Summing up of the #webroots meetings at #nwsk

I came away feeling like an alien with the chasm that divides my #openweb view from the Facebook generation that made up the panel and ordnance.

Some thoughts:

As the guy from demo’s said the are better #openweb projects in most areas. Though these options were only said in a few words in passing.

It’s interesting that the has not been a mention of the WWW just the internet. This might be because a company like Facebook is not on the web do a search and you come to a login page, not content you can link to.

As said on the panel legislating for the #dotcons is dangerous for a wider www/internet view. On this positive note they knew they were incompetent for the roles they were playing. That’s a step.

Offering a real alternative to the dotcons world

Published Date 10/17/17 4:59 PM

This is a quite #reboot of the #openweb going on. This #4opens project has nearly 1 million users https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) It’s one of the use it or lose it moments for life outside #failbook. It would be a bad time for progressive funders to start to prop up the #dotcons world if we don’t try to change direction, sad outcome is invertible.

A funding application to set up/boot up both an “NGO” and an “Activism” instance of Mastodon. Each could have different “terms of service” but would both talk to each other and the wider #AP networks. It’s time and not a #dotcons and works #OMN

Would need a crew of 3 people part-time for 6 months roll out then 6 months sustaining after this year the project should be self-sustaining due to low running costs. Can use patron and occasional donation drives.

Crew
Hamish – lead fixer and Activist outreach
Sys admin – to set up the servers and keep them running
NGO Outreach – to outreach to NGO’s and get them to buy into the #openweb project.

Funding
5-7K funding for the first year. From Lush and Edgefund
This would mostly be part-time wages, with some server and outreach costs. A monthly donation would go to the development https://www.patreon.com/mastodon

The project would be organised on Github as a #4opens project as a part of an open media network.

Don’t trust the fashionista

Published Date 9/25/17 4:24 PM

Thinking about #Uber and the dysfunction of #Facebook.

It’s time to #reboot many parts of the #openweb With the “visibility” of the failing of #dotcons such as #failbook privacy/obscured agronomic control of you, #uber and the race to the bottom culture.

The will be a plausible “class” of people who come up with convincing sounding solutions, these #fashionista are not part of any solution and are a clear and historical core to our failers in the past.

I understand it’s hard to see the differences of tech projects, what is worth supporting and what not. We have issues from two different directions that have to at least a little understood to have a hope of supporting projects that have the possibility to be part of a real LINKING alt.

* #fashionista thinking/working

* the #geekprobelm

These are opposite side of the same coin.

“A river that needs crossing – On the political side, there is arrogance and ignorance, on the geek side there is naivety and over complexity”

A good first step solution to both is the #4opens

They will dis-empower the worst of the #fashionista thinking by shining light on their actions and mediate to a better outcome the “closing push” of the #geekproblem by keeping the LINKING in place.

Simple and sweet, a first step solution in a hashtag 😉

A look at were alt grassroots media is at

Published Date 9/17/17 10:02 AM

A look at some of the current alt/radical media projects in the UK

Novra media

These guys are some of the most intelligent “idiots” I know. They produce good content and they produce a lot of it.

* FANTASTIC CONTENT

* HARD WORKING

* OLD, BROKEN AND DANGURUES NEW/OLD MEDIA ASPIRATIONS

You can see them trying to build themselves into the new Guardian/Buzzfeed/***media. The root problem am hoping is the limited understanding/interest of the open web due to them having built there careers inside the #dotcons of Twitter and Facebook etc. In this the is hope for these guys.

Realmedia

The now “old” upstarts who keep getting it wrong by building something that might have been the thing to do if they had done it 10 years ago and most importantly as a open network rather than a closed portal.

* REFUSE TO LISTEN

* FUNDING DRAIN

Hard to say if the is hope for them.

The Canary

The tabloid of left alt-media, my thought is that am glad some one is doing these and its not me 🙂

* GOOD CLICK BAITING

* EXCELLENT OUTREACH

* HAVE HAD A TENDENCY TO BE ON THE EDGE OF FAKENEWS

* STILL MAINSTREAM MEDIA FACING

Now these guys would be valuable as part of a Open Media Network (OMN) partnering up to work as outreach for the more content soled groups. Its a nobrainer and not to far away from the funding model as a bigger alt means a bigger them, more revenue – everyone wins.

The fact that they are now linking after each story gives hope.

Built by the social media generation so little real understanding of the open web and limited interest in being part of the open world. Is this an unsolvable problem?

RealNews

The granddaddy of the current alt/grassroots media, they are a niche publisher of trade union grassroots news. Good content that all the other groups should LINKING to and share BUT CURRENTLY DO NOT, this sums up the issue with current “alt” media.

With a bit of investment they should be at the centre of a OMN

* HARD-WORKING AND GOOD CONTENT

* TECHNOLOGY BACKWARD

* GETTING A BIT LONG IN THE TOOTH

Am going to take a little time to try and help them out if they need/except help.

Radical film network

Has been taken over by a bunch of career building academics. There events have been so pointless that I have never been to one of them, and, I was around at the setup. I have been one of the most prolific radical/alt/grassroots film-makers of the last 20 years its odd that isn’t it, that am alienated from something calling it self “the radical film network”.

* THEY LINK

* POINTLESS

* LIBERAL FUNDING DRAIN

Outcome – CHANGE THE NAME to #fashernista film makers / academic career building network

The Media Fund

Grew out of realmedia and share many of its NGO facing. Good and needed project if it can refocus on real media outcomes The 4#opens and the linking of alt-media.

OMN

A open “trust” peer to peer standereds based network thats needed.

* THEY LINK

* #4OPENS PROJECT

visionOntv

Still worthwile as a video part of a network but pointless with out this wider linking project.

* THEY LINK

* “KINDA” #4opens project

Building alt grassroots media networks to challenge the traditional media

Published Date 7/16/17 7:30 PM

Our current groups doing alt/grassroots media are to limited in there idea of what media could/should be. The is either a naivety or a dishonesty to all the current grassroots/alt media. They act and think they can be “big media” with out controlling the distribution of there content in any real way. This is in no way unusual the mainstream media is continually making this very same mistake. All of them rely on the the #dotcons which nowadays is largely the Facebook algorithm for the there content distribution.

Our current grassroots/alt media have web sites so already have one foot in the openweb, but non of their sites prominently link in any meaningful way to each other. They do podcasts so anther foot in the open web, but all their effort for outreach is inside the #silos such as Apple itunes etc. it’s hard to directly blame them, though we should and will, for this sorry state.

So why are we here? On the one hand we have the #fashernista embrace of the #dotcons which most of the current crew built there careers inside. On the other we have the suicidal embrace of #encryptionists complexity and parallel “standardisation” into a pointless/shrinking in to nothingness alt-tech ghetto were our alt-geeks are.

With these issues in mind I have been outreaching to these groups for the last year, and building real working openweb linking tech as part of the #OMN project. This currently is not been getting far past their naivety/self interest/career focused thinking. Fair anufe if that is as far as there imagination/aspiration goes, but this is a clear problem for working alt/progressive/left media that urgently needs to be addressed. I will keep outreaching, if you wont to help with this outreach get in touch.

They link to meany alt-media crews at the end of each story which is nice, but no links on front page yet.

They have no links on the front page to alt media crews. They used to have a linking page inside there site, now I cannot find it? If anyone can find links can they send me a URL please. They are looking like going backwords to a more tredtional 20th centery view of what media is?

They have no links on the front page to other alt-media crews and I cannot find any links inside their site. They have source links in there story’s which is not much of a step. This is a clear a failer in alt/grassroots media turms.

Fashernistas

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 #fashernista?
A group of individuals who value/push their 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 effect of diluting and killing off possible alternatives and selling “grassroots” to NGO’s and corporatist agenda’s. #fashernista taking over projects in hand with the #geekproblem 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 it’s basic stuff. At this stage, we only have the basics left. Let’s take a first step linking alt/grassroots producers, and build tools to push this into a #rebooted #openweb to start the needed move out of the #dotcons ghetto’s. Let’s try as hard as we can to avoid #fashernisa take over of this basic #reboot. Fashernistas will set up parallel projects, raise parallel funding, push these into the traditional media and dominate the #dotcons conversation. None of this inevitable pointless #fashernista 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 it’s our very own “false flag”.

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

There is a strong anti-dote in the #4opens

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.

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.

Trust and Media Flows

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.

OMN and publishing on smart phones

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.

Outline of the OMN

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.

The OMN an easy project for everyone

Published Date 12/24/16 6:18 PM

The OMN an easy project for everyone

Producer groups have to put in minimal effort only puting a linking sidebar on their site and providing a RSS feed into the network.

These can be:

* Tag based content list “you might be interested in this”

* Tag based site link list “blog roll”

* Tag based video player embed “good films”

Optional: a site can add a badge to say its a member of the network.

What do they get out of it?

Google juice from the wide links back to their website and their content.

Clicks and content audience for all sites of the network rather than just their own.

More commenting from cross site conversations in their CMS comment system

On social media (the #dotcons)

They get a wider sharing of their content to work its way round the FB algorithm restrictions.

More “likes” on their #failbook pages to help boost the 3% organic reach.

Well a warm fashernista feeling of being part of something whole/bigger.

A geeky feeling of doing something real geeky.

We join together to push the “undercurrents” up and into the “mainstream”.

Badging the OMN

Is based on the #4opens to get a badge a site has to embed at least one linking embed somewhere (relatively) prominent on their site to become a member of the network. The Badge will link to the OMN project page, maybe this could have a list of OMN sites, as well as hosting the basic project docs.

Gold – 4opens

Silver – 3opens

Bronze – 2opens

We need some one to design these “badges” its up to site owners if/were they use them.

The OMN is a project of the 4opens and the PGA hallmarks.