[Imc-oceania] FWD: Changes To Catalyst - URGENT

[Cameron Gregg]

Dear Catalyst Member,

We are writing to tell you, urgently, that Catalyst needs to stop our 
internet
hosting within a month. If you, or your group have a website, email
list, web domain name, or
cat email address with us, you will need to make other arrangements as soon
as humanly possible. Your absolute deadline for moving your site, list,
email accounts and/or domain name hosting needs to be 15th of
November 2006.

Unfortunately we can't avoid this, because if we don't make some
radical changes now Catalyst could
come to a grinding halt rather than making a graceful transition. You
are welcome to join us in Catalyst's next
incarnation with a focus on the community building aspects of our
project. Catalyst was set up over ten years ago as an anarchist
community web activist project, at a time when it was much harder to
access the internet. But
times have changed and now that there is an Internet Service Provider
on every corner, we are going back to our roots, supporting grassroots
networking and mutual aid.

Luckily, there are many organisations and companies offering reasonably
priced and reliable hosting. Most commercial webhosts offer sites,
lists, email accounts and domain
name hosting. You can also access free email and mail lists at Gmail and
Yahoo Groups.We've listed some below to get you started.

http://bur.st
http://www.blinddog.net
http://netaxxs.com.au
http://www.mdwebhosting.com.au
http://www.sykit.net/
this is only a sample.

Catalyst will be re-emerging in the next couple of months with a new
system, and a new way of working, on the axxs.org server. Cat.org.au
will still exist, but we will be focussing all of our attention on the
projects that mean the most to the activist community. Most
importantly, we will be putting a lot of work into a new version of
ACTIVE, and if you'd like to  continue your relationship with Catalyst
(and our projects), we'd welcome your active involvement.

This time round we will be focussing on as we relaunch active.org.au,
a sustainable web activist information
sharing tool. The new and improved Active will allow you to have your
own site, with your own domain and
events calendar, a huge improvement on the simple listing in the
groups area, as at present. This will put you
in the driver's seat, and makes us all less dependent on tech experts.
We're talking empowerment! Anyone who is interested in taking part in
this exciting new project is welcome to join the discussion list, and
to check out the developments as they take place:

E.G.
http://lists.cat.org.au/pipermail/devactive/2006-September/000017.html
http://lists.cat.org.au/pipermail/devactive/2006-September/000019.html
as listed in the devActive archives at:
http://lists.cat.org.au/pipermail/devactive/


Wrapping Up:

Here's a list of things to do before the 15th of November:
- Download your web page files and texts
- If you have a site with it's own domain name, make sure you change
the domain name server details from ns1.cat.org.au and ns2.cat.org.au
to the addresses provided by your new hosts. This often takes a couple
of days to switch over – don't leave it to the last minute.
Regrettably, we're unable to offer you any assistance with these tasks.

Regarding Personal Email Accounts and Email Lists:

Don't panic. We will do everything we can to leave you with some kind
of useful archive of your personal email and email list archives. We
will try to provide a single file with all your mail after the 20th of
November.
Our volunteer technical resources are completely stretched so suitable
offers of technical or other assistance will be appreciated.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank the many generous hands
who've helped for over ten years, and hope to continue doing what we
do best - helping activists.

Hugh and Leah
Volunteers for Catalyst