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Fashernisat

Published Date 4/18/17 11:53 AM

I have been talking about the fashernisatas for the last few years, its an idea/group that I have been struggling to work with my whole time in the alt/grassroots. So what is a #fahernista?  
A group of individuals who value/push there own individual advancement over the needs of the croup and community, generally they do not realise or see that they are doing this. This has the end affect of diluting and killing off possible alternatives and selling “grassroots” to NGO’s and corporatist agenda’s.  #fashernista takeing over projects in hand with the geek problem’s has lead to endless dead-ends in all alt/grassroots tech. Most recently this has manifested in encrypt everything, bitcoin/blockchain ect. this is a dead end.

The #OMN linking project is basic tech that I have been working on for more than 10 years, in past times the has been more interesting tech/social problems in alt/grassroots media to work on so linking has taken a back seat as its basic stuff. At this stage we only have the basics left. Lets take a first step linking alt/grassroots producers, and build tools to push this into a  #rebooted open web to start the needed move out of the #dotcon ghetto’s. Lets try as hard as we can to avoid #fahernisa take over of this basic #reboot. #fahernista will set-up parallel projects, raise parallel funding, push these into the traditional media and dominate the #dotcon conversation. Non of this inevitable pointless #fahernista noise should distract from the basics, as it will just flash bang and fad into nothing. Keep the basics going, linking, building. In the long term the rest is noise, distraction, for the conspiracy minded its our very own “false flag”.

Hummm… how to spot drift into the #fahernisat agenda?

The is a strong anti-dote in the

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Stalled roll out of OMN

Published Date 4/16/17 5:04 PM

How to move on with alt/grassroots media producers linking to each other? Currently the shamelessly do not do this, even though they have repeatedly stated they do over the last 5 years.

1) Keep private messaging them on steps they can take, this works to an extent, as asked them to add more tags to their posts and they “broke” the User Interface on the #OMN software we are using by adding lots more – which is a good problem to have 🙂

2) Publicly talk to them as a alt/grassroots media group in blog post and their social media – this currently has little affect.

3) Talk to them in public as producer groups – this has had a limited affect with some of the groups, will try this more.

4) Public talk to them as individual’s, this will generally get a private response and little action just words so far.

5) Name them as groups who do not link/share in public, this might be needed for some of the groups.

6) Name them as individuals within the producer groups and push for linking directly to them in public, name and point to the individual that this is a clear #fail a last stage.

Its a shame that this escalation is needed – linking is a clear path to success on the web – the right-wing blogs/producers do this, its a blank faced #fail that the left/progressive do not now and generally never have.

“Make the world you wont to see” LINKING is a strong path to this.

Looking for helpful/happy people to crowed source the active conversation to make this happen.

Lets start with these groups.

NovaraMedia

The Canary

Reel Media

Real News

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Pembroke Was ist das

One of many appeared on the Commons Pembroke. From Mars?

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One more step OMN

Published Date 3/15/17 8:20 PM

The OMN will allow you to find good quality alt\grassroots content. It’s a way of getting distribution outside Facebook and Twitter to push-up the use of the open web. It’s a stupidly simple social project using existing basic web technologies.

The OMN is an open network so we call each of the sites “nodes” as they are small parts of the wider World Wide Web (WWW). Openworlds is the first node/siteof the network, currently with links to 10 embeds on sites as an initial soft roll out. We are aiming to expand this out up to 100 sites over the summer for the hard launch.

If you have a web site and want to play a part in this “soft roll out” go to openworlds

Step 1: If you are interested in only some subjects or groups, click on group tags (with @ in front) and/or subject tags. You can choose as many as you like and then only these will show up in your river embed. Then click the RSS link.

Step 2: Take the URL of the RSS feed, in the new window that opens. Go to your CMS/site/blog and install a RSS display/widget and add the RSS URL to it. You can use the formatting options to change the number of items and what info to display to make it look nice.

That’s it for now, your site is now a part of a open alt/grassroots media network. Playing a role in linking and cooperating to build a progressive worldview empowering people to build a better world.

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A first step to reboot alt grassroots media

Published Date 3/4/17 6:32 PM

A first step to reboot alt/grassroots media land an update on were we are on the OMN (open media network) linking project.

* The is a node/site up http://omn.openworlds.info:8080/

* This currently has 10 embeds https://github.com/tomspost/OMN/wiki on sites as a soft roll out

* we are aiming to expand this out to 100 sites over the summer for the hard launch

We bring good content in and push it out as links on site sidebars/sections on these sites. To make this work better the producer sites need to add more subject tags to posts as embedding sites can use these to display content flows they like ie. the more tags the more shared views for producer sites.

For a lose time scale of the project http://bit.ly/2mUDA3f

Howto use the OMN

This is a first step of a longer project.

Goto http://omn.openworlds.info:8080

1) You can click on the RSS feed button to get a news river for your site, this will link to articles from all the feeds in the node/site.

2) If you are interested in only some subjects or groups click on group tags (with @ in front) and/or subject tags. You can chose as many as you like and then only these will show up in your river embed. Then click the RSS link.

3) Take the URL of the RSS feed, in the new window that opens. Go to your CMS/site/blog and install a RSS display/widget and add the RSS URL to it. You can use the formatting options to change the number of items and what info to display.

That’s it for now.

Your site is now a part of a open alt/grassroots media network. Planing a role in linking up and cooperating to build a progressive world view. To empower people to build a better world.

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The left Stop the rot and start the composting

Published Date 3/2/17 7:37 PM

Its not the people we should be angry at for the current Brixet/Trump mess, it is the small/tiny number of people who pushed neo-liberal polices through for the last 30 years, probably a few thousand.

The people rebelled, yes, they could have rebelled to the left or the right, they rebelled to the right as the right were more competent in the face of the lefts divisions and general uselessness. Be angry with these few and make friends with the majority who decide our future.

And the left stop this divided uselessness, we need a left reboot, keep it KISS currently few “ideas” on the left are worth much. A good first step for the left is for groups to link to each other and share media and events, work out KISS “liberal” diversity of tactics and co-operate.

Stop the rot and start the composting.

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Building a alt grassrots media network

Published Date 2/21/17 6:10 PM

The OMN rollout is a 10 step process

  1. Rollout a single node to link alt media and share content to 100 sites.

  2. More

  3. More

  4. More

  5. Rollout full social taging flows and start the offline backup, start to move away from the dotcons.

  6. More

  7. More

  8. More

  9. More

  10. The openweb grows into the semantic web, the dotcons become history.

 

Time scale

* This could take a year with support and full on effort

* 2 years with interest and some geek commitment

* 5 years with active BLOCKING and geek’s turning away and doing something “better”.

* It will FAIL if the alt/grassroots groups don’t links to each other and each tries/pushes to be the “one” ie if we strive for the same dotcon working in alt/grassroots media.

“Be the change you want to see”

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History of the visionOntv project

The original project was offlinetv and was a online network to setup screenings to bring people together and cross fertilize different radical campaigning groups. I was pushing it as “open” rebooting of the failing undercurrents video activism project.

Before this I had been making a meager living doing screenings by fundraising vie the copyleft ruffcuts video CD project. With the transitioning from dialup to broadband internet speed the was a possibility to move the the distribution of screening quality video to the spreading peer2peer web.As you will continue to see thought my narration here my core thinking changes little.

The first dotcon (enclosures) boom had bust, the web was still a health open network through the “open” pioneers were being pushed out by more mainstream fahernisata people, these people were being snapped up by the next wave of dotcon funding so the clock was ticking on the next boom (and attempt as enclosing the web for control and profit).

Fashernisa´s were all over the open web, conferences, events, media. Geeks were developing open standards – each one unlinked/incompatible with the next it was a “fun” time for “open”. This flowering of geek culture had its fashernista side, the were 100 applications for zipping files or FTP and no easy to use open tools – the geek problem.

P from undercurrents got involved to do the funding side, a lot of “brainstorming” was done. During this time we see a “splitting” of the project. It was obvious that streaming video – that is a technology for watching video real time without having a local copy was going to grow to dominate the next dotcon boom and the fashionistas were buying into this big time. This is a client server technology – from one to many – its old (traditional) media distribution. At the same time the was a subculture flowering or peer2peer technology being used for “free content” this was a “native” open web technology.

The “splitting” was around a miscommunication/misunderstanding of what was going to happen in the next 5 years. And “funding” pushed this in a bad way, it was easy to talk to funders about “online video” it was fahernista mainstream. Few had any thought to the “cost” of jumping on the #dotconS fahernista wave. And in time the rise of the #dotcons from the second boom that was rising for all to see.

The “brainstorming” lead to the project being renamed visionOntv – just for the funding and outreach – much easier to get funding. Why would anyone be interested in offlinetv and peer2peer technologies all the value was about “owning” online space. That is enclosing the commons was unthinkingly embraced as a good thing – a touch on controlfreekery.

This simple change was the first step to the project losing direction and failing.

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How to do ethical aggregation and news flow displays

Published Date 2/15/17 12:13 PM

The is an issue of fast flowing (lower quality) news sites dominating over slower flowing (quality) sites on short 5/10 story sidebars on the #OMN

To get round this the are a number of options:

  1. We only show one item (the latest) from each feed in embed RSS feed flows. This will mean that some content is “skipped” on high flow sites and some stays around for longer in low flow sites.

But for this to work in nodes (sites/hubs) with lots of source feeds we will need a rolling group RSS polling update system say 5 or 10 feeds at a time, divided into the total polling time frame.

So a site has 30 feeds polling ones per hour than it will divide this into 3 groups of 10 feeds and pole these in turns ever 20 min so that the feeds are undated ones per hour but in 3 different groups so that the is a turn over of content for the feed for option 1) to maximize slower site flows getting linked to in the #OMN

  1. A second option that we do now on the node dispay iis we randomize the content in site flow feeds, this will give a wider view of older content and will even out faster/slower feed flows to bring diversity. But you wont get time based “news”.

  2. What we do now, we show content in liner order, however due to the way that RSS polling works the updates will be in groups and faster updating sites will dominate over slower updating sites. This is far from satisfactory, as it rewords sites that “game” the system by scatter gun publishing publishing lower quality content.

http://omn.openworlds.info

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Power Politics of the undead left

Published Date 2/1/17 2:07 PM

I have found memories of fighting the Power Politics of the “undead left” during the London Social Forum many years ago – lots of knotted strings of organic garlic around the top “taking the power table” to highlight the uncomfortable “undead left´s” grasping for power.

Then the ad hock crew taking away the top table altogether during the lunch break and arranging all the chairs in a circle. Their faces were a delight, coming back after lunch and it kinda/might have worked… but the splits of “not thought of here” took over and the undead were permissioned to take back the space at the next meeting.

The ESF movement faded and now is a shadow – no alt was built.

The use of cultural myths and traditions will mediate and disempower “power politics” but it’s a chicken and an egg to get these embedded in groups that are already ensnared in “power politics”.

The rainbow gatherings used to work this way till they were “disrupted” by the digital shift and capture by the #dotcons now the gatherings themselves are broken due in part by being organized through #failbook

The #OMN could fail from the same issue. The myths and traditions are in place PGA and #4opens. But the project does not have deep roots to weather the inrush of success. And on the other hand will likely not last the slow growth needed for the roots to dig deep.

Starting/Doing the “Risistence Expo project is unsettling for the same resion.