On Monday me and my friend actually installed Mambo, an open source cms. Initially, the solution was intended to be used for the Peace and Justice Centre in Edinburgh and temporarily hosted under Moving Pages, but now the whole project seems to collapse, from my point of view. The Peace and Justice Centre mainly consists of elderly volunteers, not very tech

On Sunday, there were Linux install days, organised by the Edinburgh Linux User Group, called Edlug. To give some sort of statement, I have been reading their email list in the archive, but unfortunately, they are quite tech and geek based. There is hardly any political or philosophical discussion, and most of the Edlug members seem to want to stay away from activists as far as they can without leaving their computer. At first, I just went because of my friend, but once I got there it was actually quite nice. After drinking lots of tea, I found some places on the computer and just tried out different Linux systems.

On Saturday I went to the Community Media Association, see AGM. I blacked my way in as I said I would be from Indymedia. So there were all the professional community media makers trying to make decisions, and most of them had only one aim: give more money and give a frequency. Both main objectives seem to feed primarily into one: Secure my job! Sadly enough, actually rarely anybody seemed to be concerned with Community Media as a tool for change, as a tool for empowerment. There was hardly no practical approach and so much infighting over power which doesn’t even exist yet.

The last days were rather uneventful if it would not have been for Edinburgh’s Peace and Justice Centre. A couple of older Quakers run this resource situated in the lower part of St.Johns church in Edinburgh. Committed to non-violence, their mission is to change the world. Their favourite groups are Scottish CND and Trident Ploughshares, as far as I know. Anyway, as I am on the computer course our final project is to build a website for a client. As I did not want to be too embarrassed, choosing something political but non-controversial, the Peace and Justice Centre asked me if I could do so when I tried booking the room for Indymedia.

On Friday we finally had the Lost Film Festival here in Edinburgh. It was great, absolutely fantastic! We didn’t get to see the promised “riot porn” though, but we got to see other fantastic funny short clips. One of the most amazing films was a small documentary about the Yes Men, who maintain the spoof website gatt.org. There are actually intellectuals falling for this website, inviting expert speakers to their conferences and getting the most amazing spoof speeches out of the assumedly WTO representatives. Also to see was the “Jerry Springer Show” spoof and the “Ring of Free trade”, which was fantastic!