Re: <nettime> Summary of today's meeting

[Ted Byfield via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org>]

Brian, you put this so well: razor-sharp and spot-on. Felix and I have been trying to take a very low-key approach to this transition, because it really should be about what the new team imagines and how they work. I do want to say that Felix deserves pretty much all the credit — on the 'old' side — for nudging things along in such a gracious and productive way. The 'new' side has a fantastic vibe: very thoughtful, open, and energetic, but (again) in a low-key way that feels right. John's summary conveys that well.

A few things I'd add:

It's great that you underlined what Vesna and John said about offline meetings. "Meetings" might sound big, as it often did in the list's heroic period — the various N5M meetings in Amsterdam, Beauty and the East, and so on — but I think many of the best meetings were a few people over beverages of choice, or putting up friends-of-friends who were passing through for a day or two. If people sent occasional free-form notes about some of those conversations, it could go a long way toward nudging the list closer to the end of energy that Geert, Pit, and so many others brought to the list early on.

And "diversity"...what a loaded word that's become over the last decades. In the context of finding a new mod squad, it has a slightly bureaucratized or even HR-ish ring to it — and the *principle* of finding wider perspectives really matters. But a good way to approach that principle might be, as in your case, a collective effort to open doors to new people through their ideas and work more than through assumptions about representation.

There's lots of talk lately about the stunning collapse of social media: the inane waste of billions of pseudo-value — at this point *hundreds* of billions — on demolishing Twitter, Facebook's hilarious Second Life 2.0, throw-shit-at-the-wall projects like Bluesy and Threads, etc. Where that's leading is anyone's guess, but it isn't hard to imagine that mailing lists might see what I guess we could call a "retronaissance."

Cheers,
Ted

On 11 Jul 2023, at 12:57, Brian Holmes via Nettime-tmp wrote:

> This is all brilliant news. Kudos to John and the entire tech team!
>
> Guest posts and meetups both online and off are very good ideas (Vesna has
> a lot of experience with that sort of thing). I think there were some
> nettime guest posts early on - in fact, Geert Lovink solicited a text from
> yours truly and that's how I got into this. Jordan Crandall's early lists
> were run entirely that way, and it was very stimulating.
>
> There's an outstanding question about the scope of nettime today. On the
> one hand it doesn't matter - nust post what you like. However,  Geert's
> notion of an "immanent critique of the networks" was a very strong and
> productive one. My sense is that as time has gone on, and the network
> society has become, not a theory or a possibility, but something like a
> total social fact, nettime's immanent critique has become general cultural
> critique. Obviously I'm comfortable with that - or guilty of it from
> another perspective - but it would be interesting to hear what the new
> mods, and really everybody, thinks about it.
>
> Thanks again for the report, John.
>
> All best from Vashon Island,
> Brian
>
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2023, 08:30 John Preston via Nettime-tmp <
> nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Here is a longform summary of the synchronous meeting held today.
>>
>> There is general agreement to move to servus.at as the new host for the
>> mailing list. They have about 2000 email accounts and a few hundred mailing
>> lists so there are no concerns about management or scale.
>>
>> We talked about problems with bots, and they are currently working on a
>> solution.
>>
>> After the move, the intention for signup process seems to be to keep it
>> the
>> same as it is now: users have to confirm their email via a link, and then
>> be
>> manually approved by a moderator. We think this is currently scalable,
>> effective
>> for managing spam, and gives mod team a feel for "who's coming and going",
>> which
>> is nice to know.
>>
>> We expect the move to take a couple of weeks, and there was some
>> discussion
>> about when is a good time to do this, given it's summer now. Eventually
>> the
>> archive and website will move as well, but probably that will happen after
>> the
>> new list is established.
>>
>> An initial pool of new moderators is now being formed and I think people
>> will
>> meet again soon to organise this. I think Jordan, Christian, and Menno
>> expressed
>> interest in joining the new mod squad.
>>
>> We also talked about pruning the subscriber list and figuring out how best
>> to
>> coordinate the move. This is an open question for the mod team to figure
>> out
>> what to do, but there were suggestions of using the invitation function on
>> the
>> new list to send out invites to everyone with activity in the last year,
>> as a
>> way to make sure the most active members are able to migrate effectively,
>> and
>> find a balance with just resubscribing lots of people who maybe don't want
>> to
>> be on the list.
>>
>> There was brief discussion about using the nettime.org domain name for
>> the
>> mailing list, and this is still an open question. Ted would like to
>> maintain
>> ownership for now and act as a guarantor, since it also points to other
>> services
>> like our website and the Mastodon instance [1]. Overall there did not seem
>> to
>> be much concern either way in terms of the mailing list, as we expect host
>> moves to be few and far between.
>>
>> We also talked about the role of moderation on the list, and making sure
>> this is
>> also about creating energy in the list, and bringing new people into the
>> space.
>> Ted pointed out that diversity is an issue for nettime, as the homogeneity
>> has
>> both allowed the list to last for a long time, but also caused it to
>> "ossify".
>>
>> Vesna had some good suggestions for organising small meetups and remote
>> hubs,
>> and we talked about arranging meetings at in person events like Ars
>> Electronica
>> and Transmediale. Also we said these should be publicised so we are making
>> nettime an open space that new people can get involved in, regardless of
>> if they
>> like mailing lists or want to be part of the list.
>>
>> I also raised the idea of doing more events on-list and off-list, such as
>> a
>> 'show and tell' thread where people can just talk about what they're
>> working on
>> at the moment, or having coffee calls where people can have a chat and get
>> to
>> know other people in the community. Someone also mentioned the idea of
>> inviting
>> people not on the list to write guest posts, which I like because it grows
>> the
>> community and allows us to explore the use of a mailing list as a
>> publication
>> platform as well as just a space for connecting and discussing.
>>
>> Probably there is a bunch of stuff I missed because I got distracted
>> halfway
>> through, and then had to leave early, but I hope this is a useful summary
>> for
>> the list! ❤
>>
>> [1] I actually missed that we have a Mastodon instance! It's at
>> <https://tldr.nettime.org/> if anyone is interested 🙂
>>
>> Thanks,
>> John (they/them)
 <...>
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