TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE
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The electronic environment that has been specifically tailored for Vancouver consists of more than just a WWW home page, and draws on a number years of study, reflection, preparatory work and actual practice in these matters. The electronic environment brings together three main interlocking elements in support of the conference:
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This Web site is organized into eight main ‘pages’ or sections which interact with each other in a highly dynamic sense and are intended to facilitate the meeting in many respects.
Note: All sections are to be updated regularly in order to reflect the latest available information in each case. This is the work of the WebMeister, working in close cooperation with the staff of the OECD’s Environment Directorate and the meeting host, Environment Canada.
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All sections other than the E-Forum are essentially passive: basically ‘electronic bulletin board’ announcements and documentation sites which, once established, are intended to provide all of the main background materials needed by those who are interested in attending the conference or trying to make up their minds about participating.
By making this information available in this comprehensive form well in advance of the physical get-together itself, it will thus be possible for those who are to assemble in Vancouver to have in hand well prior to their arrival a full set of papers and background materials, as well as to be fully informed as to the main ‘arguments’ and intentions of the meeting.
Likewise, this Website provides useful advance identification of speakers, organizers and registered participants. This of course has the advantage of ensuring that the conference and all who come can get off to a running start, thereby avoiding the usual awkward situation that inevitably occurs when papers and other key materials become available only at the last moment. We all know from experience how few of those last-minute papers actually get read.
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The Progress and Conclusions sections are intended to serve the conference as the main repositories for the various written contributions resulting from the individual sessions and the meeting as a whole, as well as for suggestions and reactions to what has been proposed, presented or occurred thus far. The goal in this respect is to use these two-way links in order to ‘increase the applied collective IQ and performance’ of the assembly -- a process which of course requires good systems of feedback, as opposed to the usual passive attendance and pro forma ‘question and answer sessions’ which all too often fail to provide a forum which is either sufficiently extensive or lively enough to elicit the kinds of reflection and exchange which are really needed.
A further advantage of this approach is that it permits more reflective commentary, as well as a means of expression for those who prefer to build their ideas and express them in a calmer and less aggressively public environment. We have all often noticed that those most likely to speak up at such meetings are not always those who have most to offer. These electronic means provide a mechanism for other, perhaps shyer or more prudent minds as well to share with the meeting their reactions and ideas.
At the time of the meeting, rapporteurs are asked to file short statements of their session the same evening on which they take place. These reports will appear in the Progress section. At the same time, suggestions and comments on these and others matters can be logged into this same section by both meeting participants and others who may be trying to follow the meeting as ‘distance participants’ -- all of which are to be consulted and integrated as useful into the various reports, etc., that will eventually come out of the conference. The availability of this open forum for further discussion and exchanges is thought to be a particularly effective way to ensure the widest range of expression of views and opinions, thereby greatly enriching the final reports and other products of this collective experience.
The meeting will use the Conclusions section as the place to deposit the final findings, conclusions and recommendations, once they have undergone the process of intensive review not only in closed meetings but via the Progress postings which will give all participants an opportunity to add their comments, suggestions, etc. It will be the responsibility of the Conference’s organizers to make sure that their final entries under this section have indeed taken into full account the overall reaction and sense of the meeting. It will, of course, be possible for any observer to note the extent to which this process of consideration and accommodation has indeed taken place.
In establishing this process, it is our goal to ensure that whatever eventually may come out as a strong statement of meeting consensus or general intent will indeed fully and honestly reflect the collective intelligence and views of all involved, and not, as usually is the case, only those who happen to be in the editing session in the closing hours of the meeting.
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It is trusted that arrangements will be made to maintain these pages for at least six months after the formal closure of the conference. In this way, all of those who were associated and all those who are interested to know what was achieved (and how it was accomplished) will be able to have full access freely and without the usual delay of a year or more than normally marks the appearance of a printed report with the final papers, etc. The fact that not only the more formal elements of the meeting but also the interactive sections will continue to be open for continuing reference and commentary is seen to be one of the foremost potential contributions of this meeting.
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This is to the best of our knowledge the first full scale Web site to be developed in support of an OECD Conference, and thus we ask you to view it kindly as work in progress. It has been developed independently of the OECD and Environment Canada by Eric Britton and Philippe Crist of EcoPlan. It draws extensively on EcoPlan's own previous experience in telework and teleconferencing, the group's two years of hands-on experience in setting up and running the ECTF Forums on New Ways to Work and Access/Sustainability, and owes a considerable debt to the earlier work of the Netherlands Institute of Design in developing their DOME Web site in support of its Doors of Perception conferences (and which we encourage you to visit).
Critical reviews of earlier draft pages have been provided by Stephen Banker of Comm*Tech USA; Ajai Tripathi, Senior Systems Manager of the US House of Representatives; Mikel Murga/100322.134@compuserve.com of Leber (Spain); François Hamelin and Nick Arnold of the OECD, Kristi van Riet of the Netherlands Institute of Design; Jose Torcato of DG XIII of the European Commission; Stefan Lubach of the Teles Group (Germany), and Richard Gilbert (Canada), all of whom we gratefully thank for their ideas and feedback.
Comments and suggestions on all aspects of this site are invited. Please make them to WebMeister/100336.2154@compuserve.com or fax to +331-4326-0746. All suggestions will be considered as they come in, and, when possible, adjustments will be made to take them into account.
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