Praccus wrote up this imaginary interview, March 2002:
Q - What is the Background to Catalyst, how long have you been around and what were you original intentions?
A - We started up sometime in 1994, came out of people at Jellyheads Warehouse wanting to start some multimedia activity; hooked into the Newtown anarchist/activist underground. Some critical Community Access TV energy fused up into an internet trajectory. There was also a push to have anarchist media rooms in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane -- inspired by Melbourne's Xchange Anarchist BBS, which had been bubbling along for a while. It's hooked into the oldest form of mass media, with nurturing and location from Black Rose Anarchist Bookstore, Newtown. We have a Community Dossier online at http://www.cat.org.au/cat/dossier/cmd.html.
Q - What are the most important aspects of the organisation that keep it on its feet so to speak?
A - The monthly meetings: Face-to-face is still very important. The email lists, mainly catgeek for the operational thrashings and catkore for general what-goes-on. (See lists.cat.org.au for a full listing of email lists the Catalyst collective hosts.) The generally helpful attitude of people who are in the project, especially those who are working on the various cat jobs.
Q - What would you advise others who are thinking of setting up their own server for themselves or their group...
A - Use linux (a free operating system!). Use Debian ( a distribution of linux). Old thrown out machines still make good servers!
Q - What other organisations is catalyst affiliated with via the internet? Do you see this kind of resource sharing and organisation linking as an effective and positive thing?
A - The most important thing is the real people using catalyst. You can see from our website what we're involved in, but there's a lot of less visible and more effective networking by email, personal conversations and on street gatherings. Catalyst is part of anet, an Australian affiliation of online anarchist nodes. This is a way for anarchist people in different cities to network, to collectively form overseas links, and to help each other out with all the behind the scenes system administration. Each group is autonomous.
Q - What about collaborative decision-making, learning curves you've been though and the process Catalyst has put in place to keep it going.
A - We leaned a lot of stuff the hard way, like making the machines reliable and making sure they stay that way, and creating a geek centre which was attractive for people to learn in, finding a distribution of linux which wasn't too painful to upgrade. Many of the serious decisions cat makes happen in face-to-face space, but the ongoing little stuff happens in email, mainly catgeek for techie stuff.
Q - Did you have any technical problems with starting up / maintaining the service, how do you go about raising funds for the expensive equipment?
A - Well we could have gone for sponsorship or government grants, but we would have got bogged in red tape and ads. Instead we grew dollars with some fully excellent benefit gigs, a tape catalog (available online http://www.cat.org.au/catalog/catalog.htm ) and membership donations. We also run a lot of cheap workshops these days to skill people up in all sorts of area, from basic computer usage to cd burning, system administration and building online communities on the web, just to name a few. We have a page on our site about ways people can donate to us, at http://www.cat.org.au/cat/donate2cat.html
Q - How can people get in contact with you or get involved?
A - Visit our web site http://www.cat.org.au/ - email us on cat@cat.org.au, ring us up on 02 9567 6222 , come to our open meetings on the first Monday of every month, 7.30pm, (for location, see http://www.active.org.au/sydney . Or build your own thing and if you want some help from us just let us know, and when you've finished please tell us how you got there. DIY!
..The catalyst collective..
sonia (at) cat.org.au
CAT is an anarchist collective of volunteers involved in media creation, propaganda, internet and free software hacking, activist support and having fun. Being a CAT is documented at: http://www.cat.org.au/cat Check it out & then check us out! All welcome.
andy (at) cat.org.au, hugh (at) cat.org.au
