This may not be news to you, but it is definitely news to me. Remember, I am a specialist in environmental issues. I don’t actually do research on internet and society. Thus, for me, learning about Web 2.0 is always delightful and amazes me on a day-to-day basis.

It was really nice to see this self-organization emerge at the gathering. Ianiv live-streamed the meeting on Qik, Lorraine cross-posted the liveblog with FearlessCity (and loaned me her laptop so that I could liveblog), Kris set up a Skype back-channel, Tris live-tweeted the meeting, and everyone chimed in to contribute in one way or another (a lot of tweets as well).

While sometimes I have my doubts as to whether I want to continue blogging (for my very own personal reasons, which I will not reveal here), it is times like last night at RainCity Studios that make me feel all warm and fuzzy. Collaboration at its best.

Related posts:

1. VANOC 2010 Indie Social Media Meeting Liveblog
2. Vancouver alt/indie media organizational for 2010 meeting liveblog
3. #3tyvr Liveblog – Social Media And The Olympics

UPDATE 5.03 pm – Robert Scales is right now welcoming us all to the meeting. A lot of conversation. This is not a protest, this is about citizen journalism, people who want to distribute the content over the internet. We are trying to move towards facilitating access to content about the 2010 Olympics. The reason why Robert, Kris and DaveO have been working on this
1) We are fans.
2) We were in Torino on the ground.
3) We did a bunch of segments in Beijing, and definitely around 2010 we want to talk about the stories beyond the Olympics, and create a conversation around that.

The importance we see in this media center is that we want to cover beyond what the mainstream media is covering. Some of the social impacts, some of the various forms of impact of the 2010. Robert is now turning it over to Kris. The meeting will be around 1 hour, 1hr 20 mins.

KRIS

The way we see it – an accredited media center, like a Tier 1. It will give some sorts of special rights. And then there will be an unaccredited media centre (some of the local folks). When you hear unaccredited media center, it doesn’t mean us, it means big mainstream media folks who didn’t win the support (Tier 2). We are looking for a Tier 3 – we want to have a place for social media.

2 parts of the conversation come together:

A – The folks who want to cover the arts, and other social elements and,
B – Provide a physical space to provide folks who are covering (bloggers, and other people) to be able to tell their stories.

That’s about as much as we know. We know we need some space, and this meeting is for us to figure out together what we are going to need. We will need to look at issues like
- Room, space
- Branding of the media center
- Catering
We are looking to build a space and a place for this independent media center. Build the networks and connections. We need to find sponsors, for example.

UPDATE – I can see now Greg Andrews from TechVibes, Richard Eriksson, Linda Bustos, Jenn Lowther, Jordan Behan, Nadia Nascimento, John Bollwitt, Joe Solomon, Roland Tanglao, and a few other folks that I might not know right now.

Some of the questions we want to work on are:

- Should there be one, or multiple locations?
- What kind of resources do we need (printers, phones, fax machines)?
- Share sources, leads, resources.
- What kind of daily program do we want?
- Do we put in a Symposium as well?
- Do you want some gallery space, for local artists?
- People who aren’t covering the stuff that others are covering?
- How are we going to pay?
- Is it catered, and who?

Those are the questions that Kris wants to throw out so that we can all answer together.

DaveO is going to talk about what we can all do and how everyone can get involved.

DAVE OLSON

A couple of little tensions we need to deal with. There seems to be a shroud of “us” and “them”. Issues that Kris and DaveO. How open are VANOC main offices going to be about this stuff? We are deciding to be very open and translucent. It’s important to keep the dialogue open. DaveO threw online some of those tools. What DaveO hopes to talk is talk about some of these questions.

We don’t even know how to name the place (independent vs. indie vs. alternative). How do we do the branding? This is a grassroots effort, so how do we brand it in a positive way. We have a space here, but realistically, this office isn’t ideal. Maybe we need to think about other ways for people to collaborate and communicate. All these resources will be online.

The next step is talk about how to do this – openly and publicly. We have different experiences to share. Let’s just put it all on the table. Dave O threw on the site – the stuff that drives all this effort. From Dave O, he wants to give people a motivation, so he put up the work of Robert and Kris (photographs from Beijing).
- Google Mailing List
- Wiki

Kris jumps in – we have seen that one by one is easy to lock us out, but we have enough common natures in terms of access and what we are looking for, we can allow for bigger organizations to fall behind us. If we are all working together and we are a whole bunch of people who are working together, we kind of have more of a voice, and they’ll need to kind of address us better.

Another part of it is that many of us have been creating collaborative ecosystems. Competitors choose to be collaborators. Kris’ idea here is that the best ideas – a lot of those people are represented in this room. They don’t realize is that we are trying to meet their own objectives – first Olympics that will be covered by citizens and social media and alternative media. We can change the perceptions of people in how things are happening with the Olympics.

We have a chance to show to the world that Vancouver’s tech and social media and citizen journalism scene can be powerful enough to showcase how things are happening in the 2010 Olympics. Robert is mentioning that in Beijing there was no actual control of social media (iPhone-taken photos). If you want to collaborate, you put the content on your website. The IOC doesn’t seem to think that this (social media) is the right model (e.g. including social media), but one of our goals is to make enough noise to force them to change the strategy.

They may have vested interests in keeping the mainstream media coverage, but we don’t want to substitute that coverage, we want to actually FURTHER advance that coverage to include social media, stories, social elements.

VANOC has a big PDF of what you can do and can’t do. We need to learn how to talk in the appropriate way, not the inappropriate way. We all have to read the branding and guidelines, and stuff. We have to work within the system.

VANOC also has a roster where you can sign up. As much as you want to be involved, we are jumpstarting the collaboration. There are folks like us everywhere in the world, and everywhere in Canada. We can start interviews about the programming, what people want to put up there. Start talking about it and talk to DaveO, Kris, Robert. They have already some connections and can help with that.

OPENING THE FLOOR TO THE DISCUSSION

Kris would like to have a “requirements” document. Apparently Telus already has a plan. There is someone here who has worked with The Vancouver Sun. Robert, Dave O and Kris already applied for accreditation (but we have one full year for that, hehe).

For them, it’s absolutely new ground (social media, bloggers). They said they want to have bloggers and new media. How do they decide who gets accredited? It may be based on unique hits or some criteria. They may want the social media there, but they may not know how to accreditate someone. This needs to establish the conversation. There’s some groundwork that has been done in Torino, you can get some pointers from there. There was a beautiful media centers with laptops, connections, etc.

Torino was trying to push their mandate. They were very open and welcoming. Beijing – you needed a specific visa (J) and some people who had to ‘almost fly under the radar’. But it probably was related more to the regulation. How are we going to deal with it in Canada? As long as people are following the branding guidelines you’ll be able to talk about the stories.

Lorraine asks how many people are going to be working on this? Robert and Kris said “as much space as possible”. They want to have enough space to put on soirees, etc. As much space as possible.

Would it be possible to get an assessment of a virtual space allocation? How much space do we already have? What needs do we have in terms of space. R- We can do that (W2 and stuff, we do have some space that we could volunteer but we need more)

How would you feel if a company like Pepsi would like to provide funding? R – That’s AWESOME! We are going to be open, so we’ll be open to whatever funding and support we have. We are trying to keep this apolitical.

Anybody can be part of the planning process. There is no one document that has been created. All of this is happening in the open. We know that the chances of happening in this RCS office there might be some need for managing it, but the ideal would be an ideal, neutral location. A bunch of printers, a bunch of laptops/computers. Get stuff out, make art, create stuff. Whoever wants to give us money to get our message out.

Q.- Hard to monitor whether people are saying things that are bad (or not through the guidelines) on Twitter, blogs, etc. How to deal with it? R.- The place/facility we are talking about is a place where bloggers and citizen journalists will be able to have resources. But it’s the blogger’s responsibility to follow the guidelines. The bottom line is – the conversations that people create are their own property, their own content. So they are responsible.

Check the closures map.

Q.- Lorraine – a casual commitment to make sourcing local a priority. R.- Kris thinks that there is no organization to which a commitment can be made. As a value of whatever the group comes, we should try to keep it local. This stays apolitical. Something to think about.

Robert asks an open question – on the assumption of building a steering committee, who would be interested (you can sign in the wiki, etc.)

Q.- How do you see athletes fitting into this (athletes who are interested in having access)? R.- DaveO says that we’ll be reaching out heavily, and we’ll invite them if they want to come and spread the message.

Robert – creating a team profile – out of the box Drupal-hosted websites. Building a specific profile with a target team and allow them to write their own blogs. There are certain guidelines that the athletes can’t cross. We would like to work with them.

Kris – what type of stuff, programming. For the programming you will need to learn about the guidelines and what you can and cannot present. The only times that they can stop you from posting stuff on the internet, the print media is trying to make the transition into the social media. If you can’t broadcast on the internet your own videos, then what’s up?

Q.- It would be really neat to have videocams and recording devices on the internet. R.- Getting cameras and distributing. Apparently some people are thinking about getting videocameras and stuff like that. Fearless City are goin gto send people. They are going to be partners in this. Robert and Kris could do some livestream at some venues, etc. But always within the guidelines.

Andy (Univ of Scotland) – studies the intersection of media and the olympics.

Dave O will what can folks do? Let’s brainstorm. Blog your ideas. We want to have a space for dance, or for art, or whatever.

Take away items – sign up to the websites, start making wiki pages, right now. Share in your ideas of what you see should be the content, the programming of the centre.

Q.- So is there really an embargo on imagery? R.- If there is imagery that has venue (Olympic rings) intellectual property violations then you may get in trouble.

Read the guidelines, play by the rules.

UPDATE – 5.55 PM – LIVEBLOG IS DONE.

Related posts:

1. Vancouver alt/indie media organizational for 2010 meeting liveblog
2. Collaborative efforts in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics indie media gathering
3. #3tyvr Liveblog – Social Media And The Olympics