Report on S11-Indymedia, Melbourne

Sam de Silva

organizing Melbourne IndyMedia began about 2 months prior to S11. we started having weekly meetings and at that stage, awareness of IndyMedia was good, but its usage was low. not many people had actually ever published using an online publishing tool such as IndyMedia. however, in Melbourne, there is a solid 'alternative' media - including 3CR community radio and SKA TV - which produces activist-based video content on a regular basis.

the melbourne.indymedia coordination team was small - between 3 and 7 people - depending on time. but the team had strong social relationships and was already actively involved with activism and alternative media.

this small team did some workshops - especially getting 3CR skilled up to upload some of their radio stories online. a couple of people committed to uploading at least a couple of video reports each day during S11. and, as the 'magic day' approached, we did workshops at various teach-ins and got people comfortable with using the system. to ensure story content, we also committed to publishing every few hours a text report. emphasis was placed on text only stories and also text with images. we felt that video and audio would be great - but we weren't going to put too much of an urgency/priority on these mediums. however, with audio, we knew that 3CR, the radio channel would produce good content.

until a few days prior to S11, we (the coordinating team) were concerned that no one would utilize IndyMedia. but as S11 did begin to approach (from S8 onwards), stories began to stream in at a steady pace and during S11 there were many many stories uploaded - including lots of images.

the other thing the IndyMedia team organized was the indyBULLETIN. the first edition came out approximately 3 weeks prior to S11. And an edition came out weekly, releasing 3 indyBulletins in total before S11. From S11 to S13, a copy came out daily. 6,000 of each were done and given away free to protestors as well as the general public. The PDFs were also uploaded to the IndyMedia site. Again, Melbourne's existing media networks were utilized. A student paper publishing collective undertook to produce the indyBulletin during the protests.

Melbourne's IndyMedia, which comprised of the online and paper, and contributed to the "Melbourne Rising" video (avail soon online) resulted because Melbourne had a strong but small alternative media community which respected each other and was able to co-operate during the S11 events. The number of stories that were published on the IndyMedia site went beyond the coordination teams expectations. And the comments associated with each story was also very high. We apparently crashed the IndyMedia system because we had exceeded the amount of content ever uploaded by any IndyMedia site!! (need to double check this!!).

One conclusion for this high usage of the site was that those who attended S11 had a high awareness of the net and were not afraid to use it. The hole protest coordination also relied on the www.s11.org site - and e-lists were used a lot.

We encouraged IndyMedia usage by saying to people that "if you could set up a yahoo account, then you can publish on to IndyMedia". Also, we produced a paper-based 'IndyMedia Guidelines' sheet which was distributed at Convergence. This sheet had general awareness stuff about media issues but also a quick guide to publishing a story on IndyMedia.

The other significant thing amount Melbourne IndyMedia is that it did not have an IMC. There was no public space where people could utilize computers. We encouraged using street-based net cafes and built a relationship with one cafe for use of one computer free. However, we had a small coordination office from where we did upload content, but the vast majority got uploaded from outside. This IndyMedia office also played a role in coordinating media crews from audio to video who were not necessarily going to be involved with uploading online. But the office was not open for the public - though many protestors did spend time in there - causing much frowning from those who we were sharing the space with!!

Another important note is that the iXpress bike couriers (www.criticalmass.org.au/s11/) played a big role in bringing stories and also some video tapes and mini-discs to the office to be published. They were the protest courier service and provided the IndyMedia office with access to the protestor public.

Melbourne IndyMedia and the associated content, including video and audio (distributed through traditional means) has been a great success. We did not have any agreements with any one - everyone was considered as an autonomous media agent - and it was optional if they wanted to utilize the IndyMedia channel, share video footage or deal with mainstream media. No rules!

IndyMedia assisted in breaking a couple of stories - one was the Hill and Knowlton involvement, and the other was publishing of the BMG letter demanding the S11.org site remove references to the song by Australian singer John Farnham. Melbourne IndyMedia also made mainstream news and continues to today. We are still questioning whether it is a good thing to have a high profile or not.

There are some key events where it would have been great to have more media coverage at - and this is a future improvement. What worked was small trusted media crews working in teams and negotiating with each other who was to be where, what was to be covered and what to do after it was covered. But at the end of the day, a small coordination team combined with a few hundred autonomous media people worked well and independent media was successful in covering a majority of the protest.

Here's some stats:

200+ images uploaded to melbourne.indymedia.org
250,000+ successful page requests to melbourne.indymedia.org site
15+ videos uploaded to melbourne.indymedia.org
35+ audio stories uploaded to melbourne.indymedia.org

Melbourne IndyMedia will continue. We are currently tossing up issues such as the possible need to remove content which is blatantly published to annoy and distract the audience. Also, we will be aiming to publish a regular indyBulletin paper.

The email address for melbourne.indymedia is mim@antimedia.net...

an Alternative Australian history lesson?
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