[IMC-US-tech] Greetings and first thoughts

[max]

I also wanted to mention that you can set up dada to have the newswire 
be syndicated, like the global site.

max

On Monday, September 22, 2003, at 03:04 PM, Ana wrote:

> Hi y'all
>
> my name is Ana and i am with the NYC IMC. I am nothing short of 
> extreeeemly excited about this project. And I could go on forever 
> about why I think it is so crucial to changing the political dialogue 
> in this country. But Ill spare you, for now. :-)) This email will be 
> long enough with my thoughts on what I think it should look like and 
> function as.
>
> First off, I am not a techie. And I havent had too much experience 
> with using codes other than Active 0.0. (yes, painful!)
>
>  I did spend quite a bit of time on the Cancun site however, which 
> runs dada, and as a user i can say it was a pleasurable experience. (I 
> have no idea what the navigating the back end is like.) I especially 
> liked the media gallery and the categorized newswire. But the features 
> column seemed pretty useless to me and the design was way too busy for 
> my taste. How easy is it to take an existing code like dada and tweak 
> it to our tastes? is that something we have energy for at all?
>
> The four most important things I'd like to see in my dream us.indy 
> site are:
>
> - a tailored design for a (hopefully) tailored code
> - a manually uploadable features column much like the global site
> - a newswire that syndicates features from all participating IMCs
> - a categorized newswire (news, commentary, announcements, etc)
> - a categorized archive by issue (environmentalism, racial profiling, 
> war on the poor, prison industrial complex, etc)
> - a media gallery (much like cancuns's with easy to find rich media 
> files) or pages dedicated to inter-imc video, audio, photo and print 
> work
> - a chat room
> - a calendar
> - a "how to get involved in or otherwise support your local imc" 
> directory
> - a links page to non-imc radical media groups
>
> The #1 most important thing is what the features column looks like. If 
> its an automated thing then I dont think it will be very effective. I 
> know I never look at center columns that auto-generate. To me, one of 
> the best characteristics of indymedia sites are the hand-made features 
> that draw the reader in, and, with the use of hyper links imbedded in 
> the text, are able to connect the dots between seemingly disparate 
> issues. For example, how does the patriot act effect librarians, drug 
> dealers, immigrants and plowshare activists all in the same breath? 
> You'de be hard pressed to find any one article that does that 
> anywhere. But you can find it on a feature on the global page because 
> of our crafted hyper-linked text. thats the kind of stuff id like to 
> see us producing on our front page, always linking back to local IMCs 
> or other independent organizations putting out crucial info.
>
> So, those are my thoughts to throw out there as a starting point. Id 
> love to hear what other visions are out there and what is technically 
> possible with what we got.
>
> thanks!
> ana
>
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