In order to advance this agenda, we developed an sketch work plan for the two years directly ahead, of which this Web site is but one part. The following chart summarizes the three main planned components of the work program for that period.
There are thus the electronic, print, educational and exchange elements, all of which important as part of the process. But the bottom line stretches far beyond this and it is, above all, the creation of new and better jobs for individuals and communities with a future.
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| The xWork Forum
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Communications between the interested parties is a critical element in the strategy behind this sprawling, ill-formed cooperative international effort. To that end a special "open discussion and exchange space" was set up on 5 January at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xWorkCafe/ in order to support this important aspect of the effort. For these discussion, exchange and support purposes you may find some use in the xWork Forum
which you will see just to your left and which you can access directly simply
by clicking the icon. This will whisk you directly to the Forum. You are invited to check in and participate in the exchanges.
To make this easy, all you have to do is fill in the following with your email address, click and wait for rapid confirmation and instructions for participation by return email. It's that simple. Drop on in.
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| Update inventory of leading groups,. projects, sources |
[Section to follow. In the meantime click to draft inventory forupdating. ]
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| xWork tools |
[Section to follow. In the meantime click to draft inventory forupdating. ]
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 A MAJOR UPDATE AND EXTENSION OF 1994 EC REPORT
... is currently in process and the latest version is now available in the Library (see nov98draftreportd.pdf). The current version, which we hope to publish by midyear, represents a major cooperative effort with contributions from a number of leading independent thinkers. It is informed, challenging, diverse and, we like to think, at last a bit upsetting. Both reports -- it should be said -- have been written not as solution sets but rather as, we call them, "thinking exercises".
One recent expert reviewer from the Commission characterized this latest version in these terms:
"On the substance of your latest draft, I haven't read every word, but I have serious misgivings:
- You are much too pessimistic,
- You don't recognize the enormous progress made since 1994, both in bringing unemployment down to near record "lows" in some countries, and in the policy debate and coherence at European level; many of the key references are still to 1993/94,
- The new draft is still an uneasy mixture of information, views and catastrophe predictions, apparently to shock the reader into new ways of thinking about work that aren't then spelt out.
Having said this, your text is still full of gems. It would still be a great contribution to policy debate."
To which we have, perhaps not surprisingly, a response, which can be boiled down in a few words to:
- Pessimistic? If anything it is probably not pessimistic enough to reflect the full reality and depth of the crisis.
- Enormous progress? Where it counts most, little or no real progress has been made!
- Uneasy mixture? Yes indeed, that is exactly the idea! We are trying to shock you (YOU!) into new ways of thinking about it -- and part of the thinking involves spelling out some of the ways yourselves. We are not smart enough to have all the answers. But we can at least spot the fact that there are questions that are not being asked. And this is a part of a process of first, problem setting, and then, problem solving. But it's a group process, and one of the ways in which we can try to constitute the group and get the ball rolling is through the Web as we are now doing.
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Last updated on 13 October 2005
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