The Electronic/Environment - Technology & tools to support and extend international sustainability initiatives

The electronic/environment:
A toolkit for sustainability

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Deep background:

Summary: The electronic/environment (e/e for short) is an ever-evolving (and fast!) state-of-the-art multi-level communications toolset developed over the last decade and deployed in our work with an expanding group of international partners and technologies in various configurations in specific projects aimed at advancing the sustainability agenda.

Introduction (Let's be part of the solution!) (For a change?)

"Sustainable development and social justice", the phrase has a noble ring and is quite fashionable at the moment, with different groups using it in different ways for different reasons. More and more international events, conferences, seminars, workshops and the like are being organized around these critically important themes for our embattled world. However in almost all cases - and quite ironically given that it is after all 2005 and Moore's Law has yet to be repealed - organized with a decidedly backward technology approach that is serving to hold them back in terms of their international reach and actual impact when it comes to implementing specific remedial programs and projects.

Of course, technology is not going to solve all our problems and dilemmas of sustainable development, but at The Commons we are firm believers that "technology is part of the solution". Indeed one thing that we have learned over the last decade of discouragingly slow 'progress' (backtracking in most cases, really) in these matters from a global perspective, is that none of us are going to get very far with the challenges if we do not learn to make creative use of the full range of tools that are at our disposal. Which brings us right up in front of information and communications technologies, an area where there is a huge amount going on and where the tools available to support the international sustainability movement are advancing with great strides - what we call the electronic/environment.

What is an electronic/environment?

The idea in brief is to design and bring into play an integrated set of low cost, widely available, state of the art electronic communications tools to support and extend the reach of international events such as conferences, workshops or other gatherings in which people traditionally have come together physically in a given place for a few days or so, in order to exchange ideas and information on some specific target topic (and then run back home).

An e/e is a carefully orchestrated, parallel virtual "communications/support envelope" that extends over a considerably longer designated period than the physical meeting, during which time the basic concepts and issues central to the event in question are introduced well in advance, shared with a wide international audience, explained and queried in an active collegial manner, relationships are established, ideas are built, and concrete follow-up can already be in place before the day that the doors open at the physical meeting..

The success of any given e/e project depends on three things: (a) assiduous planning with the event organizers, (b) the selection and preparation of the various technology components and their deployment (with qualified and experienced project partners), and (c) meticulous management attention to the full range and levels of detail over the project life.

How it works:

A typical e/e support project starts up several months before the physical meeting, and continues for a similar period afterwards in order to ensure the full capture of feedback, views and suggestions for future events. (Ideally in a world in which continuity is a virtue only rarely achieved, the day the e/e itself closes down will be the day that the next program or event in the cycle is ready to start)

The e/e toolset varies from project to project, but the main components currently available include:

Aggressive international multi-level outreach program aimed at bringing in hundreds, even thousands of international groups, experts and concerned citizens from all over the world, allowing them both to follow and also to participate actively in the event.
Interactive web sites, with supporting events and discussions both in meeting run-up, during the main event, and in the planned aftermath. (In all cases these days the event organizer usually has already made plans for their main website. These need to be discussed and possibly adjusted to ensure a smooth meshing.)
Meeting registration area, libraries of materials, billing tools, confirmations, etc.
A series of discussions, "pre-conferences" and brainstorming sessions, including discussions of working papers and submittals of the various speakers and presenters - so that the day when people arrive at the physical event they are off to a running start (instead of the totally dead start that is the norm, sadly.)
Virtual discussion rooms and poster sessions in parallel with physical meetings during the conference to permit multiple access.
IP videoconferencing configurations (multiple): One option to be taken very seriously is that of creating an always on line IP videoconferencing facility that anyone in the world with a broadband connection and hundred dollar pro web cam will be able to join - together with a whole slate of events and programs that will use this technology.
Live and on demand webcasting: A 100% virtualization (Webcast) of the conference as it takes place. This approach makes the conference available to anyone in the world while it is taking place and then can be maintained on line for the full period of the e/e (Another considerable advantage is that this approach, when kept on line, enables conference access to those who may wish either to review the events later and from afar. Likewise, if the discussion areas are maintained, this permits the conference to be extended in time and space -- and eventually in terms of its impacts and effectiveness - as opposed to the usual firm closure once the delegates have left the conference hall on the last day.)

In summary, here are some of the specific things that an e/e tries to enable which otherwise are not going to happen in your meeting:

Extend the "reach" of the physical meeting by a factor of ten, one hundred or more, by using a nested set of low costs e-communications devices to bring in more people and to extend the time horizon of the activity.
Provide an interactive set of tools which are made available and managed in such a way so that when those invited actually arrive at the meeting place, they are already well advanced in the process not only of reading and understanding the usual presentations, but also in the dialogues that usually take place only in the physical meeting. (We think of this as the "running start".)
The e/e likewise provides a means for extending the meeting once the planes and trains carry back the attendees to their homes - thereby getting rid of the usual discontinuities that result and which inevitably work to "bury" the meeting and consecrate it to the past

Project budget depends on the details of the toolset and the length of time over which the e/e is operated.

Some Historic Background:

A quick list of a handful of actual examples which show to an extent how we have made this work in the past.

1988-present. The New Mobility Agenda, Paris:
This has been the steadily evolving in-house e/e that we created some fifteen years ago, initially as a newsgroup in the pre-Web days, and which you can see in its latest form at http://newmobility.org. This might fairly be considered as a permanent conference, timeless and spaceless. (It turns out to be a very lively space with more than a thousand individual and groups plugged in on a regular basis.)

1995/96. Towards Sustainable Transportation, OECD, Vancouver:
At the other end of the time spectrum, the work we did back in 1995/96 to create a first generation e/e for the OECD Sustainable Transportation Conference in Vancouver. By today's standards, primitive stuff: a first generation web site, a supporting e-library, advance registration facility, email discussions, and a pair of ISDN videoconferencing links. Today everyone and his mother do it, but that was almost a decade ago and seen then as pretty original stuff. But it worked, it was cost effective, it extended the reach of the physical conference pretty well for the time, and was one concrete step in a process which we have continued to extend and improve steadily since. (You can see the remaining vestiges of this if you go to The Commons at http://ecoplan.org and pop the word "Vancouver" into the Search box.)

1997. Zero Emissions Strategy Conference, Cyberspace:
This was our first purely virtual conference, developed in association with the Center for the Management of the Environment and Resources of INSEAD - Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires. Again maybe worth a glace, which you can have if you pop the phrase "Zero Emissions" into the Search box on The Commons.

2000. The Bogota 2000 Project, Colombia:
This is the cooperative project with the dynamic Mayor of the City of Bogota Colombia, a Third World Megacity of more than seven million people, which led in time to one of the outstanding examples of a new approach to transport in cities. This project won as you know the prestigious Stockholm Environment Prize for 2001, which was jointly awarded to Mayor Peñalosa and The Commons for our collaboration in demonstrating not only an outstanding transportation project but also new forms of international cooperation. Reference:

2001/02. Stockholm Partnerships for Sustainable Cities, Stockholm:
The Stockholm Partnerships program which we created in partnership with the organizers of the physical conference the e/e that you see at www.partnerships.stockholm.se. This was an important building block and worked out extremely well in attaining its ambitious objectives. (We continue to work with the 228 project teams that eventually were brought into the program, including the 55 that finally nominated and brought to Stockholm for a creative week of co-learning and exchanges - showing that there are times when physical presence can be critical.)

2004/5. The extended took kit
Gradually piece by piece, technology by technology and partner by partner, we are piecing together the toolset that is now really going to make all this work.

Other related and more recent:
Have a look at the following continuing e/e platforms under The Commons:

New Mobility Agenda
Land/Value Capture Initiative at http://ecoplan.org,
World Carshare Consortium at http://worldcarshare.com,
World Car Free Days at http://worldcarfreeday.com,
Children on the Move! at http://www.ecoplan.org/children/, xWork: New Ways to Work in an Information Society at http://xwork.org, and
World Energy Futures at http://ecoplan.org/energy.