I guess I have to start using this blog. 

So, how are things? How do I feel this fiine early morning, 3 AM CET? Heh, I am at work (I work night shifts), and I have spent every free moment last hours to answer email coming in to info @ ourmedia dot org and there are so many things to do, and this site needs to start working yesterday, and I have loads of pissed off users complaining. Well, I can't blame them, but still, not too fun ONLY reading that :)

I am sure that ourmedia will be a great site; the concept is marvellous and more than a bit shattering to the usual ways of looking at media online. Old school: If your content gets popular, you pay. New wave: If your content gets popular, you don't have to pay, but can just bask in the praise or whatever might come your way.

I have seen soo much good stuff here at Ourmedia, and yet there is hardly any comments on the good things. There hardly is any real Discussion here. Now, how to let the community aspects of Ourmedia grow is one very good question. We have coders and developers working mostly on the publisher bugs as well as the Ourmedia/Internet Archive fusion (how to get the media actually Showing up on IA, and then also having a node/page here on OM). We have volunteers from around the world (I am from Norway myself, that explains my crappy English), and we have 15600 users. Registered users that is. :)

I am still on the outlook for volunteers, but I think we need to be a bit more specific in what we are looking for. Since this site is still in alpha and we are just at the very beginning of this venture, the path is not laid yet. The internal culture of this site is not fully developed, and we are still feeling our way forward. My hope is that we can have volunteers who realise that there is not that much structure and hierarchy yet, we still don't have streamlined routines yet. I often speak with new volunteers and they ask me "So how do you do X?" and I more often than not have to answer them "Well, we don't know. Yet." This puzzles a lot of volunteers and some of them lose interest in ourmedia and in helping out. That is a pity in my point of view, because when the site is as virgin as this, we really really need people who can just step up and take initiative.

This blog is my personal arena, and even though I have an official position within the ourmedia site as site admin and head of the moderators/volunteers team, I don't want this blog to be some sort of official channel. However, I Will talk about development issues, and I will be covering some of the challenges I face, and I will also ask for suggestions from you, my few readers :)

So, cheers for me starting to use this blog, and three cheers for OurMedia working, developing, and spreading our media throughout the world!

Raymond M. Kristiansen
raymondmk at gmail dot com