[theforum] back to basics

Tara Cleveland tara.cleveland at gmail.com
Tue Nov 18 06:42:50 CST 2008


Hey Erika,

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 2:54 AM, Erika <ekm at seastorm.com> wrote:
> I wonder if maybe the essential tension is not between "professional"
> and "amateur" so much as "professional" and "anarchist."
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I'm not sure it's that simple. Although you might be right that
there's an element of that. I think a lot of this tension has been
going on for a very long time...
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> When we started we defined ourselves in opposition to the other.
>
> NOT corporate.
> NOT commercial.
> NOT webmonkey.
> NOT possessive.
>
> We WERE rebels, guerillas
>
> Non-Profit
> Anarchist
> Creative
> Self-initiated
> Community-based
> Internet-freedom
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These were all the things that I loved about evolt at the beginning.
I'd love to recapture some of that rebel spirit. But I don't think
that means we can't wow people with our design, coding and techy
chops. Spirited, anarchist rebels doesn't mean mediocre product (not
saying that you're saying that by the way... just pointing it out) -
in fact I'd say it *should* mean the opposite. So in my opinion
anarchist rebelism isn't opposed to a professional level of quality.
---------
> I like being the anarchist web group, and the EXPERIMENT of it all is
> enough to hold my interest most of the time, even when the PRODUCTIVITY
> seems frustratingly limited at times.  Leadership happens in a ground-up
> manner.
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Again, I think we need balance. In my experience with evolt we seem to
lurch from one extreme to the other. I think we need experimentation
with a little direction - ie a way to capture the discoveries and good
things that come from that experimentation and make them into
something useful and long-lasting. I suppose what I'm saying is I'd
like us to have a *little* direction. Enough to get somewhere with
those great ideas, but not so much that we quash people's spirit.
Hmm... perhaps I'm just wittering on now.
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> This does and will open up all kinds of new worm-cans for us, culturally
> linguistically, and politically.  I say: bring it on.

> This also means, more than ever, our site must be accessible and
> user-friendly.
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Hear! Hear!
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> *just made decided to attend a web internationalisation lunch meeting
> this Wednesday I had been on the fence about attending*

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I can tell :-)

Cheers,
Tara
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