OPENBLOG

I know facebook is horrible in so many, many ways. But I enjoy being in touch with people I care about and don’t get to see everyday. I also enjoy the articles and videos and opinions my friends point me to; and yes, most of them are my ‘real’ friends, in life and online.

But right now as I am putting my attention to facebook and it’s failures something feels wrong. Instead I want to be learning more about Palestine, thinking about the community I live in and the deep, horrible and complicated politics of this place.

An alternative network would be wonderful. Memefest as an alternative network doesn’t work for me, because I don’t know many people at all here. And many of the issues I follow are not discussed here, where as they are on facebook.

If everyone I knew on facebook moved to an alternative network – we would be closer to an ideal world. But making that shift is the difficult thing. If you can achieve it – you’ll strike gold (culturally not economically).

Memefest online social network was not designed to network between friends, but comrades. I dont have to be a friend with someone to be a comrade with someone. Most of my friends in life are not really involved in radical/socially responsive communication, art, education. Some are.

I am interested to network with people that are engaged in areas of communication and art for social change. I dont necessarily need to be friends with them. To me- it's more than enough if I can network with people and exchange knowledge.

Its a bit similar than thinking of why did I start writing a blog in 2003 and I published hundreds of posts in all the years. I see this more as an act of making things public, of creating publics, of being part of autonomous publics.

Facebook is besides being a network becoming more and more a news/media reader. Its true, there is a lot of interesting stuff being posted there and it is so convenient to be on FB. But thats the design strategy, or part of it. Being on FB because it is convenient and it works- i have heard this many times- I can understand this of course, but its a different world. This here - to me- is radicaly intimate, while FB is practical.

I think some of it- (and Oliver and I have talked a bit about this) is rethinking the whole idea of what a blog is. Things have changed a lot in terms of how people use blogs. Certain conventions have been established. That in part is why it feels more like a news/media reader: those conventions because of 'blogging' in general have promoted that. I suspect that what might redirect things a bit would be to rethink what this online platform could be. As someone who has been involved in M-fest for a few years, some of the people who are actively doing things in their locations (in the blog and in the competition) appear to have various needs for getting in the M-fest network. One of course is getting the word out on their activities- which are always pretty amazing and resourceful in their own local milieus. But I suspect that tools, methods, other practices could be shared around in a manner that could help them and everyone, and support everyone's local efforts in a larger realm of like minded people.

One of the things I have noted in the blog discussion is a kind of critical reaction to what happens- be it Occupy, or etc. It would be useful to think through how a 'platform' can actually assist others in provoking and strategizing and sharing methods as a first course to create change rather than analyze it.

(Btw the whole notion of 'platform' is actively discussed as the so-called next big thing in online activities. There is a huge battle going on right now between FB/Google (and others) to be the basis of the majority of online user activities. We should think about that- the idea of a platform is not neutral at all anymore- it is not a kind of 'public utility' which is what many of us assumed in the early 2000's)

Hey Scott, an old friend of mine, Tom, who worked with me at the very beginnig of Memefest sent me this link https://beta.movements.org/

We have been 'helping' in the sense that we have used the web site as a platform where people could use the tools that were created for the festival. This is from 2003:

http://www.memefest.org/openmeme/main.php

Not even linked to the curen web site anymore.

We have organised workshops for Occupy Brisbane etc.. But never really used the platform strategically where movements could get tailor made'expertise' for a particular project, but we have used this more as a knowledge resource and educational platform through the Festival process...I think this is a great point- in the sense, how could we make the knowledge that is created and made public through our web site more usefull- accessible, more practical in a sense...

So just to quickly summarise and move beyond Fb, I think it's true that it excels in two ways, both points relating strongly to the its main characteristic: convenience.

1. Everyone is there. As Alana mentioned this is the greatest argument for not immediately fleeing. Even if other more critical/open/better designed/etc. networks exist they practically don't exist without any (a lot of) members. Fb was the first major online social network (I'll get back to 'network' vs. 'platform' vs. etc later) that got us all signed up. This ‘critical mass’ phenomenon is hard to circumvent.

2. Fb is a brilliant feed/filter of content from elsewhere, blogs, news articles, pictures, videos, portfolio updates etc.

These two points are both highly practical and somehow (at least to me) explains why Fb as a social network can deteriorate to the degree we are witnessing without experiencing a drastic decline in the number of users. Users are still there. Quality content is still there.

Luckily, this also points to the limitations of Fb. My personal hope is that Fb over time will become this hollow shell or hub of connecting more meaningful dots from elsewhere. It will be a practical affair full of adds with an extremely low degree of trustworthiness and minimal personal info locally stored. However, people won’t care as they express and represent themselves from elsewhere. All content and serious data has migrated to a diverse sets of other platforms actually catering for its users. Until everyone agrees on a new standard (just like it happened with Myspace before Fb), Fb will find less and less valuable data to mine and advertisers will find less and less reasons for investing. Ok, enough Fb. Memefest:

I don’t think Fb and Memefest compares at all. There is an interesting tension between the two that serves as a useful offset for discussion, but that’s it. They can easily co-exist as two different species within the same habitat. Following Scott’s comments I would like to see Memefest as a catalyst for action above anything. In this sense Oliver’s distinction between comrades and friends is highly useful. What we need is some stronger incentives and occasions to link up across our different backgrounds and continents. I would therefore suggest more “curated” projects/threads/discussions/sessions like this one, where a group of people are coming together with a confined goal and a synced, limited timeframe.

Some good old datamining within the Memefest network would be a good start: Considering what info people are asked to submit about themselves (location, field, interests etc.) and how dynamic pairings could occur on the fly, e.g. this and this comrade are organising an intervention in Berlin, just XX km away from you. Let’s not forget that datamining can be highly useful, when its done for the users and not for the advertisers or the NSA. This dynamic coordination in time, space and interests could be a great way of acquainting people over some momentum, much like the annual Memefest festivals manage to do.

By focusing on being an open catalyst for emerging thought and action Memefest could differentiate itself from other more consolidated and dense networks, platforms and organisations. Of course social networks like Fb or Twitter are good at syncing up and taking action as well, however, Memefest could present an unparalleled level of focus (“radical/socially responsive communication, art, education”) and the continuous hosting of a deep, open discussion on such matters. This is radically different than being a feed.

Extending the discussion on Fb/Google/Amazon etc. as biased ‘platforms’, there is also the current discussion on the increasingly minuscule yet significant differences between Google and the nation state, ‘the stack’ etc. (check out http://stacktivism.com/ for a good collection of ‘stack’ reflections). I don’t really see Memefest as part of this game. Rather it should be an agile, critical connecting point. If there is anything to take from the pervasive and absolutely massive presence and power platforms like Google and Fb exert, it could be something very practical like making memefest.org responsive and thus optimising it for smartphones etc.

re the above comments I totally agree. FB is not the issue.

But here specifically: what might be the tie re a 'critical connecting point'. This brings up what M-fest cites as part of a critical position. Critical of what exactly and how so- ? Are there common values that can be shared here & made more explicit? If M-fest 'expands' we need to do this to invite others to work with us & to get those people to talk about their underlying issues in their context. The biggest reward for me has been working with people in the competition that are doing their work in contexts I have no direct involvement in. I would like to figure out a platform where they could step to the forefront & take lead in their own contexts.

Pretty interesting design problem.

It's a huge task and issue- or to figure out how to design a way to let other contextual viewpoints be expressed.

These are really interesting points and I agree that seeing Memefest as a catalyst is a crucial starting point. And the distinction between friends and comrades is also important. It is the starting point for how each person coming into contact with Memefest is invited to address themselves. On that point, we might also think about the difference between comrades, allies and accomplices. BASE shared a document with Oliver which he kindly passed on to me that argues that an ally stands by whereas an accomplice stands with and, with it roots in the word 'accomplishes', accomplice suggests action. My 'friends' on FB are more like allies - like minded people and friends who might share things with me but who don't necessarily act *with* me. How then does Memefest turn comrades into accomplices?

Through my experience on Memefest I think Memefest is an online social network where people do not use everyday like they do for FB. People use Memefest more for information sharing/discussion and project updates, instead of daily socialising. I got the impression after talking to a few people who do not use Memefest very much that they would be more likely to use and interact with Memefest if there was something to bring them back more regularly. Maybe on a fortnightly or monthly basis would be good. Because I think FB is their preferred communication method for everything. I also did not use Memefest for a long time because I was only interested in the yearly competition.

So if something interesting were encouraged to happen for an autonomous fortnightly and monthly basis, this would be a unique aspect that helps make Memefest more attractive to people to stay updated and interact more. It might be possible to make fortnightly and monthly actions on Memefest as normal as daily actions on FB.

Perhaps create a project space for people to update something they are interested in on a fortnightly and monthly basis. A space for their own online zine for themselves and to share with others, and collaborating. Print media is rapidly turning into online media.