Published Date 7/3/12 9:25 PM

John Wood, New Media Officer at the TUC, tell us what is the idea behind Netroots UK and his hope to see this type of events bring activists and campaigners together, learn digital skills, network and share ideas. 

http://www.netrootsuk.org/
http://visionon.tv/netrootsuk

Catherine talks about the Move your Money Campaign. This project wants to change the financial system by asking people to move their bank account to ethical providers.

About the campaign: http://www.moveyourmoney.org.uk/

Isabel and Jake make their 1st mobile phone report during visionOntv’s workshop at Netroots UK.

Published Date 6/25/12 6:01 PM

This is a view of my twitter world, the algorithms know who i am – take note they know who you are too… do you and your frends know who you are? 

UPDATE: this image is hot linked from the original site and it is updating so the algorithm is now following me… be scared be very scared!?

UPDATE2: try not to shoot the messenger any government or private corporate can find this information, and they do find all this about you too – i am just making mine visible so you can see it.

Published Date 6/20/12 4:45 PM

if you walk into a private owned walled garden, tend the ground and grow the bounty, and they close the gates. You have to pay to eat the produce. The moral – do not walk in to the walled gardens in the digital world, the are huge trakes of free land on the open web, inhabit it and grow your own utopia. Failbook has failed you, why are you asking them to open the gate agen? RUN!!! RUN!!!!

Published Date 6/15/12 1:16 PM

The myths and traditions of Rainbow are not just decorative, they are the very essence of what a gathering is. People don’t simply come together; they come to enact these shared rituals and stories, whether consciously or unconsciously. Yet, these core elements are often neglected or forgotten.

To put an arbitrary measure on this: Most national Rainbow gatherings operate at around 10–20% of what we might call “Rainbow power.” By contrast, European gatherings often reach 40–60%, thanks to a deeper collective memory and stronger enactment of Rainbow values.

At the heart of every Rainbow gathering is a powerful, mostly invisible core of shared myth and tradition. These are not static rules, but living tools, designed to overcome and transcend the “#stupidindividualism” of the Babylon world. And where these tools are remembered and used, they work remarkably well – transforming groups of strangers and misfits into a coherent, caring whole.

The challenge is that this process works as a virtuous circle: If enough power is present at the beginning – meaning people arrive already carrying the stories, practices, and spirit – then the gathering tends to flourish. But if that power is lacking, and the myths are not held or remembered, then incoherence sets in. Fragmentation and conflict tend to dominate instead.

Rainbow gatherings, at their best, offer a glimpse of a different way of being – but only if we collectively remember how to make them live.

Published Date 6/14/12 8:28 AM

The digital tsunami has passed, the washed away sea front of the old media world is being re-built with the usual fast food joints and global burger bars media outlets. Leaving little space left on the fringes for the new media world that hasn’t made the shift into the new mainstream. Traditional media is re-creating itself, contemporary media is withering. Lifestyle, Inaction scwobaling and NGO dispoling failed to fill the space left by the digitization wave. The old media is back, with the renewed vigor of the full digital power, be frightened, be very frightened.

Published Date 6/9/12 8:33 AM

The are meany tools for organizing on the web, few are widely used, most are a flash (a churning) of fashion. Fashionable web evangelist’s will tell you to use that tool or this tool for a job. And each tool is designed to for fill one job.

BUT the most widely used tool on the web is the wiki, and the wiki is not a tool for a particular job rather it is a culture, a society a way of working that solves a “social problem”. The resion all the other tools are just churned over is that they are a product of the dominant mind set, they have a culture but it is not the same culture as the wiki or the web. We constantly mistake the issue as one of tools rather than one of culture. Change your culture not your tool, overcome the churning and actually get something done. Don’t be a fashionable dead head please.

Try a wiki today.

Published Date 6/9/12 8:03 AM

Simferopol’, Crimea, Ukraine.

The hostel I was going to stay in near the railway station was not open. so I had an idea, public transport is very cheap around 20p for a tram or bus ride so looking at my offline map I found a forest near a reservoir close to the edge of town. Got the bus there then walked into the forest till I found a nice space hidden away and pitched my tent for a lovely quirt night sleep. Nicer than a hostel, as the isn’t all the other people making noise and snoring to keep you awake.

In the morning  after breakfast next to the water I just get the tram back to the station. But this plan isn’t as perfect as it seams as on the way back I get a different bus which takes me to the wrong part of town then cant find anyone who speaks some English to find the right bus to the station. For buses and trams its good to have a phone with GPS and an offline map to make shore you aren’t going in the completely wrong direction.

Published Date 5/18/12 5:29 PM

The Rainbow shopping mission (DRAFT)

The gatherings are fascinating places to see very different views of human organising, social institutions and working/broken alternatives to traditional society.

I found that when on a shopping mission you should go with your own crew, to go with an existing crew is a recipe for frustration. The same when in the kitchen, when focalising, an open call for volunteers will make the work twice as hard, better to go the soft organic root of pulling in passing people you have a relationship with as each will come with a task in your mind, a self sense of direction, then few will driftaway. This will “grow” a crew who are motivated and focused.

Hard organising is both bureaucratic and open. Soft organising is closed and nurturing. This is why this first is seen as a natural fit for liberal society and the second held in suspicion. But the second is the one for humane liberation, the hard brings the ones who already have power to the surface and submerged the untouch talent. “Soft organising” makes space for the powerful to step back and surfaces the little sprouting talents, and thus taps into the potential of the majority. From “soft structures” many new flexible hard structures can grow. From hard organising, generally a few brittle structures will temporarily hold a place before dissolving back into the dominant mediocrity.

In intentional communities hard organising is a model with failure built in, this can be fixed to an extent by using soft organising to create hard structures. We can learn a lot from working “disorganisations” such as the rainbow gathering.