LeedsMeetingMinutes
agenda
- introductions
- climate camp feedback
- future collaborations
climate camp reportback and collaborations
background intro on what CC was/is. how media has been used at this and previous convergences. changed name from indymedia -> be the media! had a ridiculously big marquee in the end!
tech setup:
was going to ethernet everything for security reasons wiki page: [[1]]
there was a sattelite dish with a fairly decent 1.5mbps down, 384kbps up and dedicated, hence no problems such as with 3G. also some 3G stuff (small external modem with a phone chip) which was able to get a decent signal - there is a govt website which tells you the coverage and this indicated that there was no coverage, but knowing where the transmitters were and using a mast, it was possible to get a pretty good signal, particularly for low-intensity stuff when the satellite (high power consumption) could be turned off.
energy sources: solar panels. one guy did have some of his stuff impounded. a lot of batteries didn't make it in.... hence power was rationed to preserve it for the days of action. it became an all or nothing thing - if stuff was off, everything was off. there was also no sun and no wind. instead, natural energy was converted into human energy: there was a party early on, also, during which used more energy than it probably should. there was also a pedal-powered (cycle) energy supply so it was possible to make a deal: pedal for 15 minutes and get 30 minutes of internet time! there is a page on the wiki about poweruse with estimates etc. biggest problem was people turning up spontaneously with their own equipment and expecting to be able to use power. also had a traffic light system for allowing people powerusage: green - anyone can come anytime and use power for anything amber - please ask someone for permission. red - just after a party, not allowed to use! [[2]]
people setup:
very impressive to see lots of new people who were becoming involved lots of new people using new technologies - they got on and made their own mistakes! CC dispatch channel (on irc) which was private -
- was really difficult for people there:
=> unstable internet meant people needed repeat invites which was difficult => blocks people from the same ip => had to set up ssh tunnels to get around this!
people would turn up offering to help but to take time out to help them to learn how they could help seemed impossible! bringing them up to speed seems very time-consuming, which is true, but it's hard for people to get involved. this is a recurring problem for events such as this. this also seemed to be a generic problem throughout the camp, compounded by the police actions. seems that lots of people came to camp and had a "consumption" experience rather than a participatory one.
problems
alternative media ended up finding out about news from the mainstream media - the camp media team were just releasing press releases to the mainstream media... but this improved and communications with media and legal teams from the camp were connected up with the indymedia people.
comms and legal people got onto irc eventually and this (in the end) worked out quite well. the only other tricky thing was the photodesk which didn't work quite so well, but there was a phone number given to some people who managed to send pictures back from their mobiles at various actions. this is good - but as it costs people money to send multimedia messages they only send the better ones, plus there was possibility of the receiving media activist blurring out faces.
dissident radio
successful, and happy :-)
people were able to phone and leave messages which was then rebroadcast. this was constructed using blasterisk.org (an activist set this up) but one concern raised was the difference raised between people foning to convey information, and those phoning to actually have a message broadcast.