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Indymedia Needs You

23.03.2006 16:59 | Free Spaces | Indymedia | Technology | London

The global indymedia network is the work of thousands of people at many different levels, from the people who read the articles and speak to other people about what they read, the reporters who post their stories, photos or video etc, to the admins who check for breaches of open posting guidelines and the techies who maintain the servers and develop the software.

Indymedia always needs more volunteers and at the moment the IMC UK network in particular is seeking more tech help so that it can be more active in the development of the content management program used by many IMC sites. It is really important to increase the developer pool since many proposals made for improving the site are stalling at the tech bottleneck.

If you think you could help please get in touch with your local collective or email imc-uk-tech. You could also mention this to anyone else you think might be able to help.

If you'd like to develop your own tech skills, you might be interested in the various Hacklab projects around the country which host regular training and workshops. The rampART lab for example provides a useful venue for anyone wanting to become more involved in indymedia.

On Saturday 25th the London Hacklabs Collective is putting on a benefit event to help cover the cost of the broadband both at the rampART and Freedom Book Shop. You can find more details about the event from the rampART or the Hacklabs website. The event will be a workshop about IMC tech and various IMC projects.

Outside Links : London Hacklabs Collective, Aktivix, Sheffield Hacklab, International Hacklabs.

Your Community Needs You!

It's not just the IMC UK suffering from a shortage of techies with time. A similar situation exists with global IMC infrastructure sites such as radio.indymedia and video.indymedia which both have very few active developers. Not only does this mean that that adoption of new technologies is slow, the shortage of techies plays a major role in server downtime too.

Earlier this month three indymedia servers fell over, taking down vital global IMC services. Repairs could have been much quicker. The bottom line is that Indymedia relies heavily on a small pool of techies and it is vital for the projects health and sustainability to ensure that this pool grows.

This is a call for increased active involvement in the technical aspects of indymedia at all levels. Even if you can't code PHP or Java applets you might still be able to do CSS style sheets and templates and free up some of the existing techies so that they have more time to work with the developers.

All the IMC UK collectives have regular face to face meetings as well as frequent online discussion on irc.indymedia.org or in the many indymedia mailing lists. The best way to get involved would be to start attending the meetings of your nearest collective.

For example, the next IMC-London open meetings are on the last Wednesday of every month from 7.30pm at The Square (21 Russell Square WC1). The provision agenda for the last one included: coverage of the No Borders demo at Harmondsworth detention centre on the April 8th and the EuroMayday call focussing on issues of migration and precarity; a brainstorm of ideas relating to for a week long indymedia film festival this summer to coincide with the G8 summit in Russia; the proposal for the next IMC-UK network meeting, perhaps in Leeds; progress on the agreed changes to the London sites centre column.

Comments

Display the following 16 comments

Mirror mirror on the wall... — IMC tech
IMC-UK's lack of tech help is their own choice — Aaron
Mir and Java — Techie
MIR can hardly be called non hackable — rm
Who is talking about the content? — critics
Dull because.... — answer
Mir is IMC UK's biggest problem — The Camel
@The Camel — me
Mir, JAI and Postgres — The Camel
I don't think it down to the code — ben
Mir is Free — Chris
Can people in the East End have a say via Indymedia? — SCALE
Editorial concerns — j
Indymedia London Open Meetings — IMC-London
Mir and Repression — rick
Re: Mir is IMC UK's biggest problem — spanner

UK Indymedia

Indymedia Needs You

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