Twitter: Failed.

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A solution still needs to be found to broadcast AIM updates.

During the AIM 2009 in Guatemala, which I tried to follow from home, I grew enthusiastic about a crowd-sourced way of distributing updates to anybody not present through Twitter. So this year I had the chance of attending the first half of AIM, and even spending a few hours in the plenary, so I chipped in and tweeted a few updates from the plenary.

Unfortunately the twitter thread turned more into an open-access chat room, full of insider jokes and comments on what was happening in the front. It was loads of fun for everybody present, but when I left AIM and tried to get updates, I noticed that I had to read between the lines, what was actually happening.

Finally on the last day of motion discussions and voting the Internet broke down altogether, and nobody ever made the effort to publish what had happened afterwards. Apparently these are the limits of crowdsourcing, and apparently we do need one or two individuals to be made responsible to broadcast AIM updates to the rest of the CISV world - either from the host NA or from one of CISV's official bodies, like the newish Internal Communication Commitee.

I really think this is one of many ways to simplify top-down communication, and reduce the time that our grassroots find out about important updates.  Or shall AIM remain another example of the infamous CISV bubble?

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Obviously we were a few to be extremely frustrated during motions voting session to become suddenly disconnected from Berlin, while we had had IEC elections live :-)

I think we did talk a few years ago (AIM06 ?) about some kind of ombudsman, that would actually take the role of a "journalist", officially spreading the news from AIM to the world. He would be somehow financed and equipped to do so, and could be supported by a team of volunteers for writing articles, taking pictures, etc.

We've been trying at IJBC to do so since IJBC08 with the IJBC Live! project. 3 years, 3 different ways of doing so : this year's one was a few articles on JBPedia and videos on JB Faces youtube channel, and it was a fresh and nice way to feel the atmosphere of the meeting.

But it's becoming clear that, if we still want to deal with exclusion/inclusion in CISV, especially on the international level, we need that kind of responsabilities to be taken over during AIM, and the different channels (jbpedia, videos, twitter, facebook, ...) to be a bit more centralized and rationalized.

The delegation from CISV Norway did an excellent job this year by utilizing spare capacity within the delegation to always update their blog: http://cisv.no/aim2010/ so that the members of the NA that have paid their trip could see what they actually were doing. Not so much in English, but a lot of people followed it outside Norway as well,translating it in Google - which goes to show that there would be a "market" for something like this on international level.

I move to have CISV FTB present at AIMs reporting and putting critical commentaries online during the meetings. Joking aside, it's really healthy to have an outside view from an insider to put things in perspective. And then there's the hope that the same person could revive the, by now legendary, L'Aim night show.

Here's a start: CISV International (and its national subsidiaries) needs to develop a clear, concise social media policy and plan for use at AIMs and year round. Why don't we have one? I was tweeting at AIM in 2007 before it was cool...Facebook has been around since 2004, and we as an organization have absolutely no clue what our presence is or what we are doing on either site. In this case, I'm also talking about CISV USA, which recently created an official "page," but with very little filler.

Should this be something for a committee to work on?

@Martin: This would be the remit of the newly founded ICC. CISV International is though active on Facebook and Twitter, with a rather frequent posting frequency; that said - CISV is an umbrella organisation, and what we actually need to do is to enable our NAs and Chapters to be active in their local "social media" communities. CISV International needs no leaders nor no delegates, nor does it have a single camp to fund, or beds to carry...

@Nick: What you ask for is essentially to expand/redefine the AIM News; turn it into a temporary news agency - during AIM publish "proper" news reports on what happens at AIM, for those not present. The "cult magazine" for internals can be kept, but should get less focus. Who will do it: a local AIM staffer with a journalist background, to save costs!

If more life action is needed then Twitter is not the solution. An example that I used was http://live.dagbladet.no/tourdefrance, where a journalist was giving live commentary to Tour de France, while "the roadside" was "twittering" next to it, with the journalists also answering their questions every now and then.

All in all; this is a solvable problem, as long as somebody (in the IEC probably) decides that it is a problem that must be solved.

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