Seeking PPI Liason

[borgs8472]

I'm looking for one or many volunteers to coordinate communication with PPI.

Are you:
* A full paid member of PPUK?
* Semi regular contributor to BOTH PPUK and PPI? (forums or other channels)
* If not, do you plan to be?

And of course do you have:
* Passion for pirate politics?

If you answered 'yes' to those question, this role could be for you.

Possible duties:
* Reposting of PPUK ideas that are origonal but not sufficiently UK specific to warrant further discussions on PPUK
* Summary reports of PPI activities to PPUK on the forums (maybe in the mailshot in the future!)
* Tracking divergent EU views on EU leglisation relevant to pirate politics
* Encouraging UK members to participate on PPI where there is insufficient UK representation
* Encouraging non-UK members from PPI or elsewhere to participate in PPUK where non-UK representation is needed
* Seeking per country liasions (e.g. for piratenpartei.de, piratpartiet.se)

Perks:
* Forum moderator with associated powers
* Web team forum access
* Key liasion in our international policies
* Will be even more important come EU elections.

[AndrewTindall]

I think the obvious candidate here would be Duke, if he's up for it.

[epriezka]

I'm really confused by the supposed need for one/many volunteers to coord communication with PPI. PPI is not a political party - meaning 99% of its purpose is communication. So why do we need UK-level 'coordination' of PPI communication? See below to understand why I don't see the value of this role...

Possible duties:
* Reposting of PPUK ideas that are origonal but not sufficiently UK specific to warrant further discussions on PPUK

That arguably covers most of what we discuss - the internet, patents, international law... none of them are very UK specific... and if it gets reposted to PPI, what do we expect them to do with it? They don't have policies because they're not a political party.

* Summary reports of PPI activities to PPUK on the forums (maybe in the mailshot in the future!)

Surely PPI should produce one summary report of what they do and circulate it to all nations, instead of having all nations write their own separate summaries of what they see PPI doing?

* Tracking divergent EU views on EU leglisation relevant to pirate politics

Again, this is a job for PPI (or rather PP Europe - to the extent that sub-classification exists) not a job for each national party.

* Encouraging UK members to participate on PPI where there is insufficient UK representation

What does this mean? Why would UK representation be insufficient? Why does the role involve encouraging others to participate and not just doing the participation itself?

* Encouraging non-UK members from PPI or elsewhere to participate in PPUK where non-UK representation is needed

I find it even harder to work out what this is for. Why in general would a national party need PPI support - and why does it need a special UK role to find PPI people to help us? Why not just find help within the UK? Why not just rely on somebody using some common sense and asking for help on the rare occasions we need it?

* Seeking per country liasions (e.g. for piratenpartei.de, piratpartiet.se)

Again, what is the goal here other than communication because we assume all communication is inherently good? Why look for bilateral comms with national parties outside of using PPI as a conduit for communication?

My point here is that not all communication is good. We can prioritize. Too much communication or ineffective communications ends up becoming so much noise - and then rapidly turns into background noise as people learn to ignore it.

Fyi, I contacted the co-Presidents of PPI a couple of weeks ago, to ask them to participate in my podcast, so they could explain to interested listeners what PPI is for and what is happening with their planned international conference. Problem is, they've not been very good at responding to the request. Part of the reason for inviting them to interview is that I've asked questions about the role of PPI before, and felt there's been some reluctance/inability to answer. So maybe we should be fixing some more basic things about international communication before implementing this many-to-many nexus of communication. I mean, a lot of these suggested duties presuppose a knowledge of what PPI is there to do... but are you sure you know what PPI is there to do? I don't.

[Duke]

I think that I had better wade in here...

I think the obvious candidate here would be Duke, if he's up for it.

At the moment, I am not in a position to act as PPI liaison or international co-ordinator for PPI because of my current role within PPI (and it potentially creating a conflict of interest). Obviously in the event that I step down from (or am voted off) the Coreteam, I will be happy to put myself forward for such a role.

*puts on PPI hat*
The reason that PPI is looking for liaisons and co-ordinators is to speed up communication with pirates. Under the current situation, if anyone comes to us asking for contact details for PPUK, (or if we want to get in touch with PPUK about something; e.g. setting up the ACTA taskforce) the best we can do is point them towards the website or give them Andy's email. At the moment, Andy is the only person on our mailing list for PPUK and while this may well work for now (while he isn't too busy) but once the party grows (assuming it does) he may have too much else going on. We've already seen this with some of the other parties (particularly PPSe and PPDe) when the leaders are too busy to deal with every PPI-related or international issue. For example, I wonder how many PPUK members are aware of the current taskforces that PPI is running - the ACTA, conference and statutes ones - these were all advertised to PP leaders, posted on the PPI site and the mailing list, but from what I have seen, the information doesn't seem to have spread all the way to the PPUK membership.

The idea behind the International Co-ordinator is that each party would have a designated person (which could be the leader) who PPI could trust to act as a go-between for the PPs and PPI. This person would get fairly regular updates (I'm currently looking into setting up a weekly newsletter) on the status of the pirate movement and would be responsible for relaying the relevant information to the appropriate people at their party (so serious issues could be mentioned to the leader/board, general information posted on forums, big stories mentioned in blogs etc.). The person would also be the first point of contact for any international organisation or individual (so if PPI was asked by the media of one country about a particular party, as we have been, we can forward them). We would also encourage the parties to assign one of their delegate positions to this person as they would likely be more of an "expert" in the relevant affairs. [Also, it would likely be that the liaison would be given certain privileges on the PPI website and forums as well as PPUK ones, but we will be looking into this in more detail when we set up official memberlists.]

The advantage to the party of having a liaison is that the leader or board do not receive as much "random news" from PPI/PPs and would not need to focus as much on international issues and could spend more time on their own party. The liaison would have the time to become more familiar with and involved in the international scene which should help the party be more effective there (in particular, this might help avoid having parties cover the same or similar ground). It is important to remember that much of what is in our (current) manifesto cannot be achieved at the national level; even if we somehow won the next general election with an overwhelming majority, we wouldn't be able to reduce copyright without risking severe fines from international organisations. PPUK needs international support and co-operation.

Now, obviously you could say that as PPI's only job at the moment seems to be communicating with parties it should be our job to do all of this. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the time or resources (or authority) to chase up every party. There are roughly two new parties starting up every week and we have had a lot of trouble getting in contact with the larger parties in particular (for example, it took about 2 weeks before we found out that our emails weren't getting through to PPSe or PPUK). Having an official international contact removes a large burden from both PPI and the PP leadership. Another point worth considering is that PPI is still very young (and small); over the next few years we hope to get into a position where we can do a significant amount of lobbying at an international level (both lobbying governments etc. and corporations) and where we can commission (and publish) our own studies on various issues (a chance to "fight back" at all the studies that I and others have spent many hours ridiculing for their glaring errors and omissions) - while the need for a PPI liaison may not seem that great now, in a year or so, when both PPI and PPUK have grown, one could be very useful.

As CAO of PPI, once PPI has statutes and can start officially accepting members, I will be strongly encouraging all PPs to put forward someone as official liaison or international co-ordinator. Yes, it will make my job a lot easier, but it should also make things easier for the various boards/committees and make the pirate movement more effective as a whole.

[borgs8472]

That arguably covers most of what we discuss - the internet, patents, international law... none of them are very UK specific... and if it gets reposted to PPI, what do we expect them to do with it? They don't have policies because they're not a political party.

I know no other suitable channel for coordinating advertising on international type file share sites to promote pirate parties. Do you have any better ideas?

Surely PPI should produce one summary report of what they do and circulate it to all nations, instead of having all nations write their own separate summaries of what they see PPI doing?

You're right, but I'm not seeing any PPI reports here, ideally at report would be disseminated to all pirate parties, but we have the language barrier to consider so I think multiple reps is an inevitability, we might as well take the inititive here.

[tracking divergent views] is a job for PPI (or rather PP Europe - to the extent that sub-classification exists) not a job for each national party.

Again, I'm getting no reports from PPI currently, are you?

What does this mean? Why would UK representation be insufficient? Why does the role involve encouraging others to participate and not just doing the participation itself?

For example, other national parties might want more info on our CCTV policies, something we're taking a lead in.

Why not just rely on somebody using some common sense and asking for help on the rare occasions we need it?

Who? where? Through what channels? Putting these channels in place would allow swift responses if and when we need them

Again, what is the goal here other than communication because we assume all communication is inherently good? Why look for bilateral comms with national parties outside of using PPI as a conduit for communication?

I hope you'll be meeting the german pirates who are visiting the UK in april/may :p I've looking forward to this.

My point here is that not all communication is good.

Disagree, disagree, disagree.

We can prioritize. Too much communication or ineffective communications ends up becoming so much noise - and then rapidly turns into background noise as people learn to ignore it.

That's the whole point. I can't be bothered to check in at PPI regularly and see what's up because there's too much getting up to speed, looking for the pertinent vs irrelevent discussions. Hence the role of this person.

Fyi, I contacted the co-Presidents of PPI a couple of weeks ago, to ask them to participate in my podcast, so they could explain to interested listeners what PPI is for and what is happening with their planned international conference. Problem is, they've not been very good at responding to the request. Part of the reason for inviting them to interview is that I've asked questions about the role of PPI before, and felt there's been some reluctance/inability to answer. So maybe we should be fixing some more basic things about international communication before implementing this many-to-many nexus of communication. I mean, a lot of these suggested duties presuppose a knowledge of what PPI is there to do... but are you sure you know what PPI is there to do? I don't.

Indeed! Role of liason is to find out what PPI can do for PPUK and vice-versa!

[borgs8472]

<snip>

Thanks duke. This role doesn't have to be another hat you wear, but you'd be in a position to suggest to PPI/PPUK members to step forward for this position. Actual international coordination is a huge task, and not one I want to involve myself in specifically. However what good does come out of PPI, PPUK needs to know about, and what services PPI can offer PPUK we also need to know.

[rancidpunk]

If it's just about disseminating information I'll do it.

[epriezka]

For example, I wonder how many PPUK members are aware of the current taskforces that PPI is running - the ACTA, conference and statutes ones - these were all advertised to PP leaders, posted on the PPI site and the mailing list, but from what I have seen, the information doesn't seem to have spread all the way to the PPUK membership.

Good point! But how is information supposed to spread? I emailed the two co-Presidents of the PPI on two occasions, asking for a podcast interview which will give them an opportunity to explain what they are doing on all these scores... only to have one of them finally get back to me with a "we'll get back to you" message.

So what should I do now? Chase them for an interview? In other words, should I put more time into chasing them to respond because they don't spend time responding? Put this into perspective - I've already put a lot of time into creating an extra comms channel of use for communication from pirates to pirates, but I'm getting the impression that PPI is run by people who don't really care that much about reaching out from PPI to worldwide supporters parties, but who instead emphasize how worldwide supporters and national parties should make the effort to support PPI. That's the wrong way around - only national parties can get votes and influence. Only supporters can go out and win the hearts and minds of fellow voters If PPI isn't supporting national parties and international supporters, it has no purpose.

Contrast the behaviour of the co-Presidents to your own behaviour, Duke. Whenever I email you, I know you will respond immediately. In contrast, my experience of most of the leaders of PPI - past and present - is that if I contact them I'm lucky to get a response. That is despite the fact that I'm the kind of person who usually only gets in touch with people when there's some specific and worthwhile business that needs doing - I'm not the sort to engage in idle gossip. So what makes them so busy they don't have time to take advantage of a freebie opportunity to tell pirates what they're up to? How much invitation and encouragement do they need?

My point here is that debates about roles, positions, channels of communication etc are hypnotic but misleading. It doesn't matter how bad a comms structure is, if people make the effort to communicate. And it doesn't matter how good a comms structure is, if people don't make the effort to communicate. I think the debate about PPI comms structures is displaced because the people running PPI don't communicate. Just look at the front page of the PPI website and say you don't see my point. To take one of your examples - what does it say about ACTA? The last update about ACTA was dated 28th November... so if you're doing great work on ACTA, why aren't you doing a better job of publicizing it to everyone?

It is important to remember that much of what is in our (current) manifesto cannot be achieved at the national level; even if we somehow won the next general election with an overwhelming majority, we wouldn't be able to reduce copyright without risking severe fines from international organisations. PPUK needs international support and co-operation.

I think you are wide of the mark on this. Even if a national party would need to coordinate with others, it wouldn't need PPI to do it for them if the national party was successful. If PPUK had even just one MP, or one MEP, the resources available to that MP or MEP would dwarf the resources of PPI. The annual comms budget for an elected rep would pay for PPI a hundred times over. And if we don't win actual seats, then the role of PPI in reducing copyright etc is irrelevant - we won't be able to make any headway without winning national elections.

Now, obviously you could say that as PPI's only job at the moment seems to be communicating with parties it should be our job to do all of this. Unfortunately, we do not currently have the time or resources (or authority) to chase up every party.

But you don't say what you're chasing them up to do! Why is PPI 'chasing' PPUK, except to ask for PPUK to attend PPI's conference? We're all on the internet - what makes it so hard for PPI to communicate globally with all the national parties? And why is so much communication directed at leaders, and not directly at all pirates? Why need coordinators to communicate with pirates in general - we're all using the internet!?!

There are roughly two new parties starting up every week and we have had a lot of trouble getting in contact with the larger parties in particular (for example, it took about 2 weeks before we found out that our emails weren't getting through to PPSe or PPUK). Having an official international contact removes a large burden from both PPI and the PP leadership.

I think the important word here is 'burden'. It's evident that PPI and international coordination is a burden. What's not so obvious is what benefit it brings. Time and again I'm hearing vague suggestions for the benefits PPI will bring. The burdens are tangible and obvious - the benefits less so. And if PPI can't sell itself to pirates like me, it's worth asking about PPI's competence to sell pirate politics to the wider world.

Another point worth considering is that PPI is still very young (and small); over the next few years we hope to get into a position where we can do a significant amount of lobbying at an international level (both lobbying governments etc. and corporations) and where we can commission (and publish) our own studies on various issues (a chance to "fight back" at all the studies that I and others have spent many hours ridiculing for their glaring errors and omissions) - while the need for a PPI liaison may not seem that great now, in a year or so, when both PPI and PPUK have grown, one could be very useful.

I find this very troubling. PPI does not have and does not aspire to have a democratic relationship with individual pirates around the world. It does not offer to stand in elections and let ordinary voters express support for it. It only serves as a vassal for the leaders of national parties, and even that is based on some peculiar notion that a national party for India or the USA is of equal weight to the global pirate movement as a national party for Lichtenstein or for the Vatican City, or that a vibrant party of 50,000 members is equivalent to a party made up of four guys without a clue. But now you intend to lobby? On behalf of whom? Not voters. Not even pirates. You can only claim to speak for pirates via a one-step-removed appointment process. The PPI is about as democratic as the House of Lords, which in other words is not very democratic. It is confused to suggest that the PPI should be lobbying governments, and not stepping back and letting national parties be the focus for influence and change. But I have to say, I find this no more confused than most of what I hear about the role of PPI

That arguably covers most of what we discuss - the internet, patents, international law... none of them are very UK specific... and if it gets reposted to PPI, what do we expect them to do with it? They don't have policies because they're not a political party.

I know no other suitable channel for coordinating advertising on international type file share sites to promote pirate parties. Do you have any better ideas?

Why is this a priority? For example, suppose someone immediately takes on the job of coordination. Exactly how much effort is going to go into the kind of advertising that will help PPUK in the general election? Advertising not connected to elections is ineffective for political parties. It is appropriate to pressure groups. But I thought the rise of Pirate Parties was special because they intend to compete in elections - not just raise awareness in some ill-defined way. There's already pressure groups if that's all people want to be involved in.

Surely PPI should produce one summary report of what they do and circulate it to all nations, instead of having all nations write their own separate summaries of what they see PPI doing?

You're right, but I'm not seeing any PPI reports here, ideally at report would be disseminated to all pirate parties, but we have the language barrier to consider so I think multiple reps is an inevitability, we might as well take the inititive here.

So why not just go on to the PPI site and ask for a single volunteer to send out a report on a regular basis!?! And if there are language barriers, wouldn't you think that English is the one language that the PPI might prioritize above all others!?!

Again, I'm getting no reports from PPI currently, are you?

Which is why I'm questioning why you want to put the burden on PPUK, when it should be PPI. There's no need to coordinate if PPI just told people what they are doing. It doesn't take so much effort - they could just update their blog more than once every month! And they could tell people what PPI is doing, instead of mostly recycling news about what the national parties are doing! The purpose of PPI is to support the national parties, not the other way around, but I don't get any sense they actually do that.

My point here is that not all communication is good.

Disagree, disagree, disagree.

Wow, I don't get this at all. Weren't you the guy who wrote:

too many people kept starting new threads for each bit of news that they found on the web which led to the inevitable mess with nobody organising it.

What I'm asking is why every national party needs to put effort into 'co-ordinating comms' with PPI - when their output is very low and they don't actually do very much to support national parties? Why, for example, can't PPI just do some of the things outlined above - like issuing a regular and easy-to-read report to all pirates explaining what the heck they're doing?!?

We can prioritize. Too much communication or ineffective communications ends up becoming so much noise - and then rapidly turns into background noise as people learn to ignore it.

That's the whole point. I can't be bothered to check in at PPI regularly and see what's up because there's too much getting up to speed, looking for the pertinent vs irrelevent discussions. Hence the role of this person.

Wow, again. I don't see how we're disagreeing here. Why doesn't somebody in PPI work out what is relevant and put some effort into doing the filtering of important from irrelevant on their website? Surely if done at PPI, the task is done by one person, whereas if it is done by each national party it is done by a different person in each national party... can't you see my point about ineffective and inefficient communication?

Put it this way. Suppose somebody in PPUK actually wants to do the job you've suggested. They might as well do it by organizing the info on PPI's site, not on PPUK's site. It will take the same volunteer precisely as much time to do it either way, but the whole world will see the benefit at PPI's site, whereas presumably only UK supporters will see the benefit on PPUK's site...

Indeed! Role of liason is to find out what PPI can do for PPUK and vice-versa!

But surely that's like saying we know PPI is a good thing, and the first thing we need to do is to find out why it is a good thing! Wouldn't it make more sense for somebody in PPI to come up with some constructive proposals for what they intend to do (I emphasize the word 'do' to distinguish it from the word 'communicate') before we talk about the appropriate communication channels to support their initiatives? And to reiterate - the goal of PPI should be to support PPUK and other national parties, and not vice versa.

[epriezka]

If it's just about disseminating information I'll do it.

Careful John. Be sure you know what you're volunteering for before you volunteer.

We've got two differing conceptions of the role above. What isn't made clear is the influence the link-man will have on decision-making. Neither conception makes it clear, though Duke seems to imply a role which does influence PPI decision-making, and is not just for disseminating information.

If the person volunteering is effectively speaking on behalf of PPUK, and PPI is speaking on behalf of the whole Pirate Movement, we should democratize the position - by having an election of the go-between or at least a member vote to ratify an appointment made by the exec. Otherwise, the position becomes an absurd anti-democratic loophole, where somebody with no support from the membership gets to talk on behalf of PPUK and hence gets to influence what the whole pirate movement says...

If there's an election, I'll stand. I'll stand because I pretty obviously want what's best for PPUK and so I can be trusted to push PPI to do its job of supporting our national party and all national parties. I also can be trusted to do the job in a business-like fashion, without any interest in giving myself a fancy title or getting up myself...

On the other hand, if there is no election, and no vote by members, to my mind this would demonstrate an anti-democratic and corruptive influence of the PPI on the pirate movement - one that supposedly believes in freedom, transparency, democracy, participation, openness... and I would want nothing to do with the role.

[Duke]

Before we go any further, I think it should be noted that "liaison" has more than one i in it.

snip

You wrote over 2000 words across those posts, I'll try to cover as much as I can.

In terms of contacting the co-presidents, I think you might want to wait for them to get back to you - that sounds like a reasonable idea to me. I think that Valio has been in Brussels for the last few days and so may be too busy to do anything right now and CoreTX is probably still recovering from a complete hardware breakdown last week. It is also worth remembering that could potentially be getting similar requests from [url="http://int.piratenpartei.de/Global_Pirate_Party_memberscount"]tens of thousands[/url] of pirate party members around the world (as well as non-pirates). Yes, I try to reply immediately to emails, but then I know that you're not just another random pirate and, to be blunt, I have nothing else to do. [Also, if we are being blunt (and a little hypocritical), posts of several thousand words can be a little off-putting.] Yes, you have set up a very shiny new comms system for pirates and it is now linked on the PPI website and a good place to further advertise it would be on pp.int.general.

PPI is currently run by people who are frantically trying to get PPI set up and make sure that the 40ish parties (or at least the core few) are talking to each other and working together. Yes, likely Valio (who is the more public face of the presidency) will be happy to give an interview at some point, but there is a feeling that we're trying to focus on getting things done more than talking about getting things done (that has been one of the main troubles with the previous PPI attempts). Yes, getting votes is important for PPs, but PPI can't really help much with that directly (other than linking to the individual sites etc.) - what we can do (and I understand, what we are already working on) is getting in contact with national or multinational corporations and organisations (something a small political party likely can't do) and opening discussions with them.

You mentioned the ACTA taskforce and I think that is a good example of why we need PPI liaisons; the taskforce was announced on the PPI website, pp.int.general and the Pirate Party leaders mailing list. As far as I know, it wasn't then posted anywhere on the PPUK website; something that a PPI liaison could have done. Yes, obviously I could have done so, but I can't go through 40+ forums doing that. The same thing goes for the other taskforces and the conference.

Yes, PPI is currently small; but we are still working on laying out what it should be doing. An MEP does have access to far more funds than we do at the moment (in fact, we are hoping that CE will cover some of the expenses for the upcoming conference) but once the organisation is set up properly, we should be able to call on the resources of all pirate parties and help them to work together. Also, all it takes is one good corporate sponsor/donor and PPI could quickly overtake most parties in terms of funding (although objections are being raised to that sort of thing). On the subject of successful parties not needing PPI to help communication; were you aware that Rick Falkvinge will be debating for the pirate movement (against Feargal Sharkey) at the Cambridge Union next week? As far as I know, there has been no direct contact with him about this (I will try to get a reliable email address for him tomorrow) despite the fact that we are currently planning to put up a GE candidate there. If both PPSe and PPUK had a liaison officer then it would be a simple matter of one talking directly to the other to get something sorted out - yes, there is no need for PPI to be directly involved... other than in making sure the relevant contact details were available (and making sure parties know about each other).

PPI would be chasing PPUK to make sure the general members are aware of the current areas that PPI needs help with; I know that you seem to feel that PPI is useless and that you're opposed to any sort of physical meeting but I'm not going to try to debate those issues again with you. Yes, we are all using the internet, but having 80,000 people in one IRC channel at once, or using one forum is unlikely to be particularly productive, hence the need for co-ordinators.

The benefits of PPI aren't obvious to you at the moment; and that's not surprising - the current 'incarnation' has been around since late October; we still don't have statutes and aren't receiving much support (just criticism) from the current pirate communities. At the moment, the main people we can help are the new parties by offering them centralised forum space and a sense of "respectability". I have mentioned other future benefits above and yes, they are vague, but we are working on making them more concrete. As for being more of a burden than a benefit, I think that the same could be said of any umbrella organisation initially (and it has certainly been said of the EU and UN). If you think that international cooperation is a burden with no obvious benefits... well, that's your opinion. I disagree.

Perhaps rather than "lobbying governments" I should have said "help focus lobbying efforts on an international level". And I can understand your confusion at the purpose and functions of PPI; we are still trying to get a consensus from PPs as to what they want. Personally, I quite like the House of Lords and, having watched the DEB debates, have more faith in them than the Commons, but that's a different issue. We have already discussed the issue of voting within PPI - I don't want to go into that again.

As mentioned before, a PPI newsletter is a good idea, but who does it get sent to? Every one of the 80,000 pirate members? Would it not be better for the letter to be sent to one person (or two people) from each party who can then publish it as each party requires (and translate if necessary). At the moment, PPI is trying not to interfere with the running of individual pirate parties (i.e. talking directly to members).

There's no need to coordinate if PPI just told people what they are doing.

How? By posting our every move on each PP forum? By emailing pp.int.general or every individual pirate with everything we do? The "blog" on our front page is more of a place for major developments rather than posting every little detail.

Why doesn't somebody in PPI work out what is relevant and put some effort into doing the filtering of important from irrelevant on their website.

What is relevant for one party may be trivial for another. So yes, it would be good if we could have someone working out what is relevant and filtering it and then distributing it to the parties... sounds a bit like a PPI liaison officer to me. Each party has their own ideas, their own priorities, their own agenda; yes PPI will try to focus on that which is common, but the 6 of us may have trouble working out the needs of dozens of parties. Given how many problems we are having within PPUK with communication between the few hundred members and the NEC, surely you would recognise the need to have intermediaries between such a large number of people (in the case of PPI, several orders of magnitude larger) and a small committee trying to work for them?

As a member of PPUK, I agree that any such position should be voted on by the members (and yes, that person should stand for what is best for their party; which is partly why I cannot take such a position right now). As a member of the PPI Coreteam, I don't feel I can comment on how such a liaison is selected as PPI does not wish to interfere with the internal affairs of parties.

You seem to think that this would be better if it was a PPI position rather than a PPUK one? Isn't the idea that is it both? Anyways, that's enough from me for tonight. I know that you seem to disapprove of the current PPI and think it is a waste of time and effort at the moment - I disagree and it looks like no number of emails and forum posts will change this.

[borgs8472]

If the person volunteering is effectively speaking on behalf of PPUK, and PPI is speaking on behalf of the whole Pirate Movement, we should democratize the position - by having an election of the go-between or at least a member vote to ratify an appointment made by the exec. Otherwise, the position becomes an absurd anti-democratic loophole, where somebody with no support from the membership gets to talk on behalf of PPUK and hence gets to influence what the whole pirate movement says...

This goes for several of the volunteer positions I'm organising at the moment to be fair.

Hope to see you next week for the London meet to discuss this amoung other things!

[rancidpunk]

I most certainly don't want to anything more than pass the information backward and forwards between PPI and PPUK. That is not so complicated and I can't see a problem in letting all the members see the newsletter by posting it on a thread, complete transparency and all that. If it is speaking on behalf of PPUK I'd rather cross the channel in a bathtub.

[epriezka]

I most certainly don't want to anything more than pass the information backward and forwards between PPI and PPUK. That is not so complicated and I can't see a problem in letting all the members see the newsletter by posting it on a thread, complete transparency and all that. If it is speaking on behalf of PPUK I'd rather cross the channel in a bathtub.

But don't you find the idea of a go-between - if that is all it is - rather odd? We're talking about people using the internet to talk to a go-between so the go-between can use the internet to talk to other people on the internet... what's the need for the man in the middle?

[rancidpunk]

Passing information to a liason person would ensure that nobody could say they didn't get it or at least have someone to blame.

It would all depend on whether people actually bother to respond to information passed from PPI to us, i.e. did they acknowledge that they actually got the email so that PPI know that we are aware of things like the Cambridge debate. We haven't got the best track record of responding quickly to anything so there may be a need for some sort of comms liason sec.

Anything else is another matter 'cos whoever liases with PPI and speaks to them on our behalf needs to be elected or ratified by our members.

A volunteer secretary to shuffle the digital paperwork and make sure the bosses get their mail is all I'm offering to do.

[epriezka]

snip

You wrote over 2000 words across those posts, I'll try to cover as much as I can.

Touché! But perhaps the wordcount means I'm taking a serious subject seriously... Is that wrong?

This time I'll try to keep to the maxim that 'less is more'...

surely you would recognise the need to have intermediaries between such a large number of people (in the case of PPI, several orders of magnitude larger) and a small committee trying to work for them?

Well, obviously, I don't recognize the need. That's because (1) I'm distrustful of elites and (2) I love the way the internet is a force for democracy that eliminates the need for elites and middle-men. Record industry A&R mean deciding who has talent? Don't need them. Insurance brokers to get you the best quote? Don't need them. 'Authorities' to write an encyclopedia? Don't need them. News agencies to get the latest info on protests in Iran? Don't need them. Physical meetings to make a decision or start a political party? Don't need them (we didn't with PPUK).

So why do we need an elite (the PPI committee) and middlemen (the coordinators) so badly in the Pirate movement, when the overall trend is that the internet does away with elites and middlemen?

By the way, you took the arguments I posted to PPI's mail list about decision-making in PPI, and have now badly misrepresented them on PPUK's forum as saying I am opposed to PPI meetings. I take that as a great example of why comms middle-men can make comms worse instead of better! (I urge anyone who took an interest in how Duke described my arguments about a democratic deficit in PPI to go read the originals on the PPI archive instead of trusting his misrepresentation).

Every week a few guys in Canada run a weekly news podcast. They then post a message on the forums of lots of national parties, letting them all know what's been happening. Q: How do those Canadians manage to do all that communication without having lots of coordinators? A: (1) They love doing it (2) They work hard. Those Canadians do a great job without help. If they can do it, what's stopping PPI?

[borgs8472]

'Authorities' to write an encyclopedia? Don't need them.

You'll must know how hardcore some wikifiddlers are however. It takes motivation to get the digital paperwork going, I just thought creating as position for the post would be an incentive for someone to volunteer.

If this was happening without organisation I wouldn't have proposed it.

[epriezka]

If this was happening without organisation I wouldn't have proposed it.

I know your motives are good. It's just that we draw opposite inferences from the same fact. You infer that if nobody's doing it, we should incentivize somebody to do it by giving them a title, privileges, recognition, status... whatever. I infer that if nobody's doing it, then nobody (in PPI, in PPUK, wherever) thinks it's worthwhile enough to do it!

Don't get me wrong, in a perfect world it would be nice if somebody did it. But given other priorities where we're currently failing - raising funds, setting up local parties, getting election agents in place to support our candidates - the list goes on and on - I wouldn't highlight this role and prioritize finding someone to fill it.

[borgs8472]

I am working on many roles currently, PPI liason is just one of them, it isn't a priority but I'm happy to work in all directions.

[borgs8472]

It's been agreed this will be an elected role. However I've not heard from the exec about this for weeks now.

[borgs8472]

Unstickying thread as Eric's doing this now.