From FreeWiki

October 22, 2005 -- Toban's perspective

Present: Alison, Kirk, Maria, Nick (briefly), Toban

The meeting was very productive, but the turn-out could have been much better. Even though there's 25 of us on this mailing list, we clearly have to do more recruitment. (However, a few people who aren't on this mailing list and who didn't come e-mailed me to express interest, so hopefully we'll be seeing them in the future.)

Nick D-W, a professor I mentioned in my "agenda" message, came to discuss possible internships and possible resources from the university. I'll post a separate message about these issues.

An important issue we talked about is our approach to organizing and communicating. It seems clear to me that little is happening inbetween meetings -- both in terms of action and talking. My "communication" message was an attempt to address this problem. No one at the meeting seemed to want to try a means of communicating other than the mailing list. Another major issue is finding an online place for the web site. There are potential costs involved -- provided we can't find people who will donate web hosting space and bandwidth. Also, there are issues of control. If we were on a university server, for instance, would we have to be careful not to be too radical? And then there's the question of the police trying to shut us down -- will our host back us up, or fold immediately? The role of the site the Kirk set up (http://large.braille.uwo.ca/) has yet to be determined. He seems willing to let us use it as a place for an actual Indymedia site, but there are potential problems with the university, where the site is located.

We talked about what each of us would want to do once the Indymedia site is up and running. Writing and editing seems to be popular. For those of you who weren't at the meeting: What do you have in mind? How do you want to help out?

A few of us think that the group should track local events -- without excluding minority groups (with religious holidays, etc). We could draw on other sources, including AltLondon (http://www.altlondon.org/calendar.php), although we should try to avoid competing with other calendars and listings. Tracking events can be a way of determining what we, as journalists, should cover. Also, we can use some sort of record of local events as a basis for discussing them and the political issues associated them. Maria wants very much for us to get a better understanding of one another, and to work toward a common vision, which is why she will be posting about conferences and what not. As I understand it, she wants there to be more political substance to the group -- beyond the idea of alternative media in itself. Later, as discussions arise about news stories, overtly political discussions are bound to happen a lot (?), but, for the time being, the project might seem distant from what matters most to some of you.

Alison is involved in My Sister's Place (http://info.london.on.ca/details.asp?id=1058), and they may be making a web page for their patrons to communicate with the outside world. Maybe we could get together a partnership.

During the meeting, it became apparent that everyone who was there has ties to the university. There was a free speech debate toward the end of the meeting.

Discussion about internships

As I've said, Nick D-W came to the meeting. He's from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the university. (Here's the department web site: http://www.fims.uwo.ca/)

He gave us an idea of how student internships would happen -- provided they work out. The students would be in their 4th year of the "Media and the Public Interest" program (which doesn't seem to have a web site), and would devote about 4 hours per week to London Indymedia throughout the spring semester (January to April). There will be 12 potential interns, but Dyer-Witheford doesn't know whether any will be interested in this. He thinks that most would prefer more official and hierarchical organizations.

D-W also mentioned the possibility that we might establish a long-term partnership with the department that could entail some resources for us. After he left, we talked about the internships. Everyone seemed to think that the internships would be a good idea. But there was concern that we don't have enough of a basic foundation and direction. And there was some uncertainty about what there would be for the interns to do, but we quickly came up with a list.

Here's the list: - community outreach -- recruitment, making connections with community groups, publicity (once the site is up) - fund/resource-raising -- e.g. setting up a fundraising event - writing and/or editing - graphic design -- especially a logo

D-W had said that he would want someone to act as a contact so that he could keep tabs on any intern(s), and Maria has offered to do this.