<nettime> Melissa Gira Grant: My 4 days helping w/ tech at #occupywallst & questions for seasoned tech occupiers?]

["Patrice Riemens" <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

bwo iac2009 list

Pls contact Melissa direct if you have good advice!

Cheers, p+3D!


---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [Iac2009] my 4 days helping w/ tech at #occupywallst & questions
for seasoned tech occupiers?
From:    "Melissa Gira Grant" <melissa AT melissagira.com>
Date:    Mon, October 3, 2011 05:40

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, all,

I've been thinking of our Camp almost non-stop the past few days I've spent
down in the park near Wall Street. Like a lot of activists I know here in
New York, I was skeptical of what was going on in the protest, but started
showing up just to see what it was all about. And then ended up staying. And
then ended up volunteering.

As it stands now, what's being billed as a very tech-savvy protest movement
is struggling with its tech needs. After running around for a few days
shooting video and tweeting, today I joined the Internet Working Group to
see how I could be most useful, and I was surprised to find out how strained
the occupation's tech infrastructure is. There's several competing websites
that have more traffic than the "official" website (which is
http://ganyc.net). An outside organization runs the official Twitter. An
ally started the Facebook page, but we don't have admin access.

Part of me thinks this is fine. Decentralizing the information going out is
part of our strength. But as media attention grows and the general public
wants to seek out information on the occupation, it's becoming a bit of a
problem.

For folks who have been part of extended occupations and actions like this
-- if you have a moment, I would love your feedback, on:

- As we don't have the resources to constantly update blog posts w/ fresh
stories from the occupation, what's the most important info we can ensure is
update on our website? Right now it seems to be what donations are needed,
what actions are planned, and our livestream.

- Is it important to reach out to the people who run the Twitter and
Facebook accounts we have no access to, or is it okay to just let that go?
(I'm mostly of the opinion that it's totally fine.)

- Would just aggregating the material produced by the community be the best
thing we could do with the website? Maybe we don't need to do much at all
with it, given how much information is being shared on social media now.

Thanks for reading -- and I'm so glad we're all still connected like this --


Melissa

> Melissa Gira Grant
browser: melissagira.com | @melissagira <http://twitter.com/melissagira>
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