Minutes Sunday 1st August 2010

Present: Jimdog, Ptg, Nab, MR, Ian, Sarah, JRF, Dan
Apols: Jen, John

1. Corresp.

• Nab has been in touch with people involved in Indymedia Leeds-Bradford
• Mick Fuzz has been in touch about Manchester’s site, which mostly concentrates on syndication. We would like to get them involved on administraton of mcr-related articles, subject to an in-person meeting with them (teleconferencing may be sufficient in the future.)

2. Matters arising

• Guidelines have been tweaked.
• Working on Bank account.
• AP – MR to add nab to contact list. (two’s enough for now)
• It was notes that there will continue to be a skills monopoly until (amongst other things) some other members of the collective learn Rails. This (and realted technical tasks) are not all that difficult to learn if you have some time and effort to spare. If there is significant interest, it will be worth looking into some training.

3. York outreach

• AP (Nab & Jen) write ‘appeal for your news’ email to be circulated through various networks to which we individually belong.
• Readership stats might help with with convincing people to post news.
• Sarah has agreed to talk about us at the York in Transition monthly meeting.
• We can publicise at freshers fair(s) though People & Planet (or similar)

• Suggestions – things that will halep readership and profile
  • increasing traffic
  • increasing new additions to site
  • increasing use of calendar events
  • link to freegal/stuff exchange
  • nagging our friends to post stories
  • stuff that changes regularly
  • NOT comments
  • don’t remove content unless we really need to
  • regular features on radical history – would need to recruit people.
• Target – one post per dat by end of August.

4. Commuinity grants

• AP (nab, Jimdog) getting on with this

5. Fundraising for server

• donate button on site
• AP (JRF) look into paypal button that avoids paypal tax.

6. Recent coverage

• AP (MR, Jimdog, John) video & audio from Hebden
• EF Gathering feature material
• Climate camp – nab is (perhaps) willing to take laptop and camera

7. Demo coverage Saturday 28th August

• With enough content, we can get a siginificant profile & readership on that day.
• Realtime reporting (timeline, photos, videos) will allow us to produce high quality reportage in realtime
• Roles required:
  • filming/photography/handing out literature
  • runner
  • dispatch desk
• Arrange interviews with other groups that have a presence there

8. Network meeting

• Various things have bene formalised
• decision making process has been proposed
• Agenda will probably include:
  • virtual collective to allow involvement from geographically isolated people
  • some discussion of progress of drupal aggregator – made to have no internal editorial requirement
    • A simple demonstration of this can already be seen at all.indymedia.org.uk
  • security discussion

Next meeting: Sunday 5th September, 12 noon
The CommonPlace, 23 Wharf St, Leeds