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Press
Press
Contact: Megan McFeely For Immediate Release: Innovators from Technology, Activism, Media and Business Put-To-Use Information Technologies as a Powerful Catalyst for Global Change PlaNetwork Conference -- Networking a Sustainable Future; June 6-8
Technology empowers a global citizenry --It was the Internet that enabled citizens around the world to mobilize with unprecedented speed and precision for a gathering on February 15th of 2003 when millions of people worldwide spoke out for peace -- for the first time we could see and hear our vast numbers. Amid accelerating crises across the globe, new social and technological forces continue to advance. The citizens of the world are now armed with powerful tools that can be used for moving the global community into a more sustainable future. "We are creating a network of networks - individuals, organizations and businesses who share ecological and social justice values – using next generation technology which will make it possible for people all over the world to see themselves in relationship to each other, and the Planet, in a totally new way,” said Jim Fournier co-founder of the PlaNetwork Conference. "We are on the brink of a truly global, technologically empowered, social movement. We are evolving an information system that will help us better understand the challenges we face together on this small planet; one that allows us to leverage each other’s experience and ideas to learn about and support initiatives which offer practical sustainable solutions, with an emphasis on making sure ALL people are empowered by this knowledge." The conference will feature over eighty presenters, including renowned authority on sustainability Hazel Henderson, MoveOn Cofounders Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, and a special session honoring Douglas Engelbart – inventor of the mouse, hypertext, and windows, and father of modern computing, for his lifelong dedication to evolving intelligent technology to address the real needs of the Planet. Other participants include: Jeff Gates (Author; Shared Capitalism Institute), David Dill (Stanford University) Neil Sieling (Independent media consultant) Greg Steltenpohl (Founder of Odwalla), Annette Riggs (Founder of Barter.com), Joe Firmage (Founder of US Web), Leif Utne (Founder of Utne Online and the Utne Café), Cynthia Typaldos (Founder of RealCommunities Inc.), Brewster Kahle (Founder of the Internet Archive), Tom Matzzie (National Interactive Campaign Manager, AFL-CIO), Bill Pease (Creator of ScoreCard.org, and founder of GetActive Software), Tim Foresman (International Center for Remote Sensing Education), Henri Poole (Free Software Foundation and founder of Affero) , Sharif Abdullah (Commonway), Gary Alexander (Open University, UK), Wendy Brawer (GreenMaps), Atom Constantino (GTV), Owen Davis (Identity Commons), Leda Dederich (United for Peace and Justice), Brad deGraf (Venture Collective), Heather Newbold (Earth Charter), Amber Nystrom (Social Entrepreneurship Incubator), Hardin Tibbs & Peter Leyden (Global Business Network) and many more... PlaNetwork is a unique 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 five major themes: The Internet as a tool for Mobilization: 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. How can we use technology as a tool to support grassroots organizing efforts and enhance our communication efforts, rather than create more work and opportunities to misunderstand each other? 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: We will be discussing how the design philosophy of the open source software movement, which is accelerating around the globe, has also inspired a variety of software initiatives specifically intended to empower social networks. These social network tools, many of which have been 'below the radar' but are now rapidly 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 promise to give us a new sense of collective empowerment and political potency as citizens of the planet. New Economic Models: With the fall of communism and the accelerating hegemony of corporate globalization, people 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. Collaborative Networking: Planetwork is a living example -- 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, 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, the 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.
Jim Fournier is a former industrial designer, entrepreneur, software
developer, systems analyst and industrial ecologist now focused on initiatives
to catalyze an emergent global network of people and organizations who
share ecological and social justice values using the Internet through
the Planetwork Consortium. <More> For more information on the conference, call 415-459-4866, go to: http://planetwork.net or email: info@planetwork.net
Updated April 24, 11:45 pm PDT |