Though Cowards Flinch

What I missed

I’ve enjoyed some of the more balanced reports about this weekend’s first Netroots UK. 

I was absent because I felt my priorities lay with a) the Oldham byelection b) local constituency work c) childcare.  I was not absent because I wanted, like some other bloggers I can mention, to express my puritan leftwinger scorn for people coming together to discuss stuff and have an enjoyable time to boot. 

Yes, it may have strayed into Guardianista waffleshop at times, and yes it may have had people for whom I have not the slightest respect droning on for yonks, but bringing together 500 people to discuss how to be better at leftwingish stuff, even if you can’t get them all to agree on stuff, by the time everybody agrees it’s time to go to the pub, is not that bad an idea, surely. 

So I look forward to being able to make it to another one of the shindigs. 

Of course, I’ll get frustrated if people insist on telling me stuff I know better than them, and have spent 20 years longer than them doing (if they ever did it in the first place), and I’d certainly like to see future events simply leave out the speeches from the self-appointed arbiters of what it is to be appropriately leftwing, thus leaving more time for people who actually do stuff  ’on the ground’ (I’ll leave that term and the other highly contestable term ‘grassroots’, uncontested for now) to make specific demands for support of those same arbiters.

But if I can I’ll be at Netroots 2.0, and show the willingness to engage that I sometimes hope other lefties would show. 

Let me then say for the record that some people, inclusive of those who actually took what Netroots 1.0 had to offer them for their own personal aggrandisement, could do with being a but more comradely (I use the word advisedly) in their support, and bit less in the way of sour grapes-y towards the people who actually got on and organised an event.  This was an event which, by the accounts I’ve read, may not have been perfect, but was pretty stimulating, allowed loads of people to bash ideas around, some of which may well end up being enacted on streets and in other public places in the months to come.

What I’ll not miss

In the meantime, I’ll be hosting a special Netroots 1.5 in the Rocket Tavern, Euston Road, London Town, at 6pm on Wednesday 12th January 2011.

This specially condensed event (my train leaves at 7.30pm) will be a tigthtly run but non-hierachical workshop covering the following two discrete themes:

• going to the bar to get Paul a beer;
• discussing the emerging social enterprise/co-operative business plan for the development of local/hyperlocal media ventures, modelled broadly on local independent newspapers like the Hackney Citizen, but with added political organisation and bite.

The project aim is to build on some of the ideas originally set out here about developing radical local new media, initially offline but with specific measures around ‘driving’ traffic online over time.  In terms of model and ethos, the new venture is as much Robert Blantchford’s uncompromising ’The Clarion’ of the late 19th century as it is new media, but there, I suggest, lies the strength.

If you think you want to be a part of this, then try to make it down the Rocket on Wednesday.  At this stage it would be useful if you could ready to provide outline ideas about how it might work in your local area, the catchment area (numbers and type of area), who you might work with to provide the initial journalistic input (but also how you might engage local people in providing their own copy), what political organising force it all might link to, and any innovative income streams you may have in mind beyond the (crucial) local adverstising and subscription/support fee structure.

Of course, I’m not guaranteeing anyone who turns up a part in all this.  There’s not going to be much scope for timewasters, so if you want in to this stage of development you’ll have to prove your serious.  This isn’t  through financial input, as the whole point is about developing a coherent (social enterprise) investment package to make it work, but it will mean devotion of time and energy.

Of course, if you can’t make it tomorrow, send me an email for more details. 

Though not, I hasten to add, if you’re just going to whinge.