OUTLINE HISTORY OF VISIONONTV 02
The funding took way to long to come through https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/Altmedia-history/wiki/History-of-the-visionontv-project
Just before the funding finaly came though I had a conversation R. – H. we have to re-think the project as soon as the funding comes through as the current project was planed 3 years before the funding arrived. We now faced 3 issues to run this project:
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The huge viewing figures we had achieved in the run-up to the project was based on SEO and linking verging on SPAM to play the basic google algorithm. This was seen by me as a temporary path before moving onto our own “openweb” tech. This loophole we pushed, was going to be closed, the original plan was to use this temporary BOOST to bring the “opentech” into being. By the time the funding came through this loophole was already closing fast.
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The tech we wanted to build was all taken up by a well founded USA NGO "The Particularity Culture Foundation" (PCF) who suffered from the #geekproblem being pushed by #fashernistas agenda’s. PCF started out doing the right thing then failed due to NGO funding agenda’s repeatedly. This stopped the core project from developing and later lead to the tech fund part of the project being frozen to be used latter.
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The second #dotcon boom was brewing and activist and NGO types were flocking to the #fashernista agenda of embracing things like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. And these services had taken on a new generation of people who actually understood how the #openweb works and most importantly now how to close it for corporate profit and social control.
With these 3 points in mind after the funding came through the project needed to be refocused before being pushed into motion. R blankly refused to address this, refused to do this and pushed the original project into motion with my reluctant consent – with the quorum of “the funders want to see action”.
This first year we worked hard on the original out of date project.
Coming up to the the AGM meeting at the year 1:
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The viewing figures started to drop, though they were still very large.
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Non of the core PCF tech worked as advertised and after visiting their HQ in the USA it was clear to me that millions of foundation
$ were going to be waisted by their NGO funding agendas and with this, much of the time and excitement of alt-media withered. -
The #dotcon world was heading to dominance in every area and particular in the campaigning and activism areas where everywhere you could swing a cat a “social media” workshop was being run by #fashernistas people. This in parallel with the #encryptionsts suffocating and stagnating existing alt-media projects such as indymedia degraded/ended the possibility of projects outside the closed #dotcon silos.
For me our core VisiononTV project could not compete. I told R we had to put the project into standby and explain all this to the funders. It was obvious to me that the #dotcon dominance would last for a few years before the opportunity came round again for a lively alt-media #reboot. We could fund the core project by running “social work” parallel projects till this time, then launch the core project with a wide healthy crew at a right/good moment. This right/good moment was about two years ago but more on this later.
This lead to a disagreement between H. and R. he argued that we should keep spending the core funding (to make sure the second JRTT funding round came through). My strong expressed view, was that the time for “social change” tech was not now and we should put the core project into standby.
This AGM was a bit of a pantomime. But I got trough by biting my toung. After this I forcefully laid out again the need to put the core project into standby as it clearly had no possibility of working and we would just be wasting resources till the time was right and the #dotcon lost there legitimacy.
This was the start of R. not addressing issues as a BLOCK. In the face of this I took some time off, I got back to find that after working with our “new volunteer” M for a few weeks, R had employed him as a full member of VisiononTV using all the remaining share of P set-a-side wages. There was clearly no process/agreement and a strong negative outcome against this expansion of the project. We see the clear split and open BLOCKING of process from here onwards.
There was no way R was going to address any issues so after some bad meetings we reached “agreement” that budget spend would be limited and R could carry on ONLY if he documented the results as this was the value outside of “social work” by documenting the process. When we #rebooted we would not have to repeat it.
Over the next few years he repeatedly regained on this and pushed personal/privatised projects through the company. When it was obvious that the wages part of the project was going to be used up with nothing but social work outcomes I proposed that we stop the project early, to put the remaining wages into the set-a-side restart budget (as the tech fund was for this) so we would be ready to move fast when the time came. Bad tempered BLOCKING meeting's with no outcome the remaining wages were spent on nothing and poured down the drain at this stage. I stopped my wages as I had proposed to R and M, but they did not
A bad outcome but also an opportunity, there was now a (non wages) small core funding left to keep the servers/domains running, as well as a small income from youtube advertising. It was finally time to put the project in sustainable standby.
A few years went by with personal projects and small core project happening. The time came a few years ago when the geek distrust in the #dotcons started to go mainstream and even #fashernistas took note. Then a year ago this was also a mainstream media issue.
It was time for the project to be pushed back in motion hah! Fab let's move. By this time as you could imagine the core crew were tired and broken, the BLOCKING which had become a habit continued with its own inertia. This fast #reboot was both slow and painful, I got the OMN part first step built and tried to roll it out to limited affect. Then came up with the idea of the exhibition as complementary of VOTV that would use the same tools as the OMN I've been working on. The actual exhibition was a good self-standing external project.
https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/Altmedia-history/wiki/What-is-the-history-of-the-activist-expo.
This finally broke the relationship with R https://github.com/Openmedianetwork/Altmedia-history/wiki/Visionontv-split-with-R