Aim
Global multi-platform media cooperative
From November 2008-January 2009 a Media Cooperative Pilot Project will be run by Nicholas Roberts and Cameron using the Octapod Association as a base to develop the self-sustaining Media Cooperative. The main 5 sub-projects will be
Projects
- Media Cooperative - media democracy, democratic and civic media, state of media generally, social media and participation age, and the feasibility of establishing a global multi-platform media cooperative. The economics and politics of media in Australia and the world, the concentration of ownership, the propaganda model of the mass media, including the new media. The state of community media.
- Coop Australia - the state the cooperative sector in Australia, stories from the frontlines of Australian cooperators, the history of Australian cooperation, the effects of neoliberalism, the last 30 years, responses to the current economic and polotical situation
- Permaculture.TV - a rich media, video, audio and text multi-platform media project about the permaculture movement worldwide. It’s effects locally and globally.
- EcoBurb.TV - ecological suburbs, information, people, products, topics, stories from the suburban renaissance via community gardens, street revivals, public transport, urban gardening. Stories about the retrofitting of homes and gardens, individually and collectively.
- WorkerCooperatives.com - the local and global worker coooperatives scene. The stages, players, dramas, comedy, tragedy and hope of the process where people take control of their own destiny by taking over their work places, and creating democracy in their own workplaces. Looking at worker cooperatives in Spain, South America and the USA. Broadly looking at the solidarity economy and a response to the wreckage left by the financial and ecological crisis
- Australian Social Forum
Tools
- Blogs - Wordpress (mainly), blog modules in Drupal
- Portals - Drupal, Plone
- Social Planning - OpenPlans
- Project Portfolio Management: Project.NET
- Project Design and Tracking - Trac
- Semantic Content Management - Semantic Media Wiki + Halo extensions
- Google Analytics - Big Brother Google
- Web CEO - search engine optimisation etc
- Civic CRM - online campaign management
- Skype - internet telephony
- Asterix - internet telephony
Place
Operations based at Octapod Association in Newcastle. Home to This Is Not Art, Culture Hunter and other creative projects.
Field trips and site visits via my antique chariot.
Schedule
NOTE: Development should be content and story driven, this is a media cooperative project and NOT a tech cooperative. Start collecting stories, video, audio, text NOW ! ! !
Quickly develop prototypes, proposals, presentations and get sponors and stories for production and development during quiet period during Crhistmas holidays.
Startup
2-8 Nov - Week 1 - Basic websites up BLOG + Blip or Molognum - Broad proposal written and submitted to various stakeholder email lists, especially permaculture tv
9-15 Nov - Week 2 Keystone stories started, proposals & presentation written for each project, software installed and basic prototypes developed
16-22 Nov - Week 3 Full-quality TV interviews done, across all 5 properties
23-29 Nov - Week 4
30 - 6 Dec - Week 5
7 - 13 Dec - Week 6
Holidays - research, post production, preparation and build, new content and products to be released for new year
14 - 20 Dec - Week 7 -
21 - 27 Dec - Week 8
28 - 3 Jan - Week 9
4- 10 Jan - Week 10
Back to Work - and World Social Forum ?
11 - 17 Jan - Week 11
18 - 24 Jan - Week 12
Approach
- story driven - get stories and concept going - interesting content, looks good, leverage existing code-bases and platforms to develop prototype quickly
- open, democratic, participatory, worker-owned and controlled, cooperative
- many of the social media sites are owned by corporate media, we aim to be solidarity economy version of a new media corporation
Assumptions
Principles
- open - Yahoo’s Open Strategy, Wikipedia’s radical transparency etc
- participation - participation age, sharecropping the long tail, parecon, workers cooperatives, peer to peer production
Paramaters
Background
Visions
Goals
Nice plan
Comment by Josef Davies-Coates on November 12, 2008 at 2:55 pm
diablo
Comment by Nicholas Roberts on November 12, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hi Nicholas. Nice one! How is the project travelling? I am based in Sydney and am keen to talk to you about the research I have been doing on community land trusts in the US - they generate permanently affordable housing which has been foreclosure-resistant, but more importantly, rely on a non-profit NGO with a tripartite Board of CLT residents, institutional players and wider community members. Non-profit, multi-agency land stewardship mechanism - just what we need
If you want to meet, I’m at louise dot crabtree at gmail dot com.
Cheers - Louise.
Comment by Louise on January 4, 2009 at 12:18 pm