[VBbuilders] possible videobridge event

[Mark Petz]

AND you will find that International Village Conference to be held in
Berlin, May 13-14, 2011conference program and link here in English:

http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/international-village?xg_source=activity

Markus

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

>  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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