Meeting of IMC Northern England: 25th April 2010 at the Dry Dock, Leeds¶

Attending: JD, JK, PT, NB, MR, JF, Re
Apologies: JC, JW, JM

Minute taker: JD
Facilitator: JF

Standing Items¶

• New members were welcomed and we had a go around to introduce ourselves and say what we would like to get from the meeting.

• Agenda Finalised

• Minutes of last meeting not yet sent to list: need to do this asap

• Correspondence received was read out (not many this month)

• Action points from last meeting update: MR – outreach to York is ongoing, JD – “Description” on publish page now changed to read “body”, JD – domain names for the site have been reregistered. Need to all chip in to cover the costs.

Coverage and features¶

• SAEAB feature: there had been good and ongoing communication with this group and this article got posted then promoted.
  BP Feature: all agreed was really good

• WDAIL Feature on London IMC site – was suggested to move over to our site and promote as was written by a northernite.

• MayDay coverage – arrangements were made to provide coverage for Bradford Mayday in both locations (Centenary Square and Infirmary fields). Would also look towards handing out flyers if time allowed. Plans to have banners and outreach boards in the main tent in Infirmary fields.

• Medical records feature. Ongoing and needs more work to make comprehensive. Will be posted to coincide with a major announcement that is linked to the story

All agreed we need more community stuff, not just activist related stories. Nikolai proposed making a list of potential features.

AP – JK to start this list and NB will add to it.

Need more asylum seeker related features as this is a big area we are currently missing. JM went to “Press Gang” meeting and spoke to JD about it. Hopefully something will come out of this.

Another Medical feature in pipeline re: WHO decision to declare the swine flu outbreak a “pandemic”. MR to work on this. need to work in regional angle.

AP – JK and MR to work on FOI requests.

• Hyperactive summit – possibility raised to include UI design questionnaire on front page.

• Hacktionlab – Summer event will be focused on new users of services like us. All geek stuff to go to the Hyperactive summit above. There will be media activism skillshares there.

AP – We will go to represent IMC Northern there and to help out with site and skillshares

Feedback from Bristol¶

A discussion was had between the members who attended the Bristol UK Network meeting and those who didn’t go. Feedback from the event was given.

AP – that we arrange a dedicated meeting soon to start work on our proposal as to how the UK network is structured and an aggregated UK front page. PTG to arrange this at either the 1in12 club or the common place. Meeting is to be open to active collective members only as we need to get firm consensus in a short period of time.

mediation – The network passed consensus on supporting our new imc application. 2 problems were flagged up by a couple of individuals who stood aside. One is the initial publicity we sent out. Agreed to work on this in Crabgrass to get a new set of outreach material together, and to send to the active UK collectives for approval before sending to same list as the last lot. Also, a few people seemed to be confused as to whether emails were sent by JD or the collective. JD made clear that all letters signed JD were from him, and those signed IMC Northern England were from the collective. NB has emailed to ask which ones they mean. no response as yet.

AP – NB to sort out

Ongoing stuff¶

• Editorial guidelines – discussion has been on hold through new-imc process. will look at again eg “violence” link, as soon as possible. possibly as part of upcoming workday

• Oblong – Have emailed us to try and sort out a skillsharing collaboration. JM to sort out a date that’s good for him.we need at least 7 days notice to go ahead with this.

AP – JD to contact them and let them know what’s going on

• 6 month review – we agreed a list of priorities and there is still loads of stuff to do that we need to focus on.

AP – MR to create a tasklist for this (done –
we.riseup.net/imc-northern/objectives-f...

• FaceAche – JD has set up a page as an experiment for a month that pulls in our RSS feed and distributes it. Discussion about using these kind of things as a push service only. Agreed to leave this running for now as an experiment. JD points out site traffic seems to have gone up already.

AP – MR and JD to look into ways of displaying a “welcome from the dark side” kind of message for those who have been referred from FaceAche

Splitting meetings into outreach and technical¶

Some are sick of talking about external network shit in meetings. Proposal that at least every other meeting is bureaucracy free. Discussion centred around online vs offline focus. Hope is that now the new imc process is over, this will be less of an issue soon (discounting the upcoming UK bunfest in london).

AP – JK to look at the consensus decision making docs
AP – PT to take over from MR on legal, contact etc

• Workdays – different groups doing different collaborative things. Great to be able to work together and get stuff done. Need to choose appropriate places for meetings.

• Proposal – next meeting to be held at Hebden Bridge as invited, possibly 16th/23rd May. PT to contact Del

Mir Aggro-Gator¶

current system is not what was agreed at network meeting. Working group should have been set up before implementing.

AP – write a letter to the network saying thank you but this wasn’t what was agreed so could you please revert to allow time for discussion.

A long discussion was had over the pros and cons of this system. Letter to be sent first to the other UK collectives to give them time to draft any response, and then to the UK network list within 7 days (done – lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-north...

• Working documents – what we do and how we do it. This is to be started as an ongoing project at the Hebden meeting

• Peanut Gallery – snarl up with our meeting there. Have some leeway to talk directly to the Union about what happened. An explanation of the situation was discussed ie police asking the uni not to let us meet there.

AP – to continue to try and resolve this so we can meet there in future – NB to sort

• Other business – too many emails to list, we need to try and exercise some brevity

Next meeting¶

Hebden Bridge

PT to sort out (done – lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-north...