<nettime> global CN 2000 (report)

["Steve Cisler" <sacisle@attglobal.net>]

 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 cisler@pobox.com

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 
ggraham@itprog.gov.vn 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 gurstein@techbc.ca 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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