Minutes Sunday, November 21, 2010

AFU General Meeting – 11/21/10

-in attendance – Possum, Michael R, Joseph, Owen, Petra

++ Agenda

-Owen's project - Rebel Film Board (new person in attendance)

-Justin’s' one day Internet Security Workshop

-Possum's course

-AFU web changes, update

-AFU phone #

++ Owen's project * *

Owen Sheppard from the 'Rebel Film Board' contacted Petra prior to our meeting asking if he could come and discuss the project he is involved with in Nairobi, Kenya. A very interesting project. In a nutshell the group's intention is to advance a new culture of egalitarianism, voluntarism, and solidarity across borders using the empowering tools of independent media production. The target audience is the youth in the Mathare Slums, RFB teaches, guides and inspires them to create work that builds equality, freedom, and co-operation.

He is looking for volunteers to help out on all levels including writing for their quarterly journal entitled “Liberation”. We were only able to help with suggestions on how he might find some of these volunteers and other ways of approaching groups like ourselves to give people more of a reason to join his project. One idea is to offer or give something, such as a training or some skill bldg opportunity and networking his project with other similar ones such as Indy Media's, so people come away with something after volunteering.

Contact Owen 416.856.2968 / owen@rebelfilmboard.org

++ Justin's Workshop

Justin's course is ready to roll in December! He needs an appropriate space and help with promotion. The dates he is aiming for around the 6th to the 8th. A space possibility is the Linux Cafe, Justin will check with Dave to see if this could work. Petra will check with Heather to see what's up with the Free Gallery. Joseph will do the outreach to Activists and affiliated groups that might find the workshop particularly interesting and useful. Some suggestions were: Noii, RAN Common Cause, OPRIG, OCAP, Peace groups (Peace Works etc)

++ Possum's course

Possum is ready to start his course sometime in January and showed us a mock up poster he designed. He hopes to do it at Edith's home if her place is available. Petra's place is a back up if the first choice isn't available. His course has long been approved and is ready to do outreach for. We need a blurb from him to send out and put on our face book page as an 'event' for folks to attend!

++ AFU web changes, update

We all agreed that it would be best to start the web page redesign with just simplifying the first page of the site. It will NOT be changeable by anyone expect whomever has the administrators password at the time. This will be a rotating position starting with Joseph and/or Possum? Information that needs regular changing and updating such as dates for monthly meetings, adding minutes and wkshps etc will be located in an area that allows access by others in the group. This redesign will be done by Joseph, assisted by Possum with Petra critiquing and helping edit.

++ AFU phone #

Petra has had problems getting into the voicemail to check for calls due to having the wrong dial in number. Luckily some people called her on her direct line and reached AFU that way! A new interested person will be coming to the next meeting! The problem has since been corrected.

++ R.A.T. (Renewing Anarchist Tradition conference) not on agenda

Joseph attended the RAT conference in Baltimore in October and reported back. He promising to put together an email with related links to some of the audio talks available for download. He spoke to some other Free School/Alternative Education folks to compare notes and see what others are up to-will pass on the names of those schools for us to further research ourselves, as others expressed interest.

It has been agreed to use the general@anarchistu.org e-mail list for any related discussions.