On November 30 2006 the global Indymedia network celebrates its 7th birthday. The life cycle of a transnational co-operation has been fascinating to watch. I watched its birth in the lead-up to the WTO Summit in Seattle in 1999 and participated as a reader and commentor over the first couple of years as the www.indymedia.org domain was pointed at the newswire site for one anti-neo-liberal protest after another.

The first version of the current global site at www.indymedia.org was set up for global May Day protests called by People's Global Action. Some time after this an activist emailed me in response to a comment on the site suggesting I 'join Indymedia'. At the time I couldn't imagine how I could possibly help, stuck in the backwater of Aotearoa with no significant tech skills. But with the global portal now a permanent fixture and a number of former summit sites becoming a reporting tool for their local activist scene a new phase of Indymedia began - localisation.

It was always an ad-hoc process. The formal title of the 'Global Network of Independent Media Centres' was consensed but seldom used. The 'aims and principles' document known as the Principles of Unity (indymedia.org.nz/mod/info/display/principles/index.php) never got past the draft stage. This combined with the Membership Criteria for becoming an IMC (indymedia.org.nz/mod/info/display/membership/index.php)were perhaps unique in setting the boundaries of a radical International without explicitly declaring a political agenda beyond a vaguely defined anticorporate antipathy to 'mainstream media' and 'slogans like "Don't hate the media, become the media!". Despite this, or perhaps because of it, media activists worldwide were so enthusiastic about Indymedia that the number of new imcs increased exponentially. I was involved in starting our local one, Aotearoa imc. It was all go.

Then entropy kicked in. People started to drift away into other committments. Increasingly overworked and under pressure from all quarters to filter the chaotic data pouring into their newswires, local groups started to argue over the perceived ideological plurality encapsulated in the name Independent Media Centre. Collectives split, factions were disaffiliated, sites shut down.

The size and reputation of Indymedia became its own undoing as it ran out of keen mediatistas to recruit and started to hit a brick wall of suspicion and resentment. Activists from established groups started to assume their local IMC collective were dominated by an ideological agenda unfriendly to theirs. Loner activists sympathetic to the broad anti-establishment agenda from which the IMCs sprang started to dismiss Indymedia as an institution that was itself becoming part of the enclosement of autonomous and independent media.

7 years after the first Independent Media Centre and Indymedia.org website, local collectives are struggling to maintain their open-publishing sites let alone put any time into print, radio, video and the many other projects initially designed to push news out of the sites and into the public domain. Many of the working groups that run global projects like the www.indymedia.org features struggle for volunteers. Many of the early innovations like the News Real video news service and News Blast headline emails are effectively defunct despite their flash-looking websites and the burgeoning interest in independent media exemplified in newer net phenomena like blogging and podcasting.

However a network of project based entirely on volunteer labour is always going to have its ups and downs. Despite the challenges that prevent Indymedia from reaching its full potential the achievements of the clusters of volunteers it have brought together are impressive. 10 years ago I could barely have dreamed of having an activist resource like the Aotearoa.Indymedia.org website, run by consensus on an open membership email list, where a broad range of activists can post their news and debate issues and promote their events. It's even more striking that this resource is part of a network of similar sites around the world, supported by a framework of collaboration tools from irc chat (chat.indymedia.org) and email lists (lists.indymedia.org) to wikiweb (docs.indymedia.org) all running on non-profit servers running free and open source software.

New initiatives like the ClimateIMC (www.climateimc.org/) and the emerging AlternativesIMC project (docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/IndymediaAlternatives) are taking the call to become the media in new directions.

Here in Aotearoa there are ongoing discussions about how to involve more people in the activities of our IMC and the global Indymedia network, how to make sure our working structures are open to participation and our decision-making is transparent and accountable. We are planning a Convergence of people interested in learning more about Indymedia, making more use of the media tools it offers or getting involved in maintaining and evolving those tools. This is currently planned for early February in Tamaki Makaurau/ Auckland, venue to be confirmed.

To be kept informed about Convergence plans and follow the discussions from which all major decisions about the future of Aotearoa IMC emerge, feel free to join the imc-aotearoa email list:
lists.indymedia.org/imc-aotearoa

We are all Indymedia! Here's to another 7 years of challenging the corporate media oligopoly.