Volunteer meeting Thursday 12 June 08

Attendance

  • Present: Michael, Becky, Dan Ray, Gavin, Patrick Jones, Rowan, Mark Levitt, Anon, Sheila Thomson, Glyn Wintle, Adam McGreggor
  • IRC: Chris Adams, Rachel Clarke, Richard King, Elliotjhug

Big thanks

Michael thanks everyone who's done anything since we last met. Volunteer power is core to ORG's systems and operations.

  • How can we back-up our audio content? Its in different places, some on blip.tv and some on Ito, but we should make a local copy, right?
    • Ticket for Adam to discuss next time in the office.

Big Push

Michael talks through plans for a large supporter drive in the 2nd half of 2008. Full details to be published in the next fortnight.

  • Mark, Sheila and Glyn offer to help out at OpenTech
  • People to ask about videos (besides Dean Whitbread): Documentally, Sizemore, Mark Levitt, David Wilcox, Loudmouthman
  • Travel advice
    • Areas to consider: photo rights, transporting data across borders, encryption keys
    • People to help out: Patrick, Rachel, Elliot Hughes
    • Glyn suggests a shout on LUG Radio would be useful
  • Becky, Glyn, Michael, Mark and Sheila to lead contact with bloggers
  • Green Party conference stallholders: Patrick, Mark (TBC), Glyn (TBC) and Sheila (TBC)
  • One-sheets (to be finished by 19 July for LUG Radio Live)
    • Rowan and Sheila to work on layout
    • Mark and Sheila on the text (using the wiki for resources) (Anon on Phorm text?)
    • Can we get an indication of our most popular issues? How can we develop these metrics?

Net Neutrality

See this page for details of the briefing pack that Dan Ray is working on. He posed two questions to the room, which resulted in a lively discussion. First, What do we think net neutrality is, how do we want to define it? Second, do we want light touch regulation; are we satisfied with simple disclosure / transparency, or do we want strong arm regulation? Here are some selected comments:

  • Sheila: We should take a tough view here and represent the more extreme position, becuase no-one else will. All filtering is bad.
  • Mark: Priority is clarity in consumer expectations
  • Glyn offers TBL's classic definition of NN ("If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level") and notes UK Gov is happy for service providers to offer consumers differing QoS packages. But will competition in the market ensure decent service and innovation?
  • Becky: How many related issues (Phorm? ISP filtering? ISP liability?) do we want to put into the NN basket?
  • Regulation, as we have seen in the US, will be poorly drafted and out-of-date before its implemented.
  • Adam: The ISP community believe self-regulation is the way forward here, possibly led by Ofcom.
  • Richard: must rep the consumer perspective to BERR, DCMS and Ofcom.
  • Mark: can we enlist innovators (the next Shawn Fanning) to state / bolster our arguments?
  • Gavin: please email me at gavin at openrightsgroup dot org with any examples of traffic manipulation, whether by mobile networks or ISPs. Or leave a note on the wiki.

Newsblog

The Newsblog is growing in utility. Richard King takes on the mantle of Newsblog project manager and will oversee (with Michael) certain developments.

  • Bringing across the changes to the theme on the main blog
    • Should we add buttons to the top nav bar: Home / Blog / Breaking News? Should differentiate the look of the two blogs.
  • Define the function of the newsblog (Volunteer-gathered news stories of relevance to the digital rights community)
  • We need more newsbloggers! Anon volunteers. Maybe ask Gervase Markham? Put a call out in the next s'update.
  • Be sure to keep Mike 'Mr Wordpress' Little updated on these activites.
  • Formalise formatting guidelines.
  • Statistics?

Information Architecture

Richard has also led the way on imposing some good sense and order to our ever-expanding list of categories and issues. The aim is to unify the various lists we have (4 on the wiki, 2 on the blogs). No clear answers came out of the discussion so we'll continue this on-list, aiming to implement significant changes before next meeting.

Wiki

Plans are afoot to reorganise the frontpage and improve our categories. We want to make this treasure-trove of information more useful.

  • Sheila to look at implementing a version of Dan's design in CSS
  • Did not find anyone to help with a new template for pages but perhaps that will come out of or is part of Sheila's efforts.
  • Also, Anon to get stuck into some 'how to' guides, either of her own suggestion or based on Dan's list (see below).

Staging

  • Adam to put up a password-protected sandbox of the site for developers to play with
    • Also, to work out revisions/versioning somehow (for edits made though the interfaces)

AOB

  • Document CDBE outputs on the main blog and consider turning into a form of guide
  • Next meeting scheduled for 24 July.



If you want to get more involved with digital rights and ORG, then your 1st stop should be a volunteer meeting, where we run through current volunteer works and dole out new tasks. Please put your name down below if you intend to attend. The next meet will be at 1830 on Thursday 12 June, at our office, which is 7th floor, 100 Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8AL. And as usual, we'll have the IRC running (freenode.irc.net, #openrightsgroup) so that non-locals can participate. Any questions? Then email info at openrightsgroup dot org or phone +44 (0) 20 7096 1079

Attendees

Fer Shure!

  • ORG Staff: Becky Hogge, Michael Holloway, Dan Ray, Gavin Hill
  • Patrick Jones
  • Mark Levitt
  • adam mcg (someone remind me...)
  • Elliot Hughes (IRC Please)
  • Anon (probably)
  • Richard - remotely via IRC (unless technology or work prevents me!)
  • Sheila Thomson
  • Glyn Wintle
  • Chris Adams [through 'a series of tubes']

Maybe

  • Harry (probably)
  • Chris Mear

Agenda

See actions from last meeting

  • Big thanks to everyone for keeping up the good work, especially the sysadmins (Lemon, Adam, Mike, Glyn) who we regularly lean on.
  • Didn't receive any Sound Copyright questions for MEPs. Gavin's going to bring this up later.
  • New laptop stickers are done and looking good (thanks, Rowan)
  • Newsblog is coming along nicely. What housekeeping needs doing? See below
  • Blip.tv is working well for audio (although concerns that we should back-up)

"Big Push"

Present plot and ask for general feedback and specific input.

  • One-sheets: capturing an ORG issue on a single piece of paper: a kind of teaser for events. Start with knitting, phorm and datagate? Some design as well as textual skillz would be useful here.
  • Holiday advice
  • Emailing 25 bloggers in about a fortnight
  • Advice on informal videos (James Cox?)
  • Green Party conference stall 5-8 September '06

Network Neutrality briefing pack

Dan to present plot and ask for feedback

Developing the Newsblog - click for Richards bright ideas

Can Richard act as a project manager of sorts for Newsblog?

  • Sidebar should reflect main blog
  • 'About newsblog' - text for Participate and somewhere on the blog itself
  • Tighten up on the formatting (2 sentences max, minimal commentary) and selection issues

Developing the wiki

AOB

  • Future dates and wiki-pages

File:Example.jpg

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