Networking a Sustainable Future

A PLANETWORK Conference
At the Golden Gate Club in the San Francisco Presidio
June 6-8, 2003

Amid accelerating crises across the globe, new social and technological forces are converging in a unique moment of opportunity. The Internet has enabled citizens around the world to mobilize with unprecedented speed and precision. On February 15th, millions of people world wide spoke out for peace. For the first time we could see our vast numbers around the world. Why stop there?

NETWORKING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE will focus on the ways in which information technologies and the Internet can continue to play a key role in accelerating progressive change and establishing a peaceful Planetary Civilization.

How can the Internet allow us to see ourselves, and our collective aspirations, even more directly and productively?
How can the Internet be used to mobilize global citizenry around other critical issues affecting our future: ecological destruction, resource depletion, human rights and economic justice?
What communications strategies would best enable us to mobilize networks, draw attention to specific issues, envision alternative solutions, and bring about change?
How might we use the financial resources of a newly networked global citizenry to implement system-wide transformation?

NETWORKING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE is an international forum that will bring together participants representing many of the key social and technological components necessary for a sustained global change movement. The event will explore four major themes:

Global Systems:
Over the last century, "systems thinking" has allowed scientists, environmentalists, philosophers and technologists to re-conceive the world in terms of holistic networks and emergent properties rather than traditional hierarchies of control. An ecological view of natural and human systems requires such a perspective. How might the Internet enable us to further develop a systems view of both our most pressing problems and their potential solutions?

Social Networks:
The open source software movement is accelerating across the globe. This design philosophy has also inspired a variety of 'below the radar' software initiatives that are specifically intended to empower social networks. These social network tools, many of which are now coming to fruition, have the potential to once again transform the Internet. Not only will they radically increase the ability of millions of people to cooperate and self-organize around shared goals, but they will also enable us to see ourselves as a whole - as a global community that share a commitment to common values. Social network tools will give us a new sense of collective empowerment and political potency as citizens of the planet.

Communications Strategies:
The peace movement has given us dramatic examples of how strategic, cross-platform messages, such as those delivered by MoveOn via email, can galvanize immediate action on the part of millions of disenfranchised people. The forum will explore different communications strategies that support rich, vibrant, and diverse global culture. We will look at current models and explore a variety of questions:

How can we integrate the online independent media with global social movements on a mass scale?
What kind of alliance-building strategies, across both platforms and communities, do we need to employ?
What role does radio play in reaching rural communities and how might it be further integrated into a comprehensive communications strategy?
How are musicians and artists using the Web to creatively resist monopolistic corporate culture?

New Economic Models:
With the fall of communism and the accelerating hegemony of corporate globalization, many are questioning the very foundations of our economic system. Many see this system and its ideology as the root of both our social dysfunction and our essentially suicidal environmental behavior. Now we must move beyond such critique and focus on testing and implementing alternative economic models and complimentary approaches designed to work within the existing system. These models range from Internet based barter, to virtual complementary currencies, to local currencies using smart cards.

Colaborative Networking
In addition to presentations and panels, the entire event is designed to support an active networking process for all participants. A Collaboratory facilitated by Blue Oxen Associates on-line, and The Knowhere Store on-site, will run throughout the conference, with multiple opt-in creative sessions, and a high speed wireless network, as well as ethernet, will be available throughout the building and grounds. All three parallel sessions, and much of the Collaboratory will be captured on digital video, streamed live, archived on-line and burned to DVD. In addition, this conference portal site is built on a new open source collaborative platform, which many communities are adopting and extending as a universal adaptor to interconnect a growing number of existing systems. An account for document sharing and syndication is automatically created on this system for each conference participant is when they register.

Come participate in this unique moment of opportunity!

v.6
April 5, 2003 11:32 am PST