note I did not say remove it rather push it to one side this is important as this is the bases of the understanding of human nature that is embedded in the visionontv project. The act of pushing aside by ADDING meta data is a creative one as it will push it into the view of other people who will simulely push the object into view of other people intill it reaches the people who do like it. The problem we have is that people do not get beyond thinking about themselves. The instinct we have to change is that of BLOCKING that is inaction/disengagement or the active removal of content by censorship or wherewithal from the bigger project. This is a normal reaction in the “stupidly individualistic” world we live in and in no way surprising or unusal outcome. BUT it is clearly damaging to good outcomes we need.

If content is posted “within the broad guidelines of the hosting environment” YOU remove something you don’t like by adding to it, not by removing it.

Controversial notes

Limitation of the people am working with

– those coming from the old left suffer from the limitations of the old left – Boxer the houses in animal farm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_(Animal_Farm) describes in a very B&W way.

– those coming from Newmedia suffer from the fashions of corporate controlled new media they relay on.

– those coming from activism are bound by the activist mindset – which often merges into a lifestyle

– those from the NGO world are bound by the limits of funding and careerer building.

Have been involved in many alt-cultures over the years and understand there limitations all to well. To have a hope of making this project work we need a core crew who reach outside these roles or at the minanem bridge them in a creative way.