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MISTICA: Global CN 2000 (Barcelona report)

From: Raisa U. Minardi ([email protected])
Date: Tue Nov 07 2000 - 15:05:03 AST

Hola,

Un PAD-Out desde Barcelona...�alguien por ac� con otros comentarios?

Salud,
Raisa
xxx

----- Original Message -----
From: cisler <[email protected]>
To: community informatics <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2000 11:57 AM
Subject: [CI]: global CN 2000 (Barcelona report)

> global CN 2000: First Global Congress on Community Networking:
> "the human face in Internet". Barcelona, Spain. November 2-4.
> http://www.cnglobal2000.org
> Steve Cisler [email protected]
>
> http://home.inreach.com/cisler
>
> Waiting for a train from Port Bou on the Spanish border to Barcelona, I
> was sitting in the station restaurant at 5 in the morning opposite a
> producer from CNN who lived in a small town in Siberia and a Brit who
> left his London slum at 16 and had worked 14 years as a gardener on the
> Costa Brava. We were comparing the strangest meals we had ever eaten.
> Michelle, the CNN woman, was making us lose our appetite with
> descriptions of delicacies from Tuva and Kirghizstan. Both of my
> colleagues were recovering from painful divorces, and their nomadic ways
> increased after their families broke up. I was on the road much of the
> time going to conferences or working on projects at the edge of the Net.
> The local paper in Catalan showed a picture of captured "Mahgrebies"
> (Moroccans and other North Africans) who had been arrested by a coastal
> patrol and were being sent back. An Argentine waiter just arrived from
> Buenos Aires and without a work permit is being paid under the table by
> his employer. The constant mobility of people (with and without travel
> papers) is such a dominant theme in all our lives, that the challenges
> for those who stay in one town or region do not usually attract much
> attention.
>
> The conference that is ending today is about these people and the kinds
> of networks being built and run to make life better for geographical
> communities. Of course, they also deal with the needs of new arrivals
> and diaspora groups. In the rural areas these networks are seen as a way
> of stemming the rural-to-urban migration of young people looking for
> work. This has not been proven, but it's a common hope. This meeting
> has attracted about 500 people from many parts of the world, with large
> numbers from Spain, Europe, and Latin America, and a sprinkling from
> Africa, North America, and parts of Asia and the Pacific. I saw no
> Chinese or citizens from Arab countries. The coordinators from Spain,
> France, and the UK did a good job of raising support from local Catalan
> governments, Fondation Charles Leopold Mayer, the Polytechnic University
> of Catalonia, Airtel (a local telco), and the French Ministry of Foreign
> Affairs. This allowed them to bring activists and grass roots workers
> from many projects around the world and to hold it in a hotel with good
> facilities in a wonderful city whose attractions lured some of the
> attendees from some of the sessions. It also attracted the attention of
> a number of EU officials, as well as people from the ITU, and some other
> foreign ministries. Very few people from the corporate sector. Very few
> hard core technologists or hackers, though Alberto Escudero Pascual from
> Sweden was doing some very innovative things with wirelss. Quite a few
> of the attendees might be comfortable with the label "social
> entrepreneur."
>
> As a conference it is a fairly standard arrangement: plenary sessions
> where lines of speakers addressed the multitude, struggled with Power
> Point, taking more time than allotted, and leaving a short time for a
> few comments. On the plus side, more time was devoted to numerous
> breakout sessions with a pair of presenters in each room who usually
> encouraged a lot of interaction with the much smaller and intimate
> audiences. These sessions, and of course the talking in the halls, were
> the heart of the conference. This conference stood out in two ways: the
> amount of resources devoted to translation (Spanish, French, English,
> Catalan)--even for the breakouts, and the public computing area. Since a
> good part of this conference is about public access sites (telecenters
> and community technology centers) it was refreshing to see so few people
> glued to the screen checking their email. Instead, most were meeting and
> talking with other attendees. (This message was composed in my hotel
> room where I went online only three times during the week I was in
> Spain.)
>
> What were the main themes of the conference? Each geographic region was
> in a different stage of development. Canadian and U.S. community
> networks might be considered "mature" while others in Europe and
> Australia are in ascendancy. Part of it is public awareness, different
> flows of funds (the U.S. has never had a great deal of outside support,
> but EU funds for various programs have helped many cities and regions),
> and the way the Internet has developed and overshadowed the local
> concerns of community networkers. Sites all over the world that were
> started by ad hoc groups of citizens and activists are facing
> competition not only from dot com enterprises but also local governments
> who are staking their own claim to the provision of services to
> citizens. They come late to the game but with greater resources than
> some of the non-profit groups. The Africans and Latin Americans have
> more interest in economic development, training, and the provision of
> access through telecenters, but in Argentina there is also a growing
> interest in community networks.
>
> Telecenters (a placeholder word that covers a variety of physical sites
> for public access, training and learning) are being sponsored by dozens
> of foundations, government, and now companies in order to meet universal
> service obligations, to spur economic development, to give kids
> something to do after school or keep them off the street, and to provide
> a place to talk about the changes taking place as a result of the very
> technology being promoted by the centers. Often, the local people will
> shape the center to meet their needs. Thousands of franchise centers are
> being built in India, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru, and nobody is sure
> how they will fit into the different communities. Many of the present
> ones have been more customized through the use of interviews, focus
> groups, and asset mapping techniques to involve the local people. Most
> franchise models don't allow for that kind of flexibility, but they are
> intended to make money and not rely on constant creative fundraising
> from foundations.
>
> The coordinators of the conference would dearly like to form a
> consortium of community networking and telecenter associations in order
> to have credibility with EU (and other) funding sources, to be taken
> seriously as an NGO (maybe even becoming a BINGO--Big NGO), and to have
> money to help other organizations around the world who have not been
> able to raise as much support. This conference was very expensive, and
> the 2001 meeting in Argentina has to start raising more money right now.
> Others would like to see the conference just be part of a more
> ecological development of links, activities, and synergies between those
> present and are not convinced a formal structure is needed. However, the
> drive to have a formal organization seemed to be of more interest.
>
> Many of us recognize that much more press coverage is being given to the
> problems of unequal access, the different penetrations rates of the
> Internet in all countries, and the continuing belief that digital
> fluency, to use Mitch Resnick's phrase, will determine which people,
> towns, and countries do well in the coming years. While the evidence for
> this is present in many countries (Clinton's visit to a computer center
> in the Navajo Indian reservation in the U.S. being my country's example)
> it is also a recurrent theme in Kofi Anan's speeches, those of the World
> Bank, and last summer for the G8 meeting in Japan. There, they endorsed
> the work submitted the World Economic Forum's group and named this the
> Digital Opportunity Task Force(whose public statements were scrutinized
> at this conference by Garth Graham, a veteran of Canadian community
> networking. It is not online at this moment. Contact
> [email protected] for the precise web location about November 15.)
> The DOT Force document says they (the governments and probably one
> company from each country plus the U.S. Markle Foundation) will sit at
> the table with a few developing countries to work out the kind of plans
> that will be most useful. Bertrand de la Chapelle, who tracks new ICT
> for the French Foreign Ministry, said this is a time when the third
> sector ("civil society" NGOs, etc) will also be invited to the table
> within the next two months. The challenge is an interesting one. How
> will certain NGO/civil society representatives end up "at the table."
>
> First, there is a spectrum of opinions about how to engage the
> government and business sectors. Street protests over globalization in
> Seattle, Bangkok, Davos, Washington, Prague, and Melbourne have
> presented a challenge to the governments and corporations usually on the
> other side of the police lines. Obviously, many don't want "dialogue" or
> to work out compromises. They don't want to be "at the table." One
> example is Jose Bove who was invited to the Davos Forum but refused to
> go, whereas Martin Khor of the Malaysian Third World Network (very big
> in the anti-globo circles) did accept. Some groups are in such
> opposition that they don't want to work out deals or be part of any
> closed discussions with G8 reps and high tech companies. Others have
> been burned by previous partnerships and do not want to get involved
> again. Then there are those who remain very suspicious but are willing
> to talk. Others see their own role as facilitators, as people who can
> speak the language of the non-profit and social sector but also that of
> the governments and companies. Moderate groups frequently talk of
> strategic public-private partnerships. Others are in need of funds that
> they will deal with the devil if it helps them attain their organization
> mission. There are also the Alpha NGOs that already have the contacts,
> the resources, and the confidence to put themselves forwards as
> representatives in such a discussion. However, other candidates might be
> from labor, religion, and even family groups which represent many more
> people than do computer technology non-profits. In a sense, the core of
> the issue is who do NGO's or other civil sector groups represent, and
> how will they be selected? To discuss this theoretical problem about who
> represents the third sector, Michael Gurstein is setting up an open
> mailing list very shortly. Write [email protected] for more
> information.
>
> There were enough rooms to house the dozens of workshops on a myriad of
> topics. Each one had at least two translators, and that certainly
> facilitated understanding. I attended sessions on telecenter formation,
> art and community networks, an Asian regional meeting, and one on city
> services and community networks. Other topics included
> poverty-illiteracy-debt in developing countries; indigenous groups and
> the Internet (led by Maori representative Robyn Kamira of New Zealand);
> optical Internet; wireless networks; interactive webcasting;
> community-based training; knowledge-based cities; social entrepreneurs;
> working with young people and people with disabilities; civic digital
> rights; e-democracy; local employment and enterprise; women working in
> the information society; community health care; sharing information
> across communities; multilingual services; linking old media and new;
> partnerships with business; building community networks through twinning
> (i.e. cities or villages in different countries helping each other); and
> various regional meetings.
>
> Manual Castells, who fled Barcelona during Franco's time, did a
> videoconference from U.C. Berkeley, and talked about the use of new
> media for social organization, giving the example of the supporters of
> the Zapatistas (who themselves use more secure methods of communication
> that IP traffic moving over networks owned by companies and surveilled
> by governments) building up worldwide awareness and sympathy for the
> rebels in the forests of Chiapas. Since the publication of Castells'
> first volume on the network society, he has become aware of the city and
> regional community networking activities. He was even aware of the
> recent changes to Amsterdam Digital City which has gone commercial.
>
> Much of the third day was spent discussing the proposed consortium. Four
> years ago at an international community networking conference in Taos,
> New Mexico, a group of about forty of the faithful tried to form the
> International Association of Community Networks, but a Canadian
> recommended that the American get their own shit together before going
> international, and another person used the complaint about lack of
> diversity in the organizing group to question its claim to be
> international. I call this the "where is your Hmong fisherman?"
> challenge. By citing the lack of fine grained representation, anyone can
> say an organizing group lacks credibility. But in 1996 we did decide to
> concentrate on U.S. issues and not start an international group. Now the
> organizers of the Barcelona conference are trying again.
>
> The steering committee for the future global CN group met to thrash out
> some ideas after all the formal presentations concluded. The organizers
> were quite exhausted, and most of the 60 people present wanted to
> contribute, each in their own language. We sat in a circle and traded
> ideas and worries without official translators. I stayed silent for most
> of the time because my hands are full with INET 2001, and I did not
> think I could add much to the process. Many people volunteered to help
> for the forthcoming Argentine conference, but some West Africans left.
> They were quite unhappy because they had been planning another global
> conference in Dakar for 2001, and now it seemed to be in the background
> as everyone rushed to work on the Argentine meeting which may be about
> the same time. I'm not sure how that will be resolved to the
> satisfaction of the Dakar group.
>
> For some of those present, this meeting was a window into a world they
> barely knew existed. They were excited because it seems to be an
> intersection of human values, new technology, and a dedication to local
> participation that is lacking in other development or technology
> projects. For those of use who have been in this game for a while it was
> good to see a renewed wave of interest and resources and to meet people
> from areas just getting started. The Australians are planning a youth
> and community networking conference in 2001, but they made the point
> that more young people need to be involved in each meeting, no matter
> where it takes place, and that will be a real challenge because most
> youth are not habitual conference attendees but are usually showcased
> for one meeting or session. I did not have time on stage to make my
> comments, but they are in the proceedings that were distributed, and
> they should appear on the conference web site later.
>
> Steve Cisler, Barcelona

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