[Cc-webedit] [mediateam] Climate Camp TV - websites and content and so on

[richard hering]

Hi everyone

A few comments below on the CCTV discussion. I should say to start with that
I feel that there are some criticisms here that are really not fair or
accurate, and that I think this could have been handled in a better way. I
confess to being mystified as to why this is happening. I'm going to answer
Rastko's comments first, then Emily's, quite different as they are.

2009/9/18 rastko novakovic <rastko.novakovic at gmail.com>

> Hey Richard,
>
> I was unsure what the process for these decisions was and is and I think it
> would be good to discuss these in a wider forum. We still haven't sorted a
> CCTV list on crabgrass, so until then let's just stick with mediateam,
> unless people feel spammed? Please scroll down for replies.
>

That's fine for now, as long as people don't feel spammed - I think the wiki
page that Hamish suggested is a better way of CCTV coming to decisions, then
proposing to website and mediateam.

>
>
 Rastko Novakovic wrote:
> > Dear Campers,
> >
> > I'm a bit confused as to how the feed for CCTV on the main website
> > works. At the moment it seems to be feeding visionon.tv's main page?
>
> Richard:

> No - it is feeding all videos tagged "climatecamp".
>

Rastko:
I think this is not a good idea, since we might have all sorts of stuff
coming into the front page of the CC website and also it is not the voice of
CCTV. What do other people say?

Richard: No we won't - the tag only works for videos posted within the blip
account, not videos posted in general to the web. As for the "voice of
Climate Camp TV", I don't think that it should ever speak with one voice.

 Richard:

> It is not feeding VOTV's main page at all. There is a small link to the
> VOTV main page in the bottom right corner of the embed, called "VOTV".  The
> big link ("Climate Camp TV") goes to climatecamp.tv.  The other link on
> climatecamp.org.uk also goes to climatecamp.tv.
>

Rastko:
Yep, it just seemed to be the case, since the first 4 videos are the same.

Richard: They are now quite different in terms of content. During Climate
Camp, VOTV was only publishing CCTV content because of time /  internet
constraints.


>
> > Underneath it reads "Watch the latest videos produced and edited on-site
> > at the camp" which is confusing.
>
>
> Agreed - we need another wording (this one came from the web team, I
> believe) . Any suggestions?


Rastko:
"Watch the latest videos produced by Climate Camp TV"?

Richard:
See my drafts on Emily's comments.


> > Also, the Hazelwood video which is now
> > on climatecamptv.org although TOTALLY appropriate, is not a video
> > produced by CCTV. There is a comments page pointing to visionon, which I
> > don't remember us discussing.
>
> Comments are very important to have, but they were impossible to implement
> with the latest design of the climatecamp.tv site, so we just linked to
> the visionOntv commenting in the interim.  Actually, the visionOntv
> commenting is not really working yet, until we get "rss in" in the cms and
> some programming work done, so I think it's best to take this out currently.
>
>

Rastko:
Cool. I think the comments can go to either an existing address for now, or
we can set something up on CCTV, but I feel it is necessary that it is kept
on the CCTV website. I feel we are already perhaps a little distant from the
MEDIA team and I don't think we should be going even further away from CC.

Richard:
On the comments, see my remarks above and my further comments to Emily on
the problems of implementing this now. We have removed the link to
visionOntv's comments system, as that didn't work well enough.

 > Also, what does the DONATE button do?
>
> That's easy. It allows people to donate to Climate Camp TV - so far we
> received a single donation of £20!
>

Rastko:
I don't knock 20 quid! Just am wondering which account it is going into and
how we spend the donations, since, to my knowledge, this hasn't been
discussed at all.

Richard:
Your knowledge is incomplete, Rastko. The donate button was asked for and
agreed. It is going into the visionOntv paypal account. Every donation is
tagged "climatecamp", so the money is completely separate and accountable.
The account should be accessible to whoever is doing the accounts. Is that
Lauren? How we spend it is up to CCTV as a whole, as with all other funding,
as part of our general finance discussion. I must admit I don't understand
at all the purpose of asking this small question in this context. We need to
discuss how to spend all the money raised for CCTV at a CCTV meeting, and
this matter is a very tiny part of that discussion.


> Think that answers all the questions (:  It would be great to find someone
> to work more on the design of the site.
>

Rastko:
I'll see what I can do.


> If anyone wants to be an admin so that they can work on the CCTV site send
> a message to one of these current admins
> > Richard Braude
> > Mark Corbin
> > Richard Hering
> > Emily James
> > San Do Kai
> > rastko novakovic
> > antoine S
> > Lauren Jane Simpson
>
> You can ask Hamish for help as well.


DIY is fine and dandy, but (call me a Titoist) I fear lack of coordination.
Heh :)

Best,
R

Richard:  Rastko, your comment contains its own criticism , so I won't add
anything!

>

2009/9/18 Emily James <emily at emily-james.com>

> Now that the media team is switching over to Crabgrass, I think we should
> have a CCTV space there too. But email lists still get the most
> participation, and i for ne would like a bit more participation in some of
> what's being discussed here.
>

Some of what's being discussed, but not all? A bit more participation by
whom? People who have had no participation in CCTV? CCTV has to work as an
affinity group that first of all discusses things among its members.  Of
course we should respond to outside suggestions on outreach matters (such as
the climate camp website), but right now all the criticisms being made are
coming from within the CCTV group, so surely we should attempt to resolve
them there before bothering other people who are very busy and may just not
be interested.  This practice I find quite demotivating, actually, and I
can't see the reason for it.

>
> We certainly never agreed that the feed on the climate camp home page would
> carry just anything that was tagged Climate Camp, that leaves it way too
> open to randomness.


One person's randomness is another's diversity. I actually think it's good
if something changes on the site. I have changed the climate camp website
feed so that the excellent Australian videos come at the top.


> In all the discussions that I can remember, we always said that it would
> carry the player from the CCTV home page. We had agreed a process for
> deciding what gets promoted onto that channel, but it has never actually
> been followed.
>

I remember being brow-beaten by Emily over this, but there was never any
consensus, and for my part I never understood the criteria for implementing
the selection of content..

>
> As it happens, I think that the films about the action at the coal plant
> are actually the best thing to have on the home page of the climate camp
> site right now


Agreed, and I have implemented this.  Btw, we have run out of interesting
studio shows from Blackheath, (there's still a few that will find their way
into "inthestudio" only!). Are there any more action films to come in?

- but certainly not the random Kew Eco-Village piece that's at the top of
> the player right now.
>

> Would it be possible to have a specific player (and tag) for films on the
> Climate Camp home page? And then can we formulate, (and actually stick to!)
> a process for deciding what goes on there. Films playing on that player
> should need the approval of at least two or three people.
>

This is much too bureaucratic, and given the variety of tastes within the
group, is likely to be very fractious. I'm not

>
> Rastko is right, the button on the bottom right of the embedded player
> should be to the climatecamp.tv site, not the visionOn.


That's actually not what he was saying (see his last mail, above) - he
thought the embed was feeding visionOntv, rather than climatecamp tv, and
now realizes that it doesn't.  He didn't mention the link in the bottom
right of the embed at all at any point.  It is perfectly reasonable to have
a small link to VOTV, in the context of two much larger ones for Climate
Camp TV - visionOntv has spent two years of voluntary work getting together
the infrastructure that makes Climate Camp TV and other such projects
possible. There are still things not working fully yet (comments being one),
but we've also spent two years securing the money that will make that
programming possible.  This is a very well-worked-out project on a technical
level - and that only comes with a vast amount of hard graft. visionOntv did
Climate Camp TV in 2008, again in 2009, and will certainly be there for
whatever happens in 2010. This is a painstakingly constructed project built
to last, with sustainability in the technical sense guaranteed.  VOTV's
user-friendly infrastructure also enabled the very rapid building of the
Climate Camp TV website, which would otherwise have been in the hands of
drupal geeks and probably not have happened at all.  If you think we don't
think respond quickly enough to problems and suggestions, try working within
that universe!  This year will be when the VOTV content management system
gets fully developed and communicated to a huge range of campaigning groups
and individuals who have never had such a resource made available to them.
VOTV also provided the server for Climate Camp TV, and continues to do so.
So yes, a tiny link to visionOntv on the climate camp homepage is highly
appropriate and I would block its removal.

I also think that it's odd that films that were made on camp by CCTV crew
> come up with a visionOn label at the start. Why doesn't it say Climate Camp
> TV there?
>

This is a purely technical issue that derives from using VOTV's account. We
could lose it all together - technically it's called "smoke" - we could
untick it, but then viewers would not get the name of the film at the
beginning. Iprefer the current arrangement.

>
> As for the text that describes the window on the Climate Camp site, that
> depends on the criteria for what goes on there. I'd like to think that there
> could be a way for us to include things that are relevant, like the films
> about the Australian action... but I can't think how to frase a description
> - other than maybe 'watch the latest films made by Climate Camp TV and other
> related stuff'... which is a bit rubbish. Any suggestions?
>

I would go for something much less proprietorial, now that climate camp is
over - "Watch all the latest climate camp films from around the world" - we
could change this again for the Swoop.
Or we could try to get both sides of this: "Watch the latest Climate Camp TV
films and the best of the rest from around the world".
Or the Climate Camp TV link, followed by "create the world you want to see"
from the CCTV homepage. This is my personal favourite.

>
> As for comments, I don't understand why they can't be on the CCTV page?
>

We took them off, Emily, because you rightly said they were too complex.
See my comments above and below.  We can't implement comments in a
user-friendly enough way until we have some software development done.

>
> Re donations: Yeah! someone cares about us! But yes, the first time that we
> put a donations button up it pointed to the Undercurrents account (which is
> were we had our original donation sent, and who agreed to be our accounts
> keeper).
>

No, it didn't. It was never directed to undercurrents. The reason the
foundation funds went to undercurrents was 1. votv did not yet have a bank
account and 2. undercurrents is a charity, so can receive funding which can
only go to charitable purposes (which I think doesn't apply in this case?).
 And anyway, it only matters where the account is held if you don't trust
the party holding the account, which I presume is not what you're saying. It
is just a paypal account which clearly tags all donations which are CCTV's,
so that it is absolutely clear how much is there at any time, and accessible
to anybody who wants to know.

>
> We do, indeed, need to agree a process for how to decide what to do with
> donations and any other funds that we have. This has been totally ad hoc up
> to now, but I think that we need something more transparent.
>

We need that process for all monies coming into CCTV. It hasn't been totally
ad hoc up till now - there was a detailed budget for the London climate camp
which needs to be revised in line with the amount of money actually raised.
We need now to both do the sums and establish the priorities with anything
left over.

>
> As for the design of the site: there are two people, Dan and Patch who I
> have spoken to, but we need to decide what we want to do with it.
>
> I know that a lot of people have complained (myself included) that it's not
> possible to send people direct links to specific films. I don't understand
> what is needed to fix this, or why it is this way, but I do know that it is
> a problem which really needs addressing.
>

As we've already said repeatedly, what you have to do is post the individual
film to a website or blog - you just take the embed code out of climate camp
tv and copy and paste into your blog, then link to that. This is currently
how virtually all video is posted to other people's websites and blogs. And
it has the great virtue of creating valid links. youtube have skilfully
automated this process as a single click, something we are planning to do in
the future  When we get the next development work done on the cms, each film
will have its own page and web address - right now, we're just like everyone
else in the world - it has to be done manually - soon we'll be ahead of
everyone else.  If anyone is stuck on how to do this, please email us for
help (richard at visionon.tv, hamish at visionon.tv)

>
> E
>
> Best

Richard
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