Track Organization
The conference is organized into eight main substantive sections or "tracks", along with several support functions. Each in effect is a more or less self-contained conference in itself, which is being run as an intensely focused effort (spanning about one month each) under the direction of a "moderator" who is assisted by an international group of colleauges and experts who constitute the "Expert Panel" for that sessoin. The role of the organizers, of The Commons, is thus mainly one of networking in order to find people with strong backgrounds and interests in these problems of technology and society, and then working with them to provide a "work space" that can help them advance the agenda of informed public policy in their areas of expertise. The emphasis in the present series on zero emissions is the contribution of Robert Ayres and his associaites who have brought their consdierable expertise, fine international contacts, energies and some of the resoruces needed to make this conference work.
The present set of conference tracks are briefly introduced below.
Track 1: Toward Zero Emissions
The main 'Zero Emissions' themes of the conference are spelled out here. The key being the word 'Toward', indicating the idea of 'zero emissions', or more accurately 'very greatly reduced emissions' as a fundamental target: a leitmotif of the meeting. Moderator: Professor Robert Ayres, Director of the Centre for the Management of the Environment and Resources, Insead, Fontainebleau, France.Track 2. Telework & Sustainable Development: performance & Potential of the New Communications Tools.
This track explores telework as a set of technologies which may (or may not) help us achieve a more sustainable planet, while attempting to provide a critical, independent view on the topic and its prospects. Track Moderator: Eric Britton, Managing Director, EcoPlan International, Paris, France (An additional moderator is currently being sought for this track.)Track 3. Photovoltaics, Breakthrough Potential and Strategies for Accelerating Market Diffusion
Track Moderator: Dr. Paolo Frankl, University of Rome and the Center for the Management of the Environment, Fontainebleau, France and Resources of Insead.Track 4. Energy in a Deregulating World: Technologies, Markets, Impacts & Transition Strategies
Track Moderator: Dr. Hans-Holger Rogner, of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)Track 5. Remanufacturing Practices, Prospects and Implementation and Policy Strategies.
Track Moderator: Dr. Geraldo Ferrer, The Kenan-Flagler Business School of The University of North Carolina at Chapel HillTrack 6. Teleconferencing: New Ways of Building Knowledge and Mobilizing Resources in the Science and Technology Communities"
Teleconferencing is both the medium and the message of this conference. Useful also for more detail and information on teleconferencing tools. Moderators: Dr. Thomas Abeles of The Centre@Hamline University (Milwaulkee, USA) and Eric Britton of EcoPlan, Paris.Track 7. The Next TeleConference: Sustainable Knowledge Building in an Information Age
Track Moderator: To be namedTrack 8. Conclusions & Next Steps
This track is being developed as a collaborative activity and will be fed by comments, suggestions and inputs received over the course of the conference. It is, in effect, the final report of this six month attempt at international group work. Preliminary suggestions and materials will be plugged in here for discussion purposes, and the final statement will flow from this process of critical dialog and exchange.
The main conference tracks are in turn divided into sessions, organized as follows:
1. The Home/What's New page is intended to serve as an informative opening section for both first time vistors and active particiapnts in the track.
2. The Null Hypothesis represents in each case the moderator's basic strong (and perhaps contentious?) statement which is intended to lead off and provoke the discussions over the weeks of that conference track. For example, Britton's introduction on teleconferencing says something along the lines of "this stuff is here, does a job, already works well enough to do a number of jobs, and will shortly be a major competitor with physical conferences…". Which I intend then to go on amplify, support and 'prove'. At the same time the moderators and their cooperating colleagues intend to make an effort to present contrary views and opinions, and to encourage critical assessment, which may in the end convince you or others that their null hypothesis is perhaps all wet. (Ideally the moderators in each case will already on this first page of the Track provide links to other papers, sources and sites on the net, so that the various arguments and claims can conveniently be reviewed.)3. Why, Who, Who: provides the basic Background & Introduction ssction, with details on Track Moderator Background, Papers and Contributions within the track, the Expert Panel Candidates, Moderator Strategies and Invisible Colleges, and information on Early Contributions and Guiding Remarks.
4. Basic Issues, Basic Questions: Like the opening statement these are intended to be provocative and, via the process that they will hopefully engage, useful to help shed light on the topic. 5. Pros & Cons: Here is where other submittals, working papers, etc. will be filed for review and comment. These of course may undertake to challenge, support or amplify the claims and vision of the Null Hypothesis. One good approach might be to provide a relatively short note on the main points of contention, etc. here, together with a link to a full paper or report (which might be either on a detail page of its own, in the Conference ftp site, or available via link to somewhere else on the Web.)
6. Leading Sources and Links: What it says - hot links to good sites around the Web that provide information and feedback on the issues under study.
7. Leading Examples -- Success (and Other) Stories: This seems like a good opportunity to move from the general and often quite abstract to the specific and actual. Here though our approach must not be that of the publicist or of those who prefer 'announcing victory in advance' but rather that of a thoughtful independent analysis of a real world implementation or case. What a specific project involving photovoltaics has run into in, say, downtown Helsinki? A telework center in a Milan suburb built with many taxpayer francs, etc.
8. Findings & Conclusions: This section of the conference will be gradually built up in successive iterations as work on the track progresses. It will be fed and influenced by the various position papers that are presented, the new sources and links brought to the attention of the meeting, the concrete examples and projects which are introduced, and the commentaries and exchanges that take place on the WebBoard discussion forum over the duration of the meeting. 9. Actions & Next Steps/Recommendations: (To be developed in steps by the moderators, based on the feedback and lessons learned over the project. See the Conference Map for an outline of its eventual main sections.) 10. Discussion Forum (WebBoard): This is the depository of observations, critical remarks, suggestions, etc. which are generated by the participants via their comments to the meeting. In a first instance these will be shuttled via email to the Track Moderators and their team of cooperating colleagues, and which hopefully in fairly short order will be moved over to a more automated site such as the WebBoard site we are looking at with our friends from CyberLynx, or possibly Hamline University.
This is of course a "virtual" or entirely electronic conference. The actual physical 'conference hall' is in fact spread out over a handful of distant locations: in Paris (where most of the planning and work has done), in Fontainebleau (where the CMER team has continually pushed to ensure that the zero emissions theme is not left out), in Amsterdam and Coos Bay Oregon (where our colleagues from Crawford Systems and CyberLynx have helped on the technical end) and in Vienna Virginia (where the main database and processing unit (including this page) are hosted by PrimeHost. For the user, though, the entire conference is taking place on your desk top via its various electronic linkages to and through our three working sites. For the present, it makes not different at all where our team happens to be or even (with few exceptions) when we do our work. (An excellent chronology of the accomplishments, setbacks and attempted resolutions of the first weeks of the conference will be found in the Archives section. If you have an interest in virtual conferencing, what we can do with it, and where it might be going, it is a recommended read.)
The first step of the conference was to test a stripped down version of the technology and operations package that you see here in a limited pilot run. Its specific target was to see if it could be used to generate several round of expert counsel, inputs and various forms of feedback as needed to ensure that the basic package as presented here was going to be able to do its job.
But the conference is also, and perhaps this is the most important of all, seen as an important learning opportunity for all involved (including for the conference's organizers and its various sponsors). Because of its somewhat unusual nature, we are going to ask you to take a bit more time at first with the various 'rooms' and tools that together make up the conference site, than many of you are perhaps accustomed to when you sit down to your computer for your other daily work purposes. You may find that using your computer in this way is quite different and at times quite exasperating. With that annoyance clearly in our sights, we have worked hard to make this an 'efficient' process to the extent possible, in particular for the non-expert Web user. The core of our push for efficiency will be found in the site map which as you will shortly see is the central navigational tool of the conference.
That said, all this like anything else that is experimental in nature (because it is in itself very much a research process if you learn and use it to its fullest) it requires a level of curiosity and patience which stretches well beyond the practices of many busy administrators or bureaucrats, and indeed of many mature scientists. Thus if you wish to get full benefit of the considerable resources which are set out in these pages and beyond via their linked extensions, you are going to have to play with it a bit at first. This means inevitably that you will find yourself going up the occasional blind ally and that you may get lost from time to time. However, with discipline, imagination, a willingness to learn, and a good dose of patience with yourself, this is going to be a powerful tool indeed.
Finally, we would ask you to bear in mind that this is a conference, that it is a good one, and that when you go to a conference it takes you quite an investment of time and energy. Now of course a lot of that time is wasted in airports, finding your room, etc. Our conference will save you a great deal of that, but for you to benefit you are going to have to give it your time and attention as well. And perhaps, before you go any further, you might do well to take a side trip to the Participant's Contribution, and then come on back here to move ahead with the rest in good order.
And does this mean that we will never meet again, that there is no need for bringing together large floating crowds of scientists, administrators and diverse others to meet, lecture, glare and schmooze in some lovely corner of the world? Well, we have an answer to that, but why don't we first spend this month or so together and THEN talk about it.
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