our timeline

Submitted by mynweb on Sun, 02/11/2007 - 1:55pm.

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

OK, so me and sarah were talking last night and we started coming up with a timeline. To give you an idea about how dedicated sarah is, we had this meeting after she stuck her finger in a hand blender... i just wrapped it up in a paper towel and electrical tape, we had a meeting, then we went to the hospital and she got four stitches. Sarah's hardcore!

Anyway, so we made a little short term timeline...

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So our first milestone is March 9th at NCOR (the National Conference on Organized Resistance, an annual conference in DC that we tend to go to, and actually the place that we came up with the name "Misled Youth", two years ago) is coming up soon, and we have a few basic things we have to get done before we go.

Website

- We want at least 12 active users. This shouldn't be too hard once we get around to promoting on other websites

- We wanna get the zine group started. We're gonna post some more ideas about how we think that's gonna work... stay tuned.

- We're gonna start using the blogs on our site to keep self-education journals. We hope others will follow.

- I'd like to finish fixing all the sloppy css and finish fine-tuning the site's appearance.

Local Group (NYC)

- Weekly meetings! There once was a time when we actually did this... we wanna start again! We need to start again to plan for the Anarchist Bookfair with YELL!, which we'll get to in a second...

- do crafts in our house. We have a cool house that nobody ever comes to cause you gotta take a boat to get there. So we have to lure kids to our house with stencils and silkscreens.

Materials

- 1-3 flyer designs to promote this site.

- Our side of the split we wanna do with YELL! Our info packet is too outdated to hand out again this year... there are a lot of new ideas that aren't expressed in it. So we figured we'll put together as much as possible, make a mini-info packet, and hand that out.

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On April 14th we're tabling and conducting a workshop with YELL! at the anarchist bookfair, so that's our next milestone.

Website

- The most important thing, we feel, is going to be the misPlace.
This is going to pave the way for all the other features on this site we wanna utilize, aside from just the forums. This is gonna be a fair amount of work, but we think we can do it. Hopefully at this point we will have around 24 active users.

- misGuidance is probably pretty easy to set up, but we're not gonna start it until we're confident that people will really receive proper attention, which requires more users.

- Get Involved section- which will be a list of organizations and resources that will be categorized, searchable, and maintained by a lot of people, not just us.

Local Group (NYC)

- Well, obviously we have to prepare/promote for the workshop we're doing.

- We'd like to really have some local learning groups and collaborative projects. I'm gonna write a whole new thing about that next, and hopefully it will be more clear what the difference is, since it's easy to get confused.

Materials

- We would like to have the split zine done.

- Sarah wants to make a promotional "kit" thing, which she'll explain later.

- I wanna finish this poster-project idea I had last summer. Basically, I want to do the 5 elements of Punk Rock (zines, activism, bands, DIY culture and knowledge) and screenprint them, then sell them as a series. The zine one is already done, as you can see on the zine group, but I haven't started the others yet. I'll put 80% of the proceeds into misled youth.

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The Final Milestone we have is the YELL! conference on May 19. We didn't plan much for it yet, since we don't know how much of the other stuff we'll actually get done, but we know at least two obvious things: another workshop to plan, and we've been commissioned to make a promotional poster.

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This may seem like a lot of stuff, but misled youth has had its roots in this kind of reckless ambition from the beginning. It will be impossible for me and sarah to do all of this ourselves and still continue to self-educate... it's like working 3 jobs and being in college. - we need help!

Sun, 02/11/2007 - 3:56pm

SWAMI

Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25

ok, so.....

Here are my suggestions in response:

1) We need to figure out who is really going to work on these projects or just here for whatever.
2) We need to all meet up somehwere (for NYC) and assign certain parts of projects per person/group.
3) We need to set deadlines for our work so nobody slacks off. Or if you do, you get real nervous as due date approaches and your ass gets to work.
4) We need to talk to the other organizations more.

That's it.

Mon, 02/12/2007 - 6:45pm

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

yup

1) Yes. I am going to work on everything. I would definitely like to know other people's commitments, but I'd also like to not force or pressure people into working.

2) Yes. We've been meaning to do this for a while. Actually, we want weekly meetings. Our house is nice and everyone gets free dinner if they come here, but if people want to meet in manhattan that's cool. Sarah might have something in mind for a date, so I'll wait for her before I start trying to set things up.

3) Yes. Deadlines are important. We almost never finish by our deadlines, but we should still set them. That's something the NYC group can do when we meet...

4) Yes. We had a meeting with YELL! not to long ago, but we should have another, which will probably be the same meeting we have for the NYC Local Group, since they're part of that. Sarah's been trying to get in touch with All City, but I guess not having much luck.

Basically, yeah we should have a meeting.

Tue, 02/13/2007 - 11:08pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

local meeting

I asked sarah about when we should have a local meeting and she said maybe the weekend after this one. By this date, my personal goals/commitments are:
a) really start the zine group. I think it'll really start moving fast once we start.
b) have at least one design done for the NCOR flyers
c) have an outline of what we want to get together for our side of the split
d)have a good list of sites for us to start promoting on.

cool. on reflection, our goals for before NCOR aren't that crazy. I think if I can get all that stuff done we'll be in good shape.

and if anyone else wants to volunteer for things, feel free. Our new mini-info packet is something people can help with if they want, but you gotta be well versed in what we're trying to do (which should hopefully be apparent by reading the content on this site), and you have to be willing to have it edited. there's a forum thread I'm gonna revive where we can talk about that stuff.

Fri, 02/16/2007 - 9:14pm

xcriteria

Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04

I agree we should start

I agree we should start having meetings, and next weekend sounds good.

I'm sorry that I haven't contributed with tech work to the extent I'd intended to. Unfortunately I have to deal with my mood and energy levels, which got completely shot for a while. I'm doing quite a lot better now, but I want to be careful not to promise more than I end up delivering.

I've been thinking a lot about my life, and how much time to spend on things including MYN, personal development/learning goals, paid work, and recreation. And... what to do in each of those areas, and how build up and sustain my energy level. I'm fortunate to not have to deal with severe depression for the most part, but the problems I have with keeping my motivation and energy up have been an issue I've had to deal with basically all my life.

Anyway... I'm getting into this in this thread, because I've been part of MYN's core, but that involvement has fizzled away, and I want to get more actively involved again. I think we need to discuss what each person is comfortable doing.

Nick shouldn't have the burden of the whole site, or the whole project. We need to match up plans to how much work each person is up to, without feeling excessively pressured.

Fri, 02/16/2007 - 9:54pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

awww...

somebody heard me and sarah arguing next door Eye-wink . I really appreciate you posting this.

I have been questioning a bunch of things that I would like to express, but I don't think this is the proper thread to post that in. I'm gonna start a new one...

Sun, 03/04/2007 - 12:03pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

my assessment of our progress...

Well, ncor's in like a week. here's how we're doing...

-12 active users: no. We need to do more promotion... Brendan posted on a site and we got a bunch of new users but none of them have even logged in since they made their accounts.

-Zine Group started: no. No groups have been really initiated, though there are now three that have been brought up.

-Using Blogs: here and there, not as much as I hoped.

-Fix site's appearance: no. hopefully, that'll change soon, as someone recently agreed to help and I emailed him a huge list of to-dos and the entire website/database in a zip file. I'm so sick of tech work... but I'm fixing things here and there.

-Weekly meetings: we had a meeting. it isn't weekly... it should be. in fact, we should have a weekly meeting for every group.

-Do crafts in our house: no. we have bigger things to worry about, I don't really think this was that important.

-Flyer design: in progress

-Our side of the split: pushed back to the anarchist bookfair.

So not much is happening. I don't think it's a matter of anyone's fault (though if it were it would probably fall on me and sarah mostly), I think it's a matter of people being either too busy or not inspired or motivated. For me it's a combination between the two.

There's not much we can do about people being busy with their own lives, but if people aren't motivated I REALLY REALLY think the learning groups and collaborative projects would solve that. So far it's poi, zines, and (maybe) silkscreening. And it's not limited to that, it can be anything you guys want. If people start doing things together, anything, Misled Youth will be a thousand times stronger, and will be able to grow.

After sitting here for a while and thinking I came to the conclusion that I'm gonna restart the zine group. People (including me) were concerned that there were more important things to worry about, like the promotional material, but right now me and sarah are working on the promotional material and having a hard time because we don't really have much to promote if this site is dead and there aren't any projects or learning groups really happening. For me zines are a more usable skill, and closer to what I'm already working on than poi, which is definitely an amazing skill to have... I just don't think I can justify spending hours and hours of my time practicing it.

So, visit the zine group to get involved... I think getting it (or something) started on the site is the most important thing on our timeline, and since I made myself the bottom-liner of it weeks ago, I'm gonna actually start bottom-lining it.

Sun, 03/04/2007 - 5:25pm

xcriteria

Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04

a few thoughts...

With learning groups... what do you think about having a self-education group, that doesn't have one specific topic? Basically, a group for discussion, sharing, etc. of self-education plans, strategies, accomplishments, etc.

On the site, I think 12 active users is going to take a while... it's a good goal, but it's going to take time. It might help to have more content on the site, for example that would show up in google searches.

With meetings, I think we should schedule and promote something at a regular time, like we used to, in Manhattan, and try to promote that. It'll be easier when it gets warmer out. Another thing is working out how much to have specifically "work" meetings, vs. just getting together to hang out, vs. a combination. What would people prefer?

Related to that, if we had a space, people could just hang out at various times, without it having to be a scheduled meeting. I think we should keep discussion about getting a space alive, even if it's going to be a long time.

With the blogs... I've started to post a few times where I never ended up submitting what I wrote. I'll post some things soon.

Sun, 03/04/2007 - 9:55pm

SWAMI

Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25

ghost ride the whip.....

space > not-space
blogging > not-blogging
self education group is a bad idea only because we have three in idle state.

shit, my comp is about to explode. bye.

Sun, 03/04/2007 - 11:29pm

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

get this off the ground

i think brendan made a lot of good suggestions

how's this: the general self ed discussions are combined with the potluck/hanging out gatherings. That could be a sunday thing. We'd also have regular weekday/manhattan meetings.

learning groups should have their own meetings whenever they like.

i checked out nick's zine post and i'm def. gonna make an effort to contribute something. I haven't wrote anything for the fuck of it in a long time.

and poi sounds so much fun!! why isn't anybody trying to get together and do it? spinning flaming oily rags around! come on!

on a more serious note, i think that in order for these groups to get off the ground, us "core" members need to start walking the talk and actually teaching ourselves something. That includes me.

and a space would be great. i really don't see one coming soon, but i really want to at least make our house that kind of place, at least in the meantime.

one small accomplishment we just made is putting together a 4 page mini-zine for ncor. also i've been putting up a lot of activist resources up here.

--sarah

Mon, 03/05/2007 - 5:01am

xcriteria

Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04

,,,

Quote:

how's this: the general self ed discussions are combined with the potluck/hanging out gatherings. That could be a sunday thing. We'd also have regular weekday/manhattan meetings.

That sounds cool.

And yeah, we should be learning and sharing and demonstrating what's possible... I will do more in that regard.

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 12:52am

SWAMI

Posts: 66
Joined: 2007-01-25

i like...

it's a better idea than the random showing up. i think it would be cool to have a space where we could spontaneously do things/work on projects, but the planned meet would probably get more done.

i'm willing to do any kind of sharing relating to music. that's my bag. i'm actually hoping to do something related to that, but i'm waiting for the other projects to get going first.

my computer didn't explode, my laptop fan is broken. gotta send it back.

Tue, 03/06/2007 - 1:09am

mynweb

Posts: 490
Joined: 2006-10-31

hey

you should start some kind of music-related project if you want...

also keep in mind that doing stuff as an individual can also be a big part of misled youth. Nick just posted this idea for the zine that you write about something you just taught yourself, that could apply to learning a new music skill.

that way yr learning shit and teaching others at the same time.

--sarah

Sat, 03/31/2007 - 4:36am

AnarchistAlice

Posts: 26
Joined: 2007-03-28

I'm going to advertise

on the other forums I am on, including

http://www.ncpunkonline.com/phpbb (or just http://www.ncpunkonline.com if you want the whole site)

you'll probably get a few members. We'll trade some, haha, we need more members on ours as well.

Keep in mind we're not completely the same as you all, but we're an alright group of people.

H=F

Sun, 04/01/2007 - 12:13am

kid_prototype

Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17

thanks for the promotion

that's a great site for the local scene -- does new york even have anything like that? maybe i just dont pay attention...

oh -- if you go to "our allies" under "about us" we have links and info for organizations that we've worked with. So if we end up collaborating with orgs yr involved with, we can put links there

you should check out the get involved section too, i've been adding lots of organizations and activists resources there.

--sarah

Tue, 04/03/2007 - 3:37pm

AnarchistAlice

Posts: 26
Joined: 2007-03-28

If you dont,

you totally should start a sort of NYCpunkOnline or NYpunkOnline or something to that effect. Maybe you guys arent the type, but it would still give the state a punkonline name and I know that FL has been working on a site. If we can get a lot of different states to have punkonline sites then we can network through them. I'll check out the rest of this site though, thanks.

H=F

Tue, 04/03/2007 - 8:03pm

nick

Posts: 13
Joined: 2007-01-28

evolution's gotta come

I'm sure there's some kind of local nyc punk site, although a google search brought up almost nothing. I guess everyone just uses myspace (grrr...). That punk online network sounds like a cool idea. Almost like our idea. Although, we originally wanted to unite various subcultures with similar ideas that seem to be almost completely oblivious of each other.

I'll make an account on that NC website. Feel sorta like an outsider, not being in North Carolina, but if you say it's alright I guess it's alright. Unfortunately, my hands are full at the moment with this site (and I'm basically the only one here who does tech work AND has anything to do with punk), so I doubt I'd be able to start a New York chapter anytime soon. I really appreciate your promotion, we got a new user from Greensboro the other day apparently, which I suspect is your doing...

This post gives me an excuse to bring up some things that have been on my mind about punk scene, which means this is gonna be a long reply. In the words of a friend, "THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK ON ANYONE".

When someone asks if I'm punk, I say "not really", just because I want to distance myself from a vague, confusing title with contradicting connotations. There's so many kinds of punx, and most of them, I think, are elitist, macho, conformist morons. I've heard people say "apathy and ignorance is punk rock", for instance. Punk is split between kids who identify with the hateful, bratty, shock-value based bullshit and kids who recognize the DIY, anti-consumer, pro-activism, pro-doing-anything-except-watching-TV aspects.

I guess punk is as diverse as anything else. Diversity is definitely a good thing, but when I realized that there were junky punx, jock punx, yuppie punx, hippie punx, hate-edge punx, straight-edge punx, drunk punx, etc... I realized that "punx" becomes just a hollow amendment to a more meaningful title. Don't get me wrong, I love the music, and the style and all, which to me is what punk means, but the things punx believe in and do are just things people have always believed in and done. It's not punk rock to eat out of the trash and live in abandoned buildings, it's just ingenious. It's not punk rock to get drunk and hate people for no reason, it's just fucking dumb.

I'm more into creating unity in a new scene of smart, open-minded young people than continuing to try to unite a scene that's too diverse to ever unite. Most punx, if you ask them about unity, they'll say "aw yeah man, unity!", while at the same time they're saying "fuck junkie punx, fuck crusties, fuck skinheads, fuck peace punx, cause they're not real punx. only ____ punx are real punx". That's why there will never be total unity in the punk scene, because punx can't agree on what the fuck punk is.

Misled Youth wants to focus on the positive aspects of all subcultures (hip hop used to be diy, you know...) to create a super subculture, based on anti-apathy and pro-education values that exist in certain corners of both punk rock and hip hop. Unfortunately, our roots are mostly in punk rock, and we have a hard time attracting kids from other circles. We did a festival once, with choking victim and dead prez (well, half of dead prez). Dead Prez is very famous political hip hop, probably the most famous since public enemy, but everyone came for choking victim (which was lucky, because dead prez didn't show up). That's because we put the ad in MRR, slug and lettuce, gave postcards to people we know and put them in the places we know. It's hard to just waltz into a subculture and say "hey, we're incorporating your subculture into ours" and not be patronizing, culture-stealing white kids.

Whew. Sorry if I offended anyone. I hope I was coherent, but I guess there's a lot of loose ends. Just wanted to raise the topic. What do you think?

Tue, 04/03/2007 - 11:47pm

kid_prototype

Posts: 126
Joined: 2006-12-17

scotch tape rocks

i have a lot to say on this, i hope i can be focused enough now to turn these thoughts into a coherent statement

the ideal that nick described of kids from all backgrounds and cultures uniting is something that i have wanted to help create for a long time. the experience of organizing the festival taught me that you can't have this kind of surface unity between disparate communities, especially when the members of those communities dont even have each other's backs. it's like trying to scotch tape together a pile of rocks. We have to have inner strength and wisdom before we can have collective unity and aspiration. It has to happen one person at a time. Everyone's mind has to be open first. It's like the difference between a mixture and a compound like you hear in chemistry class.

so i am interested in misled youth being a vessel for these one-on-one conversations between youth. I am also interested in smaller events like open mics, workshops and discussions where we get to share and learn from each other. It's more important to form a few really meaningful relationships between young people from various communities than to have big flashy events that juxtapose cultures that aren't having a real dialogue with each other. Cause at then end of the day, it's not about the label -- as nick pointed out, "punk" really doesnt mean much on its own -- it's about the people.

well thats all for now, let's keep talking about this!

Thu, 04/05/2007 - 3:28am

xcriteria

Posts: 92
Joined: 2006-12-04

good points

I think it's probably true that myspace is a big reason for a lack of independent sites. We've had the vision of the MYN site as something that incorporates a range of cultures, and people who don't subscribe to one culture, for some time.

I think in many ways it'd be easier to get a local punk forum/site up and active than this site, because word-of-mouth would probably travel faster in a subculture for something dedicated just to that subculture. But, to make a more diverse site it's harder to get that word of mouth. We need to continue to develop our strategy.

Your post is coherent, but it does leave the question of where to go from here, which is, of course, complex.