Thoughts on the CMS collaboration possibilities session

I thought I'd better at least get a couple of notes in here before I forget everything that's happened over the last two days.

It's hard to get a perspective of where things are at from where I'm sitting, I'm mostly comparing things to my own expectations. I think I was expecting things to move into being quite specific more quickly. What I am noticing instead however is that there is a lot more of getting everyone on the same page as regards each others projects and their general operations. This isn't surprising perhaps as it's (as far as I know) the first time so many activist online video distribution projects have sat in the same room. It's a bit much to expect everyone to just jump into coding and collaborating on software immediately it's much more a of a long term process. I think it will take 6 months to start seeing some real outcomes of what's going on here in Rome.

The content management system discussion today was a prime example. We didn't get too specific but had a quite a good discussion (I thought) on the basics of what people thought the key aspects of a CMS should be.

notes: http://www.transmission.cc/wiki/Notes_from_the_CMS_Collaboration_workshop

Between about 30 of us I think we covered some good ground and focussed on quite basic aspects of how we might collaborate together but there was some confusion in terms of what we should be considering a CMS and some frustration at not being easily able to see options immediately before us to work together.

My conclusion from this discussion was that basically a lot more discussions need to take place (and a lot of them need to be small conversations too i think) and it really extended my time line of how long building those solid collaborations are going to take.

I came out out feeling quite positive about it all, hopefully it's the first conversation amongst many.

oh and the food in forte rocks!!