The Hon. Sheila Copps
Minister of Canadian Heritage
Jules Leger Building, Terrasses de la Chaudiere
15 Eddy Street
Hull, Quebec, K1A 0M5
The Hon. John Manley
Minister of Industry
11th Floor East, 235 Queen Street
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0H5
TC / CPI / ITAC
Dear Ms Copps and Mr Manley;
Canada has a hidden success story that needs to be told. In many
Canadian communities, there are engaged people acting on their
own initiative to consciously apply groupwares and new
communications media for social purposes. Their actions reveal
the emergence of a healthy electronic community networking
movement that directly benefits Canada's transition to a
knowledge society and economy. We are very pleased to bring to
your attention a project proposal to create a national and global
forum for sharing the lessons that those communities and their
partners are learning. Please find enclosed:
Local Choices - Global Voices ( LCGV). A funding
proposal for a world symposium on electronic
community networking: expressing civic engagement
and community online. Project Development Partners:
Telecommunities Canada, Canada's Coalition for Public
Information, and the Information Technology Association of
Canada. October 29, 1997.
The Hon Jon Gerrard, in a letter to the Information Technology
Association of Canada, stated, "I see this project as an excellent
opportunity to form a partnership between governments, the
private sector and non-profit organizations like Telecommunities
Canada and the Coalition for Public information, to showcase
Canada's successes and expertise in this area. I believe that the
major benefit from direct private sector participation could be
the dialogue between businesses and community networking
advocates that could then occur."
As a consequence of the cooperation involved in the development
of this project, that dialogue is already under way. The rationale
and business case for this Symposium outlines the respective
roles of the social, governmental and business sectors in a
networked society and economy from a community networking
perspective.
We see the major national benefits of the project to be as
follows:
1. DIALOGUE ON UNIVERSAL ACCESS.
The final report of the Information Highway Advisory Council
noted that "the issues surrounding development of the Information
Highway are so far-reaching that neither government nor industry
nor individual Canadians can hope to tackle them alone." As
governments go online and integrate services delivery at the
community level, strong electronic community networks are an
essential guarantee of universal access to the electronic public
spaces this creates. LCGV leverages exactly the spirit of
commitment and cooperation that is called for in the IHAC Report.
It directly addresses issues of participation, social cohesion,
identity, and the need for national dialogue on the broader
implications of universal access policy.
2. EXPLORING THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY IN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE.
In a networked world, the active totality of people's social,
political and economic behaviour, not just their consumer
behaviour, is the critical component modifying the open and
dynamic systems that businesses and governments seek to
understand. Community precedes commerce. But commerce and
community online can and should complement each other. If
electronic commerce is the supply side, then electronic
community is the demand side. LCGV explores how commerce
online reinforces, and is reinforced by, community online.
3. NATIONAL SHARING OF COMMUNITY NETWORKING EXPERIENCE.
Electronic public spaces are involving ever greater numbers of
citizens. Community networks are becoming significant new
social learning zones. There are many people who find social
relations mediated by new communications technologies to be
intensely personal and affirming. They experience a means of
transition to a knowledge-based economy centered on social
values of equity, inclusiveness, and democracy. LCGV shares the
experiences of people who express civic engagement and
community online.
4. EXPORTING CANADIAN COMMUNITY NETWORKING EXPERTISE
Effective community-based actions in other countries create
long-term windows of opportunity for a multitude of other
Canadian interventions. The Symposium is thus part of a
conscious long-term strategy to intensify reciprocal
"interdependencies" via the global network. It acts as a catalyst
for accelerating international cooperation on the community
centered approach to communications development. LCGV
positions Canada as an exporter of community networking
expertise and technologies -- the grassroots, bottom-up, "people
first" expertise and applications that make local infrastructures
pivotal in adapting countries to global socio-economic and
political change.
As the budget in the proposal indicates, we are asking that the
Government of Canada contribute development costs in the sum of
$360,000, related to facilitating international dialogue, both
online and face-to-face, about communities in transition and the
role of electronic community networking in enhancing their
opportunities.
The concept of online community development cuts horizontally
across the interests of many departments. It has been suggested
to us that our request for federal partnership and support might
best be met by organizing a consortium of departments. We urge
you to consider this suggestion. The departments that are
presently aware of the project proposal include: IDRC, Industry
Canada, Canadian Heritage, CIDA, Agriculture Canada, and HRDC.
Our World Symposium Project Moderator, and elected board
member of both CPI and TC, Garth Graham, is available in Ottawa
to supply details and participate in organization.
In summary, effective public policies and business strategies for
transition should be grounded in community needs. The
Symposium and the online dialogue that will proceed it are
attempts to provide answers to the crucial question of how we
fully engage the thinking of all stakeholders about what is clearly
a radical social transformation. LCGV will be an opportunity for
amplifying the global voices of social sector organizations online.
It will bring those voices to the attention of governments around
the world. By hosting this Symposium, Canadians will show their
leadership in enunciating those voices. By sponsoring this
Symposium, the Canadian government will prove its leadership in
attending to the message of the electronic community network
movement, and in highlighting significant Canadian expertise in
its expression.
Yours sincerely,
TELECOMMUNITIES CANADA
Per: Michael Gillespie
President
CANADA'S COALITION FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION
Per: Liz Hoffman
Chair
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
Per: Gaylen Duncan
President
LOCAL CHOICES - GLOBAL VOICES (LCGV)
A FUNDING PROPOSAL FOR A WORLD SYMPOSIUM
ON ELECTRONIC COMMUNITY NETWORKING
EXPRESSING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNITY ONLINE
PROJECT DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS:
TELECOMMUNITIES CANADA
CANADA'S COALITION FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF CANADA
OCTOBER 29, 1997
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 Introduction and Objectives
2.0 Setting
3.0 Partnerships
3.1 The partners
3.1.1 Telecommunities Canada
3.1.2 Canada's Coalition for Public Information
3.1.3 International Development Research Centre
3.1.4 Information Technology Association of Canada
3.1.5 Interdepartmental Universal Access Committee
3.1.6 USA Community Networking Partners
3.1.7 International Association of Community
Networks
3.2 Management Structure
4.0 LCGV - The Event
4.1 Making it happen
4.1.1 Time Table
4.1.2 Virtual Symposium
4.1.3 Agenda
4.2 Entertainment
5.0 Recruitment and Marketing
5.1 Canadian Marketing Strategy
5.1.1 Communities
5.1.2 Businesses
5.1.3 Governments
5.2 Other National Community Nets' Marketing Strategies
5.3 International Agencies' Marketing Strategies
6.0 Logistics
7.0 Preliminary Budget
7.1 Risk and Revenue Sharing
7.2 Revenue potential
8.0 Conclusion
LCGV - WORLD SYMPOSIUM PROPOSAL
1.0 Introduction and Objectives
The public sector is shrinking and the private sector is
globalizing. The social sector is striving to maintain a coherent
centre of civilized life. As part of their activities in that
centering role, social sector organizations are using technology
to create electronic public spaces, and to open those spaces to
the participation of all. LCGV will provide the opportunity to
consolidate the metaphor of electronic public space by linking on
a global scale all those communities -- real and virtual -- that
have found conviviality and neighbourliness through connecting
their cyberspace homesteads.
The essence of community development is simple. People want to
talk. Let them. But computer mediated networks support new
ways of talking that transcend community boundaries set by the
limits of time and transportation. In effect, we create our
networks and our networks create us. This alters utterly the
characteristics that define who is a neighbour and what is a
community. This gives each of us greater freedom, but also
greater responsibility, to shape the social contexts that we
inhabit. While we cannot fully anticipate the society that results
from this new freedom, there are engaged people consciously
applying groupwares for social purposes. In the process, they
learn how the concept of community changes as locality diverges.
This Symposium will, in fact, create an opportunity for linkages
that will bridge real and virtual communities. That those online
communities based on interest -- often called virtual
communities and often existing only online -- share many values,
principles and methods with those communities based on
geography reinforces the possibility that the distributed nature
of the Internet may be the technical analogue for a broader
historical trend.
Community precedes commerce. This principle is fundamental to
understanding how the benefits of electronic commerce can be
fully realized. The introduction of commerce into electronic
public space need not undermine community. But if we don't
consider the relationship of the two ideas, then we don't have the
whole picture.
In a networked world, the active totality of people's social,
political and economic behaviour, not just their consumer
behaviour, is the critical component modifying the open and
dynamic systems that businesses and governments seek to
understand. The fact that people now connect in continually
evolving and shifting electronic social networks creates both new
community and new interesting commercial opportunity. But it is
always the community that remains the network, not the
technological products and services.
The same principles and values that reinforce community in
general can also reinforce specific communities of commercial
opportunity. But we're just learning how to do this. We need to
think about and talk about how this might occur. We have to
invest money and time in exploring the full range of people's
interactive behaviours in online environments. In the open
systems of the Net, we have to get involved to ensure that
commerce online reinforces, and is in turn reinforced by,
community online. Community and commerce can and should
complement each other to the degree that neither exists without
the other.
The intention of LCGV is to provide community networks and their
partners the opportunity to advance the agenda for the global
future of the community networking movement. Socio-economic
decisions about electronic public space, community-based
computer networking and the restructuring of public life should
be centered in communities and the individuals who comprise
them. The achievement of cohesive electronic domains for
support, friendship and neighbourliness is a legitimate goal.
Effective public policies and business strategies for transition
should be grounded in community needs. The Symposium is an
attempt to provide answers to the crucial question of how we
fully engage the thinking of all stakeholders about what is clearly
a radical social transformation.
LCGV, as a forum for sharing the lessons that communities and
their partners are learning, has five overall objectives:
* To provide a global overview of grassroots, bottom-up,
community-based experience with computer-mediated
communications;
* To enable community action by demonstrating the pragmatics of
applications for social sector groups;
* To act as a catalyst for accelerating international cooperation
on the community-centered approach to communications
development;
* To negotiate new partnerships among community networks at
the global level, and;
* To foster new community networking partnerships with
businesses and governments at local, national and global levels.
2.0 Setting
Canada is one of the world's leaders in the development of
Internet applications, tools, resources and services by and for the
social sector -- and in the creation of the organizational
structures necessary to sustain them. Canada has also led in
attempts to ensure that the technology is available to all who can
use it, both locally and globally. Therefore Canada should be
willing to demonstrate that leadership by hosting LOCAL CHOICES
- GLOBAL VOICES (LCGV), a global symposium on electronic
community networking and on computer-mediated
communications for the social sector and its supporters.
The proposed host city [under negotiation] is Vancouver, British
Columbia. It has excellent international air connections, and a
World class multimedia arts community. The BC Provincial
Government is implementing the "BC Accord," an imaginative
multi-sectoral and community-based approach to Information
Highway development. The BC Association of Community
Networks is a pioneer of regional approaches to community
networking. It demonstrates a model of support that
complements Telecommunities Canada's long term objectives.
3.0 Partnerships
3.1 Partners
Ultimately, the success of LCGV as a global venture will depend
on negotiating partnerships with several other national
community networking movements and the international agencies
that are becoming aware of them. The core of the Canadian LCGV
team can expand as support is negotiated but currently is
comprised of four organizations:
Telecommunities Canada
Canada's Coalition for Public Information
International Development Research Centre
Information Technology Association of Canada
Outward from this core, it is essential to collaborate with other
national, international, private sector and government partners.
The full partners picture to date is detailed below.
3.1.1 Telecommunities Canada
TC is an association of associations that either operate or intend
to operate community networks. It was created by community
networks to give themselves a capacity to articulate community
networking interests in Canada on their behalf. TC's formal
organizational structure is fairly embryonic, consisting of seven
elected volunteer board members. Although an informal structure
and interim board came together at the second annual conference
of community networks, Ottawa, August 1994, it wasn't until the
third annual conference in Victoria, August 1995, that the board
was first formally elected. The board is exploring national
community networking activities, methods and priorities within
the limits of extremely small resources. The board members are
scattered across Canada, and all of them are more highly active in
local community networking organizations than they are in
national activities. Most of the board's collaborative work is
accomplished via email.
Through its President, TC participates in the International
Association of Community Networks project. TC Board members
also participate in the Community Access Project Advisory Board
(an Industry Canada project to connect 1,000 rural communities
to the Internet), the National Steering Group on Electronic Public
Space, and the Coalition for Public Information.
3.1.2 Canada's Coalition for Public Information
CPI is a national public interest group concerned with public
awareness of communications and information infrastructure
change. It has an office, staff, and sufficient funding for long
term planning. At a strategy meeting in Toronto, Saturday, April
27, 1996, CPI adopted a vision of Canada as a knowledge society.
It also adopted related objectives that place community and
community networking at centre stage.
Through its Chair, CPI was represented on the Information
Highway Advisory Council (Canada's equivalent of the US NII
Advisory Council), and is represented on the CANARIE Board (a
government / business partnership to develop bandwidth capacity
at the backbone level of Canada's communications architecture),
and the Community Access Project Advisory Board.
3.1.3 International Development Research Centre
IDRC is a Canadian aid agency with a mandate to fund developing-
world researchers, thus enabling the people of the South to find
their own solutions to their own problems. Its information
science programs have a special interest in global knowledge
sharing networks and in maintaining community based approaches
to the use of information technology and telecommunications. It
has funded the implementation phases of LCGV's Web site.
3.1.4 Information Technology Association of Canada
ITAC is the premier voice of the Canadian information technology
industry. Its mission is to provide leadership on issues affecting
the growth and profitability of the industry in all regions of
Canada, and to promote the effective use of information
technology by Canadians. While the full extend of its
participation is under discussion, ITAC is fully active in the
development of the LCGV proposal and business plan.
3.1.5 Interdepartmental Universal Access Committee
Several representatives of this federal government committee
for the development of a national strategy for universal access to
the information highway have agreed to act as a reference group
for contributing a government perspective to the development and
support negotiation of the LCGV proposal and business plan.
3.1.6 USA Community Networking Partners
Steve Cisler, formerly with Apple Computer Library, Cupertino,
California, and key partner in several US national community
networking conferences, is actively coordinating an informal US
reference group. This group will become the basis for negotiating
formal partnerships in United States once Canadian support is
clarified.
3.1.7 International Association of Community Networks
The organizers intend that the Symposium be designed in part to
serve the long term development needs of the emerging
International Association of Community Networks.
3.2 Management Structure
This is the first time that anyone has taken an international
perspective on expressing civic engagement and community in the
transition to knowledge based societies and economies. This
means that, as much as possible, we should allow the "how to" to
evolve as we go along. Then the issues, concerns and
opportunities that surface will drive the structure we create, and
not the reverse. In this manner, the process of planning the
"event" can have as much or more impact on its objectives as does
the culminating face-to-face Symposium.
The management of LCGV will be overseen by a Board of Directors
of the core and major support partners. The Board will be advised
by an International Concepts and Connections Committee (C3)
including:
- a representative from the web site crew
- all members of a team that synthesizes Canadian
experience and negotiates community nets participation
in the event
- representatives of other national teams
- representatives of supporting partners and international
agencies
- key representatives of communities of interest and
research communities on the psychology, sociology, and
political economy of the Net (ie of the key content themes
organized through the Web site).
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 14:12:45 -0500 (EST)
From: aa127@freenet.carleton.ca (Garth Graham)
To: cpi@web.net, shearman@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
Subject: Project docs for CPI/TC web sites
Reply-To: aa127@freenet.carleton.ca
4.0 LCGV - The Event
The Symposium will seek to focus the collective wisdom of a
broad range of participants into a glimpse of the future, not only
of community networking but of communities themselves. On the
basis of these insights, action plans will be formulated to ensure
that community needs are addressed in the development of
electronic highways at national and international levels. The
final step will be to discuss with the public and private sectors
the necessity of following the lead of the social sector in the
development of electronic public space.
The objectives cannot be achieved without the concerted effort of
community networkers and the cooperation of the other sectors.
Coordination will only be achieved through a clear vision of the
common ground and interests we all share. Consequently the
bridging of gaps will be a main task of the Symposium.
The first gap to be bridged is the more apparent than real gap
between virtual communities and geophysical communities.
Sessions will be devoted to drawing out the underlying
commonality of interests, values and principles uniting these two
types of community. Sessions will be devoted to analyzing the
similarities and differences between identifying with a
community of interest, manifest solely in electronic space, and
identifying with a geographical community in the midst of which
one physically lives.
Another kind of gap will be addressed by the attempt to convey a
fresh perspective to social, government and business sector
representatives, at a global level, about the needs of communities
in transition and how making those needs paramount in policy and
business decisions concerning computer-mediated
communications can have beneficial results.
4.1 Making it happen
Because everyone who becomes involved in the process will be an
active participant or supporter of community networking
movements, what we are really planning is an extended dialogue
about change in community life and the effect of community nets
on its outcomes. In effect, the event as dialogue is already under
way.
We must work through national community networking
movements. We must ensure that the marketing strategies and
the development of program intertwine. The Web site will be
built around the key themes. As people are drawn into the
discussion of themes, the content of themes and their
relationship to each other will evolve and key actors will emerge.
Ultimately the program of the actual event will grow out of this
interaction.
4.1.1 Time Table
To populate the web site, evolve the international dialogue within
it, and organize the logistics of the face to face meeting will
take at least 16 to 18 months from the time that development
funding is assured. For example, receiving a decision early in
1998 allows for scheduling the Symposium in June, July or
August of 1999.
4.1.2 Virtual Symposium
The Symposium needs its Web Site to:
a. Organize, synthesize and showcase Canadian community-based
experience with computer-mediated communications.
b. Organize and publicize the event in an open and visible fashion.
We practice what we preach. People need to be able to easily
self-identify their interest and opportunities for participation,
(ie the site itself is a consciously designed space where a virtual
community of interest can emerge).
c. Initiate global discussion of the issues surrounding the
interaction of community, virtual community and community
networking - in order to allow the agenda of the face-to-face
Symposium to focus on essential actions and multi-leveled
partnership negotiations.
d. Act as a catalyst and link for national sites that support
community networks, especially for the emergence of new ones.
In effect, the objective is to design the "world" site to assist the
proliferation of new national sites and organizations that support
community networking.
e. Create an explicit space to discuss actual/potential linkages
with developing countries
f. Create space for remote interaction and participation in the
Symposium itself (virtual attendance).
g. Disseminate, publicize and continue dialogue on the
Symposium's results.
h. Long-term, to support global capacity to develop community
networks. After supporting the operation of the Symposium as a
one-time event, the Site should be handed off to an appropriate
agency with a mandate to support community networking
development at the international level.
The Concept Map, used for organizing the content of the
Symposium, is also being used as the basis for site design (see
4.1.2, for a text outline of the Concept Map).
Phases in Site Development:
1. Implementation phase: design and establish the site, and plan
for subsequent phases (funded by IDRC).
2. Site operation and development up to the time of the
symposium, including:
- modification, maintenance, and additional design
- coordination of moderator roles in discussion
spaces and their integration into the actual
symposium agenda
3. Operation during the Symposium, the phase which is most
labour intensive. This is:
a. the virtual conference site
b. the symposium's primary global reporting and
dissemination capacity
4. Post Symposium. The site migrates to a long term home. Is
this in Canada (TC?) or international (IACN?). It should be
Canada/TC, but the politics of this question could be significant
to the Symposium's impact.
4.1.2 Agenda
The following checklist of themes illustrates a possible content
framework for purposes of discussion. It is not intended to be
inclusive. Ideas for additions, modifications to fit the needs of
particular participants, or other alternative frameworks are
welcome.
PRIMARY THEME: EXPRESSING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND COMMUNITY
ONLINE
Online, as you make your networks and your networks make you,
who is your neighbour and what is a community? LCGV provides
an opportunity to share experiences and explore ideas for the
community of people who think about communities in transition,
and about electronic community networks as new social learning
zones. LCGV aims for a new understanding of politics, in the
public sense of people acting together online to achieve common
ends at the community level.
SUBTHEMES:
1. COMMUNITY NETWORKS: Sharing experience about achieving
community through connecting people and distributing functions
horizontally across communities of location or affinity.
1.1. Best and Worst Case Examples in Community Net
Operations - sharing practice and experience of
governance, sustainability, acceptable use,
content, search design, training, and technologies.
1.2. National Community Network Development Programs -
Top Down or Bottom Up?
1.3. International Action in Support of Community
Networking
1.4. Technologies (Hardware / Software / Groupware)
1.5. Linking National Support Sites
1.6. Is there Common Ground Among Businesses Identifying
Community as Market?
2. SERVICE NETWORKS: Sharing experience about working with
community-based service institutions that vertically distribute
network functions. How do networks that are integrated
vertically within their respective services change those service
sectors and how do they interact with the horizontal integration
of community networks?
2.1. Best and Worst Case Examples by Sector
2.2. Defending the Stovepipe - Winners and Losers in
Horizontal and Vertical integration
2.3. Special Needs for Access
2.4. Informed and uninformed - achieving equity in universal
access
3. PERSON AS NETWORK: Individual experience of the transition to
online social networks. How personal identity, or the expression
and experiences of the self, is changed by adaption to social
interaction in electronic public space.
3.1. Motivation to Connect - Public / Private
3.2. Enhanced effectiveness in Civic Engagement and Wealth
Generation
3.3. Belonging / "Membership" - Inclusion and Exclusion
3.4. Autonomy, Anonymity, Identity, Self Reliance and Self
Organization
3.5. Bounded Spatial Relationships - Where Does Place
(Ecology) Fit In ?
3.6. Hypertext Links as Handshake
3.7. Computer "literacy" as the Expression of self in new
media
4. SOCIETY AS NETWORK: How the structure of society and its
institutions is changed by adaption to social interaction in
electronic public space. Because it's the community that's the
network, not the technology, how we use new communications
media to design our electronic public spaces has a direct affect
on the structure of institutions and organizations. "We make our
networks and our networks make us." (William J. Mitchell. City of
Bits).
4.1. Virtual Social Network Theory - Do New Networks Make
New People or More of the Same?
4.2. Local Experience as Shared Knowledge Base - Is this the
True "Content," not Culture as Commodity?
4.3. Communications Theory - Electronic Public Space
(Media) Design Principles and Computers as Theatre
4.4. Culture, Acculturation, and Community
4.5. Multiculture / Language, including Canadian Bilingual
Experience
5. ECONOMY AS NETWORK: The role of online community in
establishing new rules for equity in the allocation of power and
money in networked economies and political systems.
Community, commerce and electronic democracy are linked.
Understanding how communities form online is essential to
understanding how markets and political systems are changing.
Online communities shift market power from the vendor to the
customer and political power from the governors to the governed,
making it necessary for businesses and governments to re-think
how their work is done.
5.1. Electronic Democracy and the Disappearance of
Authority
5.2. Public Policy - Can we balance Electronic Public Spaces
and Private Information Highways?
5.3. Information Economics and its Impact on Community
5.4. Electronic Community and Electronic Commerce -
Conflict or Compliment?
5.5. Citizen Survival, Transparency, and Open Government
5.6. Nation State or Networked Nation? - Contrasting policy
and technical approaches to introducing the Internet in a
Country.
4.2 Special Event - Community, New Media, and the Arts
Hosting the Symposium in Vancouver allows for the involvement
of the dynamic BC online Arts and multimedia community in a
parallel process that explores new modes of expressing individual
and communal identity.
5.0 Recruitment and Marketing (This section requires
discussion and expansion)
5.1 Canadian Marketing Strategy
5.1.1 Communities
Particularly through the Web site dialogue, contact will be made
with potential participants in non-government agencies,
community groups, public interest groups and others involved in
the development of community networking, civic engagement
social capital.
TC and CPI will utilize their memberships in public interest
policy alliances on information highway, electronic public space,
universal access and telecommunications deregulation.
5.1.2 Businesses
This section needs more work, and is the special province of our
ITAC partners. The key question is "How does a business make
money out of this?"
Contact will be made with businesses and industries involved
with the Internet and the social sector, particularly those that
are identifying community as the focus of their own marketing
strategies.
5.1.3 Governments
Government agencies like Industry Canada, Canadian Heritage,
Human Resources Development, Foreign Affairs and CIDA,
Agriculture Canada, Health Canada, and their equivalents in other
countries.
Provincial Information Highway Ministries, and key local
governments with significant experience in community-based
electronic government services delivery.
5.2 Other National Community Nets' Marketing Strategies
Representatives of successful community network movements
around the world will be invited to share their experience at a
global level, both in the planning and in the event.
5.3 International Agencies' Marketing Strategies
International agencies such as UNDP, the World Bank and the large
philanthropic foundations will be invited to identify and support
particular themes that are of interest to them, or specifically to
fund the support of developing country participants.
6.0 Venue and Logistics (details to be supplied)
The symposium event will be scaled to accommodate
approximately 550 to 700 participants
The administrative and logistical infrastructure of LCGV will
need to be supplied by an appropriate professional conference
support group.
7.0 Preliminary Budget
Much of the cost of this event goes into talking about it before
the fact. TC and CPI, as volunteer organizations, lack the staff
and resources to cultivate and sustain the level of advance
dialogue and synthesis that is necessary to give real depth to the
final result. Finding substantial support for the development
costs, well in advance, is the key financial factor in Canada's
hosting of this event.
Development and organizing expenses (over 16 to 18 months)
Organizing staff 130,000
Community nets team 80,000
Office expenses / travel 60,000
Reporting, media, advert 50,000
Web site 65,000
=========================
$385,000
Event expenses
Meeting rooms 30,000
Conf. Meals (3L/2D) 73,000
Keynote speakers 3@5000 15,000
Travel sub - key actors x24 53,000
Onsite logistics/support 40,000
Materials 15,000
New media arts event 25,000
==========================
$251,000
sub total $636,000
contingence@10% $ 63,600
========================================
TOTAL Estimate $ 699,600
7.1 Risk and Revenue Sharing
As NGOs, TC and CPI have very limited financial resources and
cannot allow LCGV to sustain a loss. It must be entirely self
financing. We recommend that any revenues go to the ongoing
operation of the web site, where ever it is located, as a concrete
contribution to ongoing experience sharing and international
cooperation.
7.2 Revenue potential
Registration
- Community Nets 300@$300 90,000
- Internat. sponsored/govt/corp 200@$750 150,000
BC sponsorships 20,000
IDRC - web site start up 25,000
Development costs, Canadian Gov't
consortium 6 depts@60,000 360,000
Student empl grants 24,000
Corporate / Foundation 41,000
Other sponsors 15,000
========================================
TOTAL Revenue $ 725,000
8.0 Conclusion
The idea of community is high on any list of values and goals that
we might set for the uses of technology. In transition to a
knowledge society, the idea of community is, however, just as
subject to change as any other basic principle of social
organization. Many people now consciously explore the nature of
that change. There are many people who find social relations
mediated by new communications technologies to be intensely
personal and affirming. The purpose of LCGV is to share the
experiences of people who express civic engagement and
community online.
Around the world, social sector organizations face increasing
pressure to accept broadly redefined responsibilities for ensuring
the survival and renewal of caring, civilized communities. In
coping with this enormous challenge, these organizations have
begun to exploit the resources of electronic computer-based
networking. In developed countries, they are accomplishing this
evolution at essentially the same rate as other sectors.
Community networks are becoming significant new social
learning zones. But electronic networking is a two-edged sword.
It is both a means of responding to these pressures, and a
primary cause of those very changes in community that demand
response.
As social networks and communities virtualize their activities by
translating them into the online environment, what mirrors can
social sector organizations use to see the changes in community
and in themselves? How can communities share the pragmatic
lessons they are learning about successful response to transition
through local self-reliance?
As businesses globalize their production and sales by divesting
themselves of the unprofitable, what makes them sensitive to the
particulars of communities as micro- markets? The skill to
express yourself online requires something beyond the phrase
"computer literacy." Whatever the phrase is, the early adopters
of electronic networking for social action purposes have clearly
learned about and taught new modes of inventing groupwares for
community development. In effect, some consumers of new media
products and services are acquiring a new set of life skills for
communicating in a knowledge based society and economy.
Community online is great place to look for educated flexible
people who can think independently and who are prepared for
continuous learning, the very people that businesses foresee as
essential to the workplace of the future.
As governments face the open, diverse and distributed social
systems of global networks, what legitimizes authority to
govern? What works in balancing global, transnational, national,
and local interests, and who decides? As governments go online
and integrate just-in-time approaches to services delivery to the
community level, the equivalent of micro-markets in business,
what guarantees universal access to the electronic public spaces
this creates? It is already obvious that the modalities of world
government, or transnational corporate alliances that maximize
access to markets, or the hardening of traditional roles for nation
states, are not adequate responses to these questions.
Governments are about to feel increasing demands from citizens
for the protection and promotion of their online homes and
communities. One clear government role is to facilitate
communities' ability to talk among themselves.
In the period leading up to August 1998, the idea and the reality
of electronic public space will make itself felt. Electronic
public spaces are involving ever greater numbers of citizens.
They benefit from and adopt the values that flourish in those
spaces. When this process operates at its best, they personally
experience a means of transition to a knowledge-based economy
centered on social values of equity, inclusiveness, democracy and
civic engagement. The purpose of the Symposium, as it is of
community networks themselves, is to further those ideals.
LCGV will position Canada as an exporter of community
networking expertise and technologies -- the grassroots,
bottom-up, "people first" expertise and applications that make
local infrastructures pivotal in adapting countries to global
socio-economic and political change. Effective community-based
actions in other countries create long-term windows of
opportunity for a multitude of other Canadian interventions. The
Symposium is thus part of a conscious long-term strategy to
intensify reciprocal "interdependencies" via the global network.
LCGV will be the opportunity for amplifying the global voices of
social sector organizations online. It will bring those voices to
the attention of governments around the world. By hosting this
Symposium, Canadians will show their leadership in enunciating
those voices. By sponsoring this Symposium, the Canadian
government will prove its leadership in attending to the message
of the electronic community network movement, and in
highlighting significant Canadian expertise in its expression.
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