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Global CN Congress (Barcelona 2000)

Presentation

Opinions of the Representatives


First Global Congress on Community Networking.
Barcelona Spain
November 2-4, 2000

The global 2000 Congress is a first conference on community networks of all over the world. It will be the result of a process launched in March 22 coordinating the different expressions of community networks around the places, cities, regions, countries and continents.

Official website of GlobalCN2000 http://www.cnglobal2000.org
Website in Russian: http://cnglobal2000.da.ru

Goals:
  • Gathering the best of community networking leaders and experiences all over the world. Bringing real community leaders from the different continents;
  • Celebrating the emergent new digital society established by local communities across the planet;
  • Working in a common platform of understanding of the different actors, initiatives and interests in the area of digital cities and network communities.

Global CN 2000 is an initiative for bringing together community networkers from all continents to share their experiences in shaping and developing new ways of living and working. Global CN 2000 is about developing new models for our societies. It builds on community networking activities at the local level. Global CN 2000 is both local and global. It demonstrates how ordinary people across the world are using new technologies to address local issues whilst at the same time forging new types of alliances, networks and democratic activities locally, nationally and globally.
Global CN 2000 is a local and global community building tool and learning network that will put community perspectives on the Internet and Information Societies firmly on the global agenda. It is a process through which the offline and online sharing and celebration of ideas, values, creativity, imagination and achievement by local people across the world will creat a firmer basis for new types of active local community participation in Iformation Societies in the new Millenium. The process has already started in Bamako 2000, it is continuing by a launch in Bruxelles. It will include a first Global Conference of Community Networks next fall in Barcelona. But the key issue is the work of putting people together through a set of local CNs activities linked globally.
Community Networks are a new kind of local associations using computer networks, mainly Internet, for t he benefit of our communities.
Started in the US and Canada in the form of freenets, now community networks are expanding all over the world as a social expression of the Internet phenomenon. By community neyworks we understand a broad range of community uses of the Internet.
In some countries telecenters are considered the birthplace of community networks, in other they still remain as classical freenets, in others they look like a popular digital city .
It is not a simple web, or portal, or a business. They are new forms of society, of community. Through designing and building new local community networks a new generation of social entrepreneurs is emerging leading such new forms of sociality. Global 2000 wants to be their first global gathering event.

Opinions of the Representatives
The opinion of Michael Gurstein.
This conference grew out of several years of international discussions on Global Networking and specifically a meeting held in Barcelona in 1998 which I also was able to attend. There was discussion at that time concerning the development of an international conference and this most successful conference was the outcome of very considerable work particularly by representatives of the European Association of Community Networks and a global Steering Committee overthesubsequent two year period. The conference included some 450 participants representing some 25 or so countries and comprising participation from a broad range of types and approaches to Community Networking including publicly sponsored "civic networking" from Europe; telecentres both commercial and non-commercial from developing regions in Africa, Latin America and Asia; and Community Networking/Public Access/Community Technology Centres from the US and Canada. Canada had perhaps the largest representation at the co! nference outside of Spain, certainly reflecting the importance of these developments in Canada and the active role that both Industry Canada and HRDC are playing in supporting this sector.
Participation and presentations were primarily concerned with the operational development of Community Networks, Community Technologies, and Community Media but throughout the conference there was the running theme of how Community Networks linked into larger regional and global processes of global deployment of ICTs, the Digital Divide and particularly the rapidly developing G 8 DotForce initiative. In addition there was the announcement at the conference of a UN sponsored summit on the Information Society to be held in 2003. Much of the plenary discussions were concerned with these issues and how to respond to the opportunities that this presents to the Community Networking "Movement".
The conference was galvanized by a keynote tele-presentation by Manuel Castells a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley who talked of community networking in the context of the development of new forms of Internet enabled local citizenship as an alternative to the forces of WTO-led globalization being criticized so dramatically in the streets of Seattle and elsewhere.
The Canadian participants got a proposal to look to host the Global CN conference in 2002 (the 2001 conference to be held in Buenos Aries, Argentina).
The Congress concluded with the determination to launch an on-going global Community Networking "Partnership" within a transparent, open and flexible Internet enabled process. Some comments were made concerning the development of the current Congress (including Canada s role and participation) as perhaps needing additional transparency and inclusiveness and the development of the on-going process towards CN2001 and other CN Partnership activities were presented within a commitment towards a fully transparent and participative process.
Clearly Canada s role in this Partnership will be of considerable importance for community networking within Canada in that we are moving toward a commitment to hosting an international conference in two years time. Also, Canada s role will be significant as a contributor to the overall activities of the Partnership as our contributions internationally are widely seen as being of particular importance given the bi (and multi) lingual character of our CN and Community Media experience; the breadth of our activities including urban and rural, leading edge and underdeveloped regions.
Canada, it was widely acknowledged at the meeting, is a global leader in Community Networking. In taking on the responsibility for hosting the conference in 2002, we have the opportunity to strengthen our national capacity for enabling the further development of community networking, for enhancing the role of technology in enabling Canadian communities, for reinforcing our role as global leaders in this rapidly emerging area with the commercial and other opportunities with which this can be associated, and for further developing our capacity to make our expertise and experience available to the larger world in the most useful and appropriate fashion possible . (www.cnglobal2000.org)
The opinion of Steve Cisler.
The conference that is ending today is about people and 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 very 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 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 attention of a number of EU officials and some other foreign ministries.
As a conference it is a fairly standard arrangement: plenary sessions where lines of speakers addresses 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 into 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 che! cking their e-mail. Instead, most were meeting and talking with other attendees.
What were the main themes of the conference? Each geographic region was in a different stage of development. Canadian and US 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 and the way the Internet has developed and overshadowed the local concerns of community networkers.
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 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.
For some of those present the meeting was a window into a world they barely knew existed. They were exciting 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.