present:
nicola (pavilion), pat (vivid), heath (cube and himself), carole, david M., lisa, toni, jason, micz

apologies:
David S, Richard PD.

what we discussed:

1. lisa did re-cap of what is in the funding application at ACE (see: http://mediaartprojects.org.uk /ntp2001.html)
2. pat, nicola, heath did intro to the venues/host organisations: pavilion, vivid, cube: description of facilities, user groups etc.
3. all re-iterated that what is exactly in the funding application does not have to be exactly what we do.
4. all went back through what has been proposed as workshops. Discussed and re-formulated them.
5. discussed marketing and documentation issues.
6. discussed how to further prepare ourselves, venues and user-groups for the programme.
7. discussed how to move ahead in event of unsuccessful ntp application.
8. discussed what might happen in London during and between tech_2 events elsewhere in the country.

what we decided:

Workshops should address the interests of the users at each venue, should where possible move away from any kind of formal "teaching" model. Instead they should open up a space for work, enquiry and collaborative learning. Tech_2 should ensure the presence of expertise, but generally *not* put experts in a formal leadership or teaching role. The workshops work best when people have some stake in them: eg. when people bring something of their own they want to work on or get done (skip2server at cube good example): often hardware but maybe content. Or maybe hardware because they are facing some specific problem with content. A good litmus test is to think about what WE would like to attend...
 

At Birmingham:

Much more than just a streaming workshop, webTV project: the workshop should be about building a completely open-source video/streaming facility; with editing suite, live studio, encoding. We should ensure that people whose primary entry point is as content producers (rather than techs) are included...
a good way to do this would be to build up to a streamed party night on our last night involving local video content, DJ's, sound-scapers etc.
Some tech_2 facilitators should be dedicated to working with peoples content to prepare for this.
we should link with some locals (toni's contacts), who are building an open source video editing suite.

Still to resolve:
Venue for party, maybe also for workshop,
how to do some advance work with with vivid users to make sure they want to come along - maybe an advance visit?
detailed scheduling of workshop.
exact dates: June? beg. July?
 

At Bristol:

Focus will be on facilitating the developers and users of Active Code to work together in the same space for a concentrated period - But in so-doing will contribute to the community and culture in and around the cube.
The challenge will be getting the balance right between closed working sessions and more open sessions.
Suggestion at the moment assumes NO ARTS FUNDING. Should there be funding, then it will facilitate more open sessions and public programmes during the residency.
7 working days was discussed, either using the cinema space, or a tent in an outdoor space - garden or roof.
Most participants would bring own computers. Network/internet access at Cube will be essential.
In the evenings, there should be screenings and talks, there is plenty of material from activist/community video groups involved in the residency, and lots of discussions to be had about global/local activist and alternative media cultures.

Dates should be 3rd full week of August.

Still to resolve:
What space to use in the cube? the cinema can only be given over if there is funding that can cover the (lost) revenue...
More detailed and structured work needs to be done on the programme, especially how to interface with other interested people, locally and also some tecchies in UK but not directly involved in indymedia. There clearly needs to be a balance between closed sessions and some (timetabled) more open sessions.
How to invite and facilitate people from indymedia internationally.
 

At Leeds:

Focus will be on responding to the interests of the users, one of the media centres that Pavilion is currently a partner in: either Archway in Chapeltown or Gipsil (Gipton Independent Supported Living) in Gipton, and adding a different kind of approach to the training work that is currently going on there.

Music, cubase and streaming, and also VJ work with imagine are looking like they'd be most useful. Hopefully we'd collaborate wtih the iration steppas, auroraorange soundsystem and maybe some other local sound systems and party organisers.

Dates should be 2nd or 3rd week in September.

Still to resolve:
Quite a lot!
We need to get ourselves more familiar with the user-groups and venues.
Need to determine the venue and they will need to want it as part of their programme.
Much more work needs to be done (in the light of all this research still to do...) on structuring the residency.

Need to make a visit to Leeds in March or April.
 

London;

Though in the funded scenario, there is no London venue, we would do "unofficial" activities, making use of the presence of people in the UK for both screenings/presentations and also workshops and projects.
 

Overall issues:

Marketing and Documentation: what is the imperitive to have some kind of overall publicity? We need to think hard about whether this is really a good marketing strategy.

• Some people thought that tech_nicks was "overbranded", in a way that over-determined the events and detracted from local relevance.
• The idea of the newspaper was that it would be a publication in its own right that would contain the programme, but would also contextualise our work with all kinds of texts, images, quirky stuff like puzzles... very broad, technical stuff, critical stuff, fun stuff; mostly found from other sources.
• One idea was that there should be two newspapers, one at the beginning and one at the end of the programme.
• Documentation should be done, made more of a priority, and probably using a system that can handle uploads from participants themselves - php/sql- which can then possibly also create catreader documentaries.

Preparation...

All the venues want to visit eachtother! and all the artists want to visit all the venues. We also want to meet the Exodus collective in Luton and Red Bricks in Manchester. Maybe we should organise a bus trip...??? Lisa and Heath to research costs etc. Need to think about how a round-trip could help prepare potential participants and the host venues for the programme.

A draft work schedule is on the net at:

http://mediaartprojects.org.uk/tech_2workplan.html

it needs constant attention and amendment.

David Sinden wasn't there which is why we didn't discuss Brighton.

Cheers to Public Life for hosting the meeting. Hope to do some events there during tech_2!...