[VBbuilders] possible videobridge event

[Franz Nahrada]

Once again: its a great idea to follow up, Marina.

I had a similar event with Julija in Summer, where we linked up with a
board meeting of People organizing professional exchanges.

They met in her school in Lithuania.

So the idea is to dive into the actual usage of Videoconferencing and try
to promote the blending with physical, real learning processes.

I still think that if we have a strong anchor in teachers and schools
thats a good thing; and my passion is to promote the realisation that they
can reorganize the whole education system by that resource, allowing to
choose from a plethora of offerings and link into the prime necessity of
our time: localisation, the return home.

If we still, as a community, can play a role in that, it would make me
personally feel very well.

In case you have not read it yet below is my New Years message.

Franz





http://globalvillages.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-new-years-message-to


A new years message to Globalvillagers
 
                "We are the ones who still seem to be figuring out...
                ....how to be the ones we've been waiting for."
                Tom Atlee, http://tom-atlee.posterous.com/are-we-the-ones


A happy new year 2011 to everybody, be it via the mailinglist or other
channels !

I have not written to the communit(ies) for quite a long time and want to
give an update on many points concerning GlobalVillages. I try to be short
so you can read it - but also authentic and clear so it is worth the read.
I try to talk to the experienced "members" and the casual "lurkers" alike.

This goes to the globalvillages at yahoogroups.com Yahoogroup, to the members
of our NING community http://globalvillages.ning.com/ and to other friends.

Bear with me if I start with the basics and then go to some actual
details. If you are not interested please consider cancelling your
membership or drop me a mail and I will do it for you. I promise that will
be the only long letter for a few months.

1. Why Global Villages? - Definition number 349 or so
2. A movement in the making
3. A year of standstill ?
4. Finetuning the goals
5. What is needed next ?
5.1. Building Global Villages Network as an online community
5.2. Defining projects and products that will have us leap forward.
5.3. Try to come to Berlin anyway!


1. Why Global Villages? - Definition number 349 or so:

Global Villages is a network of people that think something called Global
Villages is desireable and possible and they want to work for it.

Global Villages stems from the idea of a positive exchange of energy
between the city and the village, the idea of a dyadic world where each
side profits enormously from the counterpart.  The core idea is promoting
a new economic logic of extending or creating kinds of "household
economies" to whole villages -  and have those empowered villages
cooperate globally.

The purpose of this global cooperation is primarily the improvement of a
local cooperative lifebase.

The cities (=business worlds) role is to become support centers by
providing tools and technologies of many kinds. Thus they thrive, although
people have now the real option to emigrate from the cities.

Other than the current unilateral race for economic success on the world
market that increasingly destroys the beauty and success of the human
endavour as a whole, its a bilateral system of checks and balances. Its a
choice, a real choice: between speed and slowness. between big and small.
between aggressive and symbiotic. Slowly it will also mitigate the cities
role.

But overall, its one logical system of synergy that could work and
transform the existing one. No revolution needed, just an effort of a
foreseeing minority plus a clever deal with the powers to be to create
extensions and adaptions to what we have now.

And we can start building these extensions today. We have tools and
technology to make village life equivalent to cities, despite their big
conceptual differences. Very little effort goes to the conceptualisation
of this new cooperative village. We want to change that.


Thew change starts with the perception of possibilities, with education.
Connecting villages to each other means establishing a new educational
backbone. Everything starts by the perception of the potential which comes
out of knowledge and its implantation in design. This is of course
targeted knowledge, the knowledge to combine and weave our abilities into
a beautiful local cycle of support, fueled by the worlds best answers to
all the questions we have.

We have all the *tools* to make this happen, in particular deep ecological
insight, flexible automation, new materials and incredible communication
technology that allows for the sharing of any new discovery out of
research and experimentation, thus making the villages a living global
university of life.

We have all the *need* to make it happen, a global crisis of resources and
procedures, a common feeling of an imminent collapse of the capital/power
system that is simply deepened by procrastination and denial, by
illusions, allegations and agressions, by spectacle and sensation, maybe
also by intentional strategies of power elites, we simply dont know.

And we have the *scale* to make it happen: the village scale, the
neighborhood scale, the community scale. We feel that a massive
convergence of knowledge can allow us to transform microcosms of life into
unprecedented completeness, wholeness, richness.

My intention is to build a movement.


2. A movement in the making

Yet I cant help but starting this report with mixed feelings; not only my
personal situation, but also the situation of many friends - who are ready
and willing to work towards a real solution along the principles outlined
above -  is far away from a state where we can reallize our dreams and
show the potential of our ideas - even in a situation where
path-dependence of mainstream economy, technology and habitat leads to
more and more painful experiences. Neither do we see much success on the
village scale compared to the possibilities we sense, anywhere in the
world.

On the positive side, although still far from the mainstream,  there has
been a lot of convergence and coming together in this year: a new sense of
belonging together resulted in the formation of broader movements, like
the Commons movement and the Transition movement. They all share the same
basic rationale that is also the lifeblood of the GlobalVillages idea:
that we need to foster economic localisation and the better use of
resources, reflecting on the multilateral, participative way of using and
circulating and replenishing resources in the local arena - and building
on cooperation rather than competition.

And then there are other movements that focus on the overcoming of the old
economic structures: the New Work movement, the Zeitgeist movement, the
ecovillage movement and so on.

But what about "Global Villages" in particular - as that very necessary
"movement within the movements"? What about the fervent zeal to make the
local environment aka villages more self-reliant, bright, intelligent,
liveable by special emphasis on themes, networks, communication centres,
experimentation, innovation, design? Going beyond all that existed and
create really self-feeding, organic habitat? Showing that we can have the
full life in an incredibly small place, making the planet a million times
bigger just by that perspective? What about the potential to become a
global brotherhood/sisterhood of true citizens of the world, simply seing
a potential ultra - productive localisation as the ultimate global agenda
- with new codes of global cooperation that do away with obsolete forms of
"intellectual property" and therefore unfold an unforeseen productivity
for all?

"We" - and that we *does* exist somehow - are convinced very much that
this - and mostly this -  is the true, peaceful and successful way to
"outcooperate" the currently dominating mode of production.

But: can "we" find an "entry door to reality" that gives us the leverage
to create strong centers and start a real movement?  Will we finally find
ourselves together via practical goals and a shared agenda, and when will
that finally be?

There are some tiny sign of success, like the fact that Marcin Jakubowskis
"Gobal Village Construction Set" has just made it to the top of MAKE
magazines green products contest
(http://makezine.com/tagyourgreen/?o=popular) and there is some feeling in
the air about the exciting interplay between global communication and
increasing local abilities.

I was surprised how at the recent commons conference in Berlin, a
spontaneous session about Global Villages attracted many visitors.
Academic works are written about the idea. The term 'Global Village' has
begun to shift its meaning (maybe also due to this continous work). and so
on.

But nowhere, neither in media nor in politics, is this option yet visible
nor taken really serious. People like Steward Brand can still call for the
abolition of the village in the name of progress and be celebrated by TED;
the mainstream still assumes a progressive 75%+ urbanisation in the next
decades, while industrial land grabbing aggravates the situation in a
deadly speed and leads to an ultimate enclosure of planetary dimension. A
self fulfilling prophecy of enormous destructive dynamics is the challenge
to be met; and the civil societies of the world have not even grasped what
their cooperative power could create, if there was really a grassroots
globalisation of the right kind going on, one that creates a cycle of
empowerment around centers of self-reliance.

3. A year of standstill ?

My main concern has been bringing the alternative option to public
recognition and support, considering Global Villages the "salt of the
earth" in the perspective of a progressive "villegiatura" (village
building era) of planetary dimensions that would allow us to unfold a
myriad of cultures, lifestyles, human possibilities in truly autonomous
circumstances and spaces - a big program for peace by directing energies
towards constructive goals including really everybody willing to reflect
on their true desires.

Getting practical again, one idea that started the year 2010 for me was
that the intentional establishment of "Global Villages" as service centers
to many communities in a given region, thus the scheme would become part
of regional politics and its initiation fundeable.

At the end of 2009, I had a dinner in Vienna with the governor of the
Polish region of Opole who is also a leader in the European village
renewal alliance, and it was very interesting that we shared for a short
moment a very clear image that helped facilitate the meetings of our
minds: A particular village, outstanding in its nature, that would serve
not only its inhabitants, but a whole region as connecting point to the
world, a learning and meeting center. Thus, a global village might be
easier to implement even in present circumstances, funded even by
conventional regional development.

It all seems so easy and logical, but we did not make very much headway in
particular. I have not heard back a long time from them. The promising
vision of a European network of learning centers, discovering and
developing together - that might have been an outcome of the Grundtvig
Workshop (http://www.dorfwiki.org/wiki.cgi?VideoBridge/GrundtvigWorkshop),
- the vision of diverse localities experimenting with form and content in
a holistic way that includes real local needs, is still a remote dream.
The Grundtvig Workshop was nice, but not as sustainable and effective as I
hoped for. The idea of combining a new content of education with
telepresence did not really catch up.

(a tiny footnote on "telepresence": We are made much aware of the great
obstacles present in this domain, for example in this important report we
received recently about the ElectroSmog festival:
http://www.dorfwiki.org/wiki.cgi?VideoBridge/Forum/TelepresenceCont....
The idea that this challenge could spark an inventive community working on
improvement of working patterns that transcend the undeniable obstacles is
still far away and we could not even set up a project proposal together.)

In the opposite, on a personal level, it seems the buerocratic necessities
to finalize the existing workshop procedures have exhausted me and had a
negative impact on many other works in this year. We did have some other
promising activities, like one on the village of St. Martin and
environments in Austrias Waldviertel.  This community is implementing a
communal Open Access Network based on fiberoptics with 100MB bandwidth to
each house - a rare dream setting even here in Austria. We did a workshop
on possible content there, also giving videobridging a prominent place
(with people from many other places taking part). Yet it seems the
possibilities of follow-up projects have not materialized yet. A quick fix
for profitability is hard to achieve, thats not the path we can provide.

Or the - definitely *very* interesting -  May 2010 meeting at RealCorp
Vienna, where I did a common workshop with Clear Village people Karsten
Stampa and Chris Garvin and others who were interested in the issue of the
impact of communication on human settlement and/or the renaissance of the
village scale in our time. In the aftermath we went down to the exhibition
floor of Real Vienna, a trade show which brought many investment - hungry
regions from Eastern Europe together in Vienna to show their real estate
opportunities to investors. The floor was pretty empty, the investors for
all these dreamy mega - projects simply lacked, so we had an easy time
getting in talks with regional representatives, mostly from countries
neighboring to Austria. Some of them really embraced our innovative ideas
and wanted to learn more. Later on, some of us spend a lot of time in
developing a concept for a Village Forum with the Austrian real estate
magazine, an event that would bring all stakeholders of the village
building process including the real estate industry together. The proposal
was applauded and lauded as a truly breakthrough scheme of giving a
saturated industry a new direction - but eventually our prospective
partners said no because of work overload.

so it goes.

4. Finetuning the goals

So this year did not really provide a base from which we can easily
continue work in the next year. In November at the First International
Commons Conference I tried to conceptualise a Global Villages Meeting in
Berlin for next may in conjunction with the upcoming First European
Conference of Village Movements in May 2011, which would be the perfect
occassion to meet and work on our agenda. The setting seems almost
perfect, and I repeat the call for everybody to join this conference:

http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Themen/GK_Ländlich...

But then, for me the recognition came, that for the months and maybe years
to come I will largely be absorbed in local business here in Vienna which
means the hotel. Its really clear now it will fall on my shoulders.

Besides preparing a good speech for Berlin about Global Villages which is
a challenge in itself, there is not very much I can do on the side
reflecting the agenda here in the next months. It seems nobody among my
many, many friends in Berlin believes they can organize something bigger,
even though we got a great response from Franz Reinhard Habbel of the
German association of towns and villages. So it might simply not happen in
an organized fashion.

So .... I became aware of the challenges but also the opportunities that
result in having more responsibility for the hotel after the imminent
retirement of my sister in March 2011. It started with the sudden
realization of many unfinished local issues here, starting with basic
technical and safety issues but also with the necessity to develop a
business plan when the "business hotels" will spring up in masses in our
district (a Ramada just started preopening sales). I need to reinvent the
Karolinenhof if it shall survive.

One very exciting option is this: To do everything possible to create a
good physical meetingspace here in Vienna for the meeting of communities
and the business world, for the years to come this might be our hotels
company mission. If I get consensus, I will even try to extend, to create
a true small "community hotel", that makes it fun to convene in Vienna. A
coworking-cohousing hotel. Very ambitious plan, but not allowing me to
spend too much time researching and communicating in the networks.

Maybe some of you have specific circumstances that would allow us to
explore deeper what this kind of hospitality needs, or if some of you
would consider even taking part in that endavour here. This is ther first
invitation, athough I have not very much to offer.

And here comes the second invitation: there is a real danger that I will
not be able any at least for the next years to pursue the ambitious dream
of a Global Villages Network ..... unless some of you step forward and
really share the task with me. This is the purpose of this message and of
shorter messages to come, creating a  very clear agenda which could be
shared by many.  Our Russian friend Gleb Tyurin is just one of the
examples of how important it would be to many people to have a strong
support structure at hand to support the most visionary "localizers" all
around the world.

So again and -maybe more precise than ever - I present you my personal
vision or fantasy of the network, in the hope that it truly resonates with
your fantasy or vision, and we could do something about it.

Global Villages Network should be:

* a distinct community of maximum 500 people that know each other to some
degree and collaborate on a network of locations all around the world
which want to be at the forefront of community design and liveability,
* so not only thinking how beautiful a village can be, but really
believing in the possibility and working for it
* having or seeking positions in local community education, foreign
relations, planning, administration
* staying in close touch and establish working groups and project groups
for all aspects of local community building (with the goal of freely
distributed "products" that can be useful and applied)
* but also develop a theoretical common understanding, like
conceptualising a flexible general model or pattern language of a "minimum
critical mass" local community (500? 5000?) that thrives on empowerment of
each of its members by global networks
* collecting successful examples (observatory) and essential patterns
(repository)
* intervene not only in support of each other (as a "phyle"), but also vis
a vis partners in the business and political world to facilitate growth
and development of Global Villages.

I like the idea that the virtual community is also in itself not much
bigger than a village, and the amount of its workload can be dealt with by
those relatively few individuals, which allows for a certain non -
buerocratic structure. Maybe eventually the network will dissolve into a
political entity of much bigger size, but thats beyond the foreseable and
purely speculative. What we currently need is a catalyzer for effective
localisation, an interface between local development and global
communication that has a clear focus which is not too narrow and not too
wide.

If you want to be part of it please stay. If not, please unsubscribe.

5.  What is needed next ?

5.1. Building Global Villages Network as an online community

The coming together of this whole network has been started by events in
the nineties mostly in Vienna ("Global Village", "Cultural Heritage in the
Global Village"), but only recently re-actualized with the assumed
potential of social networking and community building.

I met hundreds of people in the course of the last 20 years with whom I
felt deep resonance about the idea, but had no way of keeping in touch
phyiscally or physically bringing them together after the Global Village
conferences were over.

This period of dispersed past seemed to end with the advent of social
networking tools ... but:

In mid 2010 NING terminated its free networks, and I began to think about
a new networking strategy. Global Villages Online Groups were established
in various locations, in the hope that to all these venues there would be
a vibrant center to connect to; from LinkedIn via XING via Wiser Earth and
Facebook - there is a plethora of venues where you can find different
kinds and attitudes of people that are all needed - to one convergence
point.

Like Global Villages as a movement should draw their strength and idea
base from the wealth of cultural diversity around their globe, so the
Global Villagers should be a rich blend of many backgrounds: business,
science, humanities, engineering, vision, emotion, art, practical
experience and actually living it - everything should play a role in the
"grand small"  design. But that diversity would have to be held together
by a strong center of exchange and inspiration, which was envisioned as a
set of online venues like globalvillages.org, globalvillages.info and
globalvillages.tv.

It became increasingly clear that the formation of such a center and also
the maintainance of all the precious peripheries required external
energies to be brought into the game. Much more than I can master or
manage. Without some help, everything is gone.

One option was and is to especially cooperate with Clear Village on an
economically successful endavour of village building events and
activities, which would then call for a "observatory" and a network of
people who would also have a chance to take part in such events and
activities.

This has not happened yet; and my best idea so far for the time being was
to provisionally embed the Global Villages movements core structures as a
subset of the very successful online communities around the Transition
network.

Transition is a wonderful umbrella structure with a wider appeal,
practical and ambitious at the same time, which serves as a meeting ground
for many strands of economic localisation and ecological inventiveness.
The two groups in the Austrian and in the international system seem to be
the venues of the moment:

http://transitionaustria.ning.com/group/netzwerkglobaledoerfer
http://transitioninaction.com/group/globalvillagesintransition

And I spent most of my available time to help build and grow the
Transition movement here in Austria as a mothersoil from which a Global
Villages movement will naturally emerge. The importance of localisation is
fuly recognized in this movement, as R.K. Moore describes:

"The localization movement focuses on economics and resources, but in a
broader sense it is aimed at enabling a community to solve its own
problems, to take charge of its own destiny. Besides an economic premise
– localization makes economic sense – there are certain political
premises that are implicit in the movement:
* We can’t count on government to solve all our problems.
* We have the capacity to improve our own circumstances by working
together.
And there are cultural premises as well:
* Community is a valuable social entity.
* Stronger community can be a source of local empowerment.

So thats Transition. A good base to establish contacts.

But also the other venues are alive: even without my "gardening", Global
Villages group (LinkedIn, XING, Wiser Earth, Facebook etc..) constantly
find new members. Even our old NING gets new members every day, but its
limited to 150 and a NING mini, therefore its more a temporary storehouse
than a good center.

We (Ralf Schlatterbeck and I ) established www.globalvillages.org as the
future central domain, but no decision has been made yet what system to
use. The server that we rented is fast and powerful enough to even run
voice communication, webinars etc.

I received several offers of support, from Raffael Reinehr from Brasil who
is ELGG - literate to Urs Riggenbach from the US who runs Drupal Systems
for a Human Ecology College. Also the Estonian "Community Tools" group has
offered help.  But I feel before we build a system we should have a board
of editors who really are commited to maintain the communication flow,
keep it simple and effective.

There are a few people like Jeff Buderer or Markus Petz who are very
active networkers, but what is needed here is a steady focus around the
vision. I do not really know if the vision of Global Villages is really so
important, but I feel its a beautiful node in the fabric of the new world
that is woven now, the marriage between the physical place, the
appreciation of the natural, the appreciation of culture and technology
all flowing into one convergence point. I feel in contrary to Andrius
Kulikauskas that this network should not be woven around people, but
"people resonating through an idea".

Otherwise, I felt Andrius had a lot of sensational ideas, using the
virtual network almost like a life support system and a creative tool for
constant rekindling our inner fire and recallibrating our inner direction
that is often lost in our crushing environments. A spirit of appreciation,
respect and support, a feeling of being alive and close to the
breakthrough is what this network should deliver. Thank you Andrius for
all that, although we might be too different to work closely together in
future.

5.2. Defining projects and products that will have us leap forward.

So Global Villages should not only be a community, but maybe also a phyle.
A community that develops its business backbone.

http://p2pfoundation.net/Phyles

A few days ago I received a message from our dear Indian friend Anil
Chawla, who together with his wife Suman runs a leather factory in India,
and who has the revolutionary idea to place this factory near a village
instead having people travel thousands of miles. Everybody calls him crazy
but I encouraged him to strike a deal with vilagers that could mean that
he helps them videobridging in the nearby school for better subsistence
and lower living costs.

This is just one example of the many exciting possibilities that everyone
of us has in his or her hands and the might fit together like the pieces
of a mosaic. If Anils villagers implement Marcins Global Village
construction set or something similar, that is a possible realisation of
our networks strength and internal cooperation logic.

Our friend Gleb Tyurin produces a video that shows to the general public
in Russia the potential of localisation. Maybe there is footage for him to
implement, I encouraged him to think of a collaborative video production
like the beautiful "Coalition of the Willing" animation that was done by a
coalition of professional media producers, showing the potential of
collaborative production.  http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/

So it is very important to see the Global Villages Network as a network of
people who have some living connection to the ground, DOING SOMETHING
TOGETHER. The connections might be of different nature, our diversity and
our different backgrounds will help us realize better our common visions.
Its good that Anil is a businessman and uses his abilities as a
businessperson to bring the realisation of global villages forward.

It is very important that each of us discovers the general aspect of what
they are doing and we group around practical outcomes.

At the same time I feel its important to still be connected by the strong
tie of a common vision.

lets have these two things combined better, so we will survive and thrive.
Again, please consider your membership in our venues if you dont think
thats interesting.

5.3. Try to come to Berlin anyway!

So as I said I will not be able to fulfill my own expectations to orderly
organize a gathering in Berlin around May 14th.
Too much is on the plate right now here in Vienna.
My hope is that something spontaneous will emerge nevertheless.

We might be able to travel to very interesting examples of successful
localisation after the conference in Brandenburg. I will issue a call for
who might invite us. Everybody will be on their own financially for the
time being. But I hope we do something important to meet the challenge of
changing our situation as individuals, too.

if we meet and before that, we can discuss:
a) whats the meaning of all these social networking activities
b) how we make them fruitful for each other and keep coherence
c) what are the momentary priorities in terms of attention and projects
d) how this fits in a strategic picture

please use the globalvillages mailing list for your contributions!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/     ->  "Join this group" if
you are not subscribed yet.

All the best

Franz

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