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Oceania IMCistas meet in Melbourne
by Takver & others
Monday July 19, 2004 at 01:03 AM
IMCistas and other media activists travelled from around the oceania
region to gather in Melbourne for the first ever Oceania Indymedia
Conference. Highlights from the four day conference included workshops
on online video compression and distribution, writing news and features,
analysis and direction of the Indymedia project.
oceania_transmission17july04_35.jpg, image/jpeg, 500x315
Indymedia Centres or working groups represented in some way included: Melbourne,
Sydney,
Adelaide,
Perth,
Aotearoa,
Quezon City,
Vancouver,
Indybay,
UK,
Global features and the Sydney tech
collective Catalyst.
The conference came several months after the launch of the Oceania Indymedia website which
draws together news stories from around the region and has facilitated
collaboration between the many regional IMCs. The conference kicked off
on Thursday evening, with a discussion of, and proposals for new
features for the website. Participants proposed more collaboration and
(irc) meetings to consolidate the connections made. Also on the agenda
were money issues and issues of personal and collective harmony,
particularly in regard to the Brisbane IMC.
On Friday afternoon the Oceania meeting broke up to observe and
participate in a Reclaim the Streets action (pics,
more
pics) organised by the Students Of
Sustainability Conference. On Friday evening participants were able
to attend a fundraiser event: never before seen footage from Avi Lewis
and Naomi Klein's film, The
Take, screened at Victorian Trades Hall. About 100 people attended
and watched the film. Afterwards, Augusto, an activist visiting from
Argentina gave a brief statement with questions from the audience.
Saturday, in a program called Transmission, was filled
with three workshops on: System Interrupt! Why do we work as media
makers? ; Information Society ; Avenues for syndication and
distribution. About 100 people participated in some way on the day.
Workshops facilitated the cross-fertilisation of ideas between activist
media makers and information distributors, including radio activists
from 3CR, video activists (like SKA TV, and
Oceania Newsreal),
print activists (like Spinach7 and
Anarres Books).
This was followed by screening of the Oceania Indymedia videos and
dinner. Several bands performed at a music Benefit held at a pub that
evening.
Sunday provided practical workshops on software, hardware and collective
process issues (As an introduction see: Structure in
Collectives). Probably the most important aspect of the conference
is the collaboration and trust building between individuals, infusing
more energy into the Oceania project. The conference has allowed some
self reflection and analysis, and hopefully empowerment of individual
IMCistas.
The Oceania IMC collaboration came out of informal gatherings of
individuals from regional IMCs at the Electrofringe festival conferences
in 2000 and 2001 in Newcastle. Then in 2002 IMCistas met at the
Borderlines conference in Adelaide and decided to create a site which
syndicates features from regional IMCs, which resulted in the Oceania
Indymedia website.
-- This article was workshopped on Sunday Afternoon, 18 July 2004 with
additional links by Takver
oceania.indymedia.org
The Take
by Takver & others
Monday July 19, 2004 at 01:03 AM
oceania_thetake16july04.jpg, image/jpeg, 500x281
A very interesting film by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein. Worthwhile trying to see when it comes out.
oceania.indymedia.org
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