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ECOTECTURE: A chat room?
JF: It is not really a chat room. It is threaded discussion.
ECOTECTURE: Threaded discussion?
JF: Yes. That often means that someone starts a topic. We will
start with people who actually present topics at our conference.
However, anybody can start one. These things often live and die
on how well a real live human is behind them. Often a person who
is inspiring to others who becomes the attractor.
Utne Cafe, which
is actually up for a Webby (award) this year for their online discussion,
is hosting that for us. We also will be hosting one ourselves, there
is a good chance (the online magazine) www.salon.com
will be hosting one for us as well.
Our objective (for the Online Conference) is to partner as much
as we can, but not to be exclusive. We want to include as many people
and organizations as possible.
With the number of people we have presenting at the face to face
conference, it could easily be a week-long conference if we didn't
run events at the same time. We tried to hold a fair amount of time
by keeping the breaks long and lunch long for networking sessions.
ET: There will also be time in the evenings for networking, and,
I hope some fun! We have tried to create as much open physical space
on site as we can to encourage people to sit down with each other
and network. As I was saying before, we will have a forum for on-line
poster sessions.
JF: We should probably call them Website Presentation, because
that is what they are.
ET: They will run in the mornings primarily. The Conference is
set up so that there will be three rooms with simultaneous, single-person
presentations in the mornings from 9:00 to 1:00. There might be
some presentations that aren't of interest to some. There is only
so much of the day that some people can listen to other people talk.
(in that case) they can present their own web site or go to a website
presentation or go into another room where vendors with interesting
software or other tools will be stationed. We are trying to allow
people to participate creatively- do what they want to do. Given
the limitations of the time, the jam packed nature of our programming
schedule, and the limitations of the space, we are trying to do
as much as we can.
Also, we will have at least two simultaneous remote meetings over
the course of the weekend - one in Venice, Italy, and one in London.
Folks are gathering in those places to interact with some of our
speakers via live webcasts to create their own smaller version of
PlaNetwork. We are trying to make this a global springboard.
If it inspires other people to create their own groups and have
meetings around these issues, that's great. If we can find some
way to hook up, live, or almost live, that would be exciting, so
we are trying to do that as well...
ECOTECTURE: I suspect that there is a lot...
ET: It's insane... . . (ALL LAUGH). Two people, volunteering our
time, no money, it's insane.
JF: It is interesting, too, when we started this thing two years
ago, we were advised not to be too ambitious about it . . "Don't
try to organize a party too. Make it about the right size." At this
point I think there are between three and five parties associated
with the Conference. All the major ravers are out.
JF: Major ravers. We should have that on our publicity (All Laugh).
ECOTECTURE: You will get a lot of young people there.
JF: There is a whole trance music scene, and much of it is very
spiritually and ecologically oriented. It is very interesting, the
strange convergence of high tech and ecological consciousness among
the young people.
ECOTECTURE: How many presenters are there at the Conference?
ET: About 65, between the single speakers and the various panels.
ECOTECTURE: How many people will attend?
JF: About 700, which is about as many as we can possibly pack
into the space.
ET: We are confident that it will get the number of attendees
we want, but we still have some space. People should not wait to
sign up at the door, because we might have to turn them away. There
are fire code restrictions.
Story continued at top of page
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JF: And that is just, well, tough.
Register now. (All Laugh).
I suspect that this year it will turn out to be just the right
size. Some people may have to be turned away, but, hopefully, not
many. With the web site, we are trying to make it as accessible
as we can. Even if you come to the entire Conference, you can't
see more than about one third of it, because it's all parallel events
all the time. It is at least a three ring, and more like a four
or five ring circus.
What that means is that no matter what you do, you will probably
catch much of it on the web. We are trying to cover it that way,
and bring in outside information from other events, so the online
event is richer and more varied that what happens there.
ET: An additional goal is to catalyze a sense for those working
in the high tech industry that their skill sets can play a highly
important role in the search for solutions to our planet's most
pressing problems. We want to speak to whatever egos need to be
stroked in that particular community and tell them that they could
actually play an heroic role in helping create an ecologically sustainable
planet.
The other side of that equation is to invite people working at
the front line of the environmental issues to come and see what
the tools can do to accelerate awareness for their work. It seems
to me that is already happening on the environmental end of the
spectrum. It remains to be seen whether info tech professionals
are really waking up and getting it in terms of the crisis on the
planet. If dotcoms start taking a nosedive, maybe they'll... (laughs)...
Have some time to think about things.
JF: People who are in the thick of it in the high tech world are
so busy with the challenges thrown at them by their job...
ECOTECTURE: Yeah.
ET: Yeah.
JF: ... 80 hours a week, they can't come up for air and think
about anything. On the other hand, what we already seeing happening
as a result of that impetus to succeed, is people retiring early.
This is the position I was in. Having been in business, having done
that, gotten that perspective and looking around and saying, "Wait
a minute. Without the biosphere there really isn't any true wealth,
there isn't any security, there is no security for your children."
The fundamental infrastructure and foundation of our prosperity
is the biosphere. Humanity has gotten to the point where we can
threaten that. It's not whether humans will survive, it's the impoverishment
of countless future generations that's at stake.
We are beginning to see this even in young Microsoft millionaires
who are starting to give the money to things like children's health.
It's not a big step to think about the situation from a system's
point of view, and see that without working on the environment,
nothing else matters.
The other piece of it is not just a question of throwing your
money at the problem. We have actually gotten to the point where
many of the core problems in the world are problems of human perception
and belief. If ultimately the information technology allows us to
get leverage on that ( we could go a long way toward solving the
problem) . It is also a matter of having the feedback loop to know
what you are doing. If you put your hand on the stove, you burn
your finger and pull it away. If we destroy some part of the bioshpere,
unless we have a way of getting the information feedback and feel
the pain, we don't, as a collective, react properly.
The ability to make those connections, and to put our energies
on those very core survival, prosperity, wealth (issues)... all
these things really come down to the planet. I think it is the kind
of people who have the education and the skill sets to go into infotech,
and who, frankly, have the kind of mission oriented drive, who are
most likely to rise to the challenge. The most important environmental
skills these days and biology and ecology and infotech. That is
where were are trying to reach people so we point out, "It's not
your money we want... we will take that too (All Laugh). . .
ET: ... it is your skill set that is crucial.
ECOTECTURE: Absolutely. Do you think of the Conference as a watershed?
(Both hesitate. All Laugh.)
ET: Wouldn't that be nice? RIGHT now that we're just trying make
it happen.
PlaNetwork
Conference
May 12 - 14, 2000
San Francisco
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