To: imc-leeds

Dear Leeds/Bradford IMCistas,

You may have noticed some strange talk recently about something called ‘Crabgrass’, mainly due to some recent exchanges on this list. It’s time to let the cat out of the bag!

A few of the more geek-minded collective members have been busy beavers, working on an area of we.riseup.net where we can hopefully organise more effectively as a network and where we can have truly collaborative, decentralised stuff going on. Although mailing lists are an excellent way of getting a message out to a large number of people, they’re not very good for writing documents collectively, sharing task lists or voting on the name of a robot. Crabgrass allows us to open up the process stuff that goes into our imc for everyone to participate in, and all contributions are welcome.

We have now put in the carpets and wallpaper and are ready to invite anyone with an interest in building the new IMC Northern England network to meet us there and get involved.

Signing up for a crabgrass account is easily done from the start page and once you are there, navigate to https://we.riseup.net/imc-northern/ where you will find the things currently being worked on. Whilst there, you will be able to join the group to be updated on what is currently being talked about/worked on and join in.

This is a collective process and all input is important if we are to build a newswire that will better represent the rich array of activist groups in this area.

If anyone has any problems using crabgrass, either email to imc-leeds@lists.indymedia.org or imc-leeds-contact@lists.indymedia.org (if you don’t want it publicly archived) and we will do all we can to help you.

Better still, there’s lots of ways you can meet us face to face. We have made a commitment to holding our meetings at as many places around the region as possible so if you or your group would like to host one, we could do some training with your group at the same time. Our meeting locations are advertised on leedsbradford.indymedia.org.uk and this mailing list and all are welcome to come along and get involved. Alternatively, you could come along to one of the linux/tech skillshares, held by a collective that includes several geeky members of IMC Northern on the first sunday of every month at the Common Place, Leeds, and we will help you get organising!

In Solidarity,

IMC Northern (formerly IMC Leeds/Bradford)