[IMC-US] Acorn Offer

[Sascha Meinrath]

Hi all,

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, joe wrote:

> Speaking as someone who's only been following the US IMC effort for a
> little while, let me suggest a couple of questions that would need to be
> addressed before I'd be able to have an opinion on the Acorn offer:
>
> 1. I don't know where US-IMC is in the process of going from an idea to
> an actual website. Are the stumbling blocks mostly technical
> implementation at this point, or are there still questions about how the
> site will work? I've been going through the maillist archives but haven't
> found much.
>
> 2. It's not clear to me what it is exactly that Acorn is offering to do.
> Host the site from their webserver? Write lots of custom dadaIMC code?
> Perform editorial duties?

Acorn's offer is simply to help with technical issues -- programming,
troubleshooting, etc. with the goal of helping get the site launched so
that more people can be involved with the project.  Editorial duties will
be carried out by the IMC-US-Editorial group and Acorn with have no part
in that.

> 3. If the Acorn proposal is agreed upon, would participation in the
> project remain truly representative of the whole US, or would US-IMC
> unintentionally become Acorn and UCIMC's view of the US?

The IMC-US editorial structure has already been established (the idea is
to create a working group that will oversee this), though the day-to-day
proceedures are still to be agreed upon, Acorn wouldn't be in any way
involved with this aspect of the site.  The UCIMC also doesn't have any
special place in the IMC-US hierarchy.

--Sascha

> These all seem to me at least as important as the question of giving
> credit.
>
> As has been discussed before and elsewhere, the importance of electronic
> communication (emails, pages on docs.indymedia.org) is much greater for
> non-local IMCs. I know the people who've been involved with this effort
> from the start have already put lots of effort into it, but it's going to
> be difficult for anyone else to get involved until a little more
> information is available.
>
> - Joe