[Imc] global IMC decision-making network.

[Sascha Meinrath]

Some of you might be interested in this:


>X-Sender: jaypsand at pop.mail.yahoo.com
>X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1
>Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 22:54:19 +0200
>To: meinrath at uiuc.edu
>From: Jay <jay at tao.ca>
>Subject: Making good things happen
>
>Hello Sascha,
>
>How are you?  How's the UC-IMC doing?  I just wanted to make sure you got a
>copy of the below message I'm sending out to people who are or have been
>involved in international Indymedia organizing.  It's a note to encourage
>everyone to focus for the next few weeks on getting our Indymedia
>network-wide decision-making process together.  There's a rough proposal on
>the decision-making working group list (imc-dmwg at indymedia.org) for finally
>developing a spokescouncil model.  That's a good step, but it will only
>turn into something functional if people from all over the network focus on
>making it happen.  Keep up all the great work,
>
>Jay
>
>********
>SUMMARY:
>-- PLEASE HELP REVIVE THE IMC DECISION-MAKING WORKING GROUP -- JOIN
>"IMC-DMWG at INDYEMDIA.ORG."  NOW IS THE TIME TO FINALLY MAKE A NETWORK-WIDE
>DECISION-MAKING PROCESS HAPPEN.
>********
>Hi everyone,
>
>Jay here.  How are you all?  I'm writing to people who are interested in
>keeping Indymedia happy and healthy in order to encourage everyone to focus
>on the final stage of the development of our global decision-making
>process.  For well over a year people have been talking about the need for
>some kind of process that would enable us to have a way to make the very,
>very few decisions about things that impact the entire network.  For the
>most part we've been able to do okay without having a network-wide
>decision-making process in place, and I think we should use that experience
>as a lesson that there are very few decisions we'd have to make at an
>international level.  On the other hand, we do have $11,000 wallowing in
>the bank account without a way to spend it, and there are certainly other
>decisions we should really make together, such as how to improve
>multilingual communications (note that this message is going out mainly to
>English-speakers -- an unfortunate current reality of our "international"
>organizing).  Slowly we've inched toward getting something off the ground.
>At the meeting in San Francisco people opened the imc decision making
>working group (imc-dmwg at indymedia.org) as a place to develop a proposal for
>a network-wide decision-making body.  So far there has been very little
>discussion on that list.
>
>I'm writing to try to revive interest in that process.  Recently a draft
>proposal went to the imc-dmwg at indymedia.org list, based upon previous ideas
>of what an Indymedia-wide decision-making process could entail, that, if
>worked upon, could eventually become the basis of imc-dmwg's proposal for
>an Indymedia global spokescouncil.  There are actually two elements of the
>proposal
>(http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-dmwg/2001-August/000040.html)
>, one that should be pretty easy to pass (the basic idea of having a global
>spokescouncil --
>http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-dmwg/2001-August/000039.html)
>and the other, a much rougher one about how the spokescouncil could work
>(http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-dmwg/2001-August/000041.html)
>.  I suggest we work on both simultaneously.  Getting everyone on board
>with the idea of our having some kind of basic decision-making process will
>be a tremendous step forward; the first thing that group will do will be to
>agree upon the way it works, likely using the proposal made by the imc-dmwg
>as a model.  I'm pretty confident that if we focus for the next few weeks
>we'll be able to finally make this happen, rather than sitting around and
>saying, "wouldn't having a way to make decisions be nice . . . ?"
>
>While we're at reviving the decision-making working group, I want to remind
>everyone that there are other elements of international Indymedia work that
>could use some renewed energy.  Imc-process has finally agreed to allow
>itself to have a facilitator, but no one has volunteered to fill that role.
>  Imc-editorial, which also needs volunteer-facilitators, has a proposal on
>the table for a newswire policy, and when that's in place will open up a
>working group of people who maintain it on the newswire, but there hasn't
>been much interest in either the policy or the working group.  Though there
>have been a lot of good ideas, the pace of actual www-features creation has
>slowed somewhat.  There are also more and more general at indymedia.org
>messages coming and not enough people to answer them.  I'm saying all this
>at a time during which I know I'm personally going to have to step back
>from all the Indymedia work I've been doing.  The fall is approaching and
>I'm going to be traveling for my "day job" throughout most of it.  Perhaps
>I'm trying to focus more attention on all this stuff right now to assuage
>my guilt at not being able to be as involved for the next few months!
>
>Whatever the case, I think we're finaly ready to get a global spokescouncil
>model in place.  I'm afraid if we don't take the opportunity to do so right
>now, when there are so many people who are so able to make it happen, we
>may find ourselves in a fairly unfortunate drift.
>
>Feel free to pass this message to anyone in your local IMC who you think
>may be interested in starting to contribute globally.  We need all the
>energy and great ideas we can get.
>
>Peace, love, happiness, and lots of good sleep,
>
>Jay

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/imc/attachments/20010830/2c42a83c/attachment.html>