Re: Video ideas

First, apologies for my general absence over the past couple of weeks; I've been travelling and finishing up some projects, but I'm now settled in for a few weeks down in East Texas, where I'll be covering an upcoming Sarah Palin rally for Vanity Fair before moving on. At any rate, I'll be able to put more time into Project PM going forward, and I'd like to thank everyone for their work thus far.
In the meantime, I'd like to provide a quick update on some things as well as address a question that's been coming up. Several of our participants have asked why Project PM, which is focused mainly on media reform, is at this early point focusing on something as seemingly unrelated as our Africa Development Program. The quick answer, which I'll expand upon in a bit, is that media reform itself, though central to our work, is really only an extension of our main goal, which involves improving information flow and the collaborative abilities of groups working towards a particular objective.
As for why a working laboratory such as ours has begun by focusing on Africa, there are a couple of reasons. First, Africas relatively low level of structural development provides an environment in which an entity such as ours can operate with the highest possible expectation of being able to provide effective solutions in a number of regards. We also happen to have come across several opportunities by which to do this particular thing effectively. Initially we had discussed starting with water purification programs and other investments with high returns in terms of human development, while planning also to initiate various educational programs as an attachment to those efforts. Then one of our participants, the patent lawyer Felipe Farley, noted to me that he had come across a number of old engineering methods with low thresholds for implementation, including such things as pumps and water wheels - methods that require little skill and few resources to adapt but which hold a great deal of potential in terms of their utility and the productivity returns that can be gained by those villages which implement them. Our initial plan, then, is to identify those methods we determine to be most appropriate, compile them into instructional pamphlets, and then have them distributed to individual village leaders. This latter task will be accomplished by way of our budding partnerships with a couple of charitable groups that operate to some extent or another in Africa itself. Aside from the very minor printing costs, then, we may thereby have a great beneficial effect on a large number of people without expending any resources whatsoever. This provides the added benefit of serving as a demonstration of how groups of individuals working over the internet may combine their skill sets in order to solve problems more efficiently than can larger, less dynamic entities, such as charities with high overheads; it will also serve as a showcase for what Project PM itself can accomplish even at this early point. Finally, I myself happen to have lived in Africa when I was a teenager, during which time I was serving as the junior member of a business venture that ended up failing miserably. It is a great opportunity to watch an organization succeed; it is a far greater opportunity to watch one fail.
Since then I've made sort of a study of institutional failures, most significantly the failures of the media. And all of these failures, fundamentally, are failures of information, and it is information with which we are primarily concerned. The media happens to be the most significant single conduit of information, and one in which the flaws are thus all the more important to try to correct. This brings me to another, more significant reason why we're working on solutions for Africa, and why we're also preparing a couple of other projects that I'll be announcing shortly, all of which involve information. Even more importantly to our fundamental goals, each of these will give us the opportunity to focus on and learn from the ways in which we collaborate and communicate. We'll use this information that we gather to provide suggestions to others who are interested in improving their own communication in the course of accomplishing tasks, which is a more fundamental and crucial aspect to any collaborative effort than one would expect from the little attention that is given to it. Additionally, for our purposes, an initial focus on this sub-project has provided us with a learning experience that will be of great benefit when we begin to more stridently approach our more central project of media reform in the U.S. and elsewhere.
I understand that all of this may raise some additional questions, and while some of these are addressed in existing materials, others will be addressed soon enough by way of a FAQ, the upcoming manifesto, and a series of additional articles and videos intended to explain various aspects of Project PM.
In the meantime, thanks again to everyone for joining up.

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 10:04 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, I saw Ellis's point on that in an earlier e-mail; I've got better reasoning to use, though; just got done jotting down notes and will film in the morning when I've got natural light to use outside.

I did an article on my Africa experience some decade ago but I don't have it anymore; I do indeed plan on writing more on that relatively soon, and then at greater length when certain people are dead and/or indicted. Anyway, we've probably overwhelmed everyone with reading material and I should be doing another round of essays on related topics this summer anyway.

I actually didn't do any hunting on that trip as we were in the city for most of the time and our guns were taken up upon arrival. I did hunt in Africa more recently, though, but I've learned the hard way that that's not something I should make known.

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 9:55 PM, Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com> wrote:

Good point from Scott. The wisdom of Sally Rand. Also, have fun with it.

Africa Project question: have you ever written anything about your experiences and observations in Tanzania? If so, and if there's no copyright problem, I could post some of it on the workshop blog to somewhat personalize the Africa Project. Tim Ellis told me privately he didn't think that [me] letting it be seen as a trial run was the best PR approach.

Maybe not the hunting stuff, though.

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 7:35 PM, Scott Mintz <scott.w.mintz@gmail.com> wrote:

I think all of the questions Clark proposed are great questions for a FAQ. I'm not quite sure if they all need to be answered in a video segment, although some of them certainly do. In my humble opinion, for the video segments I would stick to the who, what, when, where, why and how, but then again, that's just my opinion ;)

I definitely concur that a discussion of the network structure is in order. As best as I can understand it will be the "original" structure that will separate ProjectPM from any other information outlet. With that said, as time goes on I've become increasingly confused as to its shape. For example, Clark has suggested to me that previously we may have partnered with someone such as T/S, however, I would then like clarity then how additional contributors can be added. Do they need to be existing Bloggers? Do they need to write for T/S, for example?

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 7:52 AM, Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com> wrote:

More video questions:

Here are some more questions, to add to the list below. I am just throwing these out to give you ideas in addition to your own to choose from with no expectation of all being answered in a short video, of course.

Will Project PM be mainly focused on commentary, opinion and analysis and not, other than incidentally, on breaking news or daily factual reporting?

Will Project PM sponsor investigative reporting?

In terms of the subject matter areas covered by the associated blogger/journalists in the network what will normally not be included? (entertainment, celebrities, travel, music, sports, _________ ?)

Structure of the network: Scott and I got into a discussion about whether the network structure would be like a pyramid or a lattice? This arose when I was talking about pushing content "up" the network to the blogger circles with more circles under them, but Scott pointed out logically that material could go sideways to equivalent-level circles of bloggers. I don't think I really have a clear conception of the network structure. (It may be that comparisons to geometry are not useful.)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Clark Robinson <robinsonchicago@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:10 PM
Subject: Video ideas
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>, Scott Mintz <scott.w.mintz@gmail.com>

Questions for the video:

Barrett has written quite a lot about the need for Project PM. I think this audience, at least, is fully persuaded, and is more interested now in "how does it work."

So, I would suggest the video focus more on the relationships among the various network participants and the web tools that will support the relationships. This seems to be less well understood.

The blogger/journalists (called just bloggers below):

--describe the relationships among the bloggers (maybe you could hold up a diagram, or maybe show how the logo is representational of it)

--what will they be able to do that current systems and networks do not give them tools to do?

--what actions will will they be able to take on their desktops once they have downloaded the software?
-------actions that will ultimately bring readers to the blogger's own writing?
-------actions that will facilitate readers finding the writing of other network members?

--will the consent of web hosting services on which bloggers publish be necessary to utilize Project PM's widgets affecting their sites?

The stuff you went through for me about building critical mass and the degenerating pattern of current networks was informative. And Scott's concept of bypass sampling was interesting.

The readers/the public:

--will the readers need to download software?

--how will the reader access the network and enjoy the benefits of the network's evaluative structure?

The governing network:

--how would you define the functions of this body, in a couple of sentences?

--the blogger/journalists recruit additional writers to the network, who in turn will be connected to the writer who recruited them, yes? So in contrast, the governing body is mainly concerned with things like ordering up software enhancements, kicking out plagiarists, what else?

--are there web tools in planning to support the governing network's activities, or will existing ones suffice?

_____________________________________________

I am not invested in any of these particular questions; I am more interested in making movement occur.

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Regards,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

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Regards,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302