I'm an a activist based in Montevideo, Uruguay. My blog which has most
of my writings is http://anarchogeek.com/
In 1998 i founded, and still co-run the activist calendar site
protest.net. I do most of my work organizing within the indymedia
network. Since indymedia started during the WTO protests in Seattle
November 1999 i've been very active as an organizer starting new
indymedia centers, developing software and maintaining servers, and
helping grow the network communications and decision making processes.
Within indymedia we have plenty of hands on experience building an
international network which uses the internet as a backbone for
communication, collaboration, and after a fashion democratic decision
making. We use a number of different programs to manage our
collaboration including irc, instant messenger, wikis, open publishing
websites, streaming audio and video, face to face meetings, and of
course mailinglists.
The indymedia network functions primarily in english and spanish
although there are 24 different primary languages for local indymedia
centers. The mailinglist server which handles most of the internal
lists traffic receives between 10,000 and 15,000 internal emails a day
to about 700 mailinglists. We've experienced many problems and a few
successes in developing a functional, directly democratic, global
networked organization which is based on grassroots consensus.
My work with indymedia applies both to my local indymedia center in
Montevideo and with the network. Locally we are working on media
projects in collaboration with the union of Clasificadores (people who
sort trash at the dump to sell recyclables), and Ollas Populares
(community run soup kitchens in poor neighborhoods) as well as standard
indymedia coverage of protests and political actions.
For the network i'm part of the editorial working group for
www.indymedia.org, as well as being actively involved in the working
groups for finances, tech, process, communication, latin america, and
strategy issues. I'm currently writing a chapter on the Philosophy of
Indymedia for a book about the indymedia movement which is produced by
the New York City Indymedia Center.
In my non-indymedia work i'm the lead developer for ActionDirectory. A
program for building and managing collaborative online directories of
organizations. ActionDirectory aims to facilitate horizontal networking
and coalition building for NGO's, civil society groups, activists.
Using syndication and a decentralized network of directories
ActionDirectory will hopefully be the groundwork to build global
directory of civil society. See
http://actiondirectory.eggplantmedia.com for more background on the
project.
in solidarity,
evan