_ The Zero Emissions Strategy Conference
_ The Zero Emissions Strategy Conference
- Hope you're rested after your weekend. We're not, we're exhausted.
- In addition to lining up and working with the author to prepare the next Podium piece which today is Zero Emissions Realities in a Diverse and Conflicted World: The Very Ordinary Problem of Motorcycles in Cities , by Madhav Badami, a doctoral candidate at University of British Columbia, we have been slaving away at making our user interface a bit more friendly to the less handy computer users in our midst.
- This is the week that we are hoping that the feedback and discussion will begin in earnest. We believe that we how have most of the basic Web infrastructure in place to support it. For now perhaps the best place to start will be By sending us your comments and observations on the first series of Podium thinkpieces, which we can subsequently post and of course transmit directly to the author for her or his reactions.
- Your suggestions for more Podium pieces and candidates for such presentations. You may even have one in the form of a longer commentary on one of the pieces that have been thus far posted (see below for the latest on this). Thanks.
- Note discussion and comments on the Letter of Invitation, and in particular the matter of the call for '3rd generation eco-efficiency case studies'
- Web Hint: May we recommend that you spend some time with and linking from the various Web sites indicated the conference's home page to inspect the results. They represent a rich world of information and opinion and are, in our view, one of the main contributions of this meeting.
Today's Web Detour: Earth Council The site of this international non-governmental organization and informational resource created as a direct result of the Earth Summit to promote sustainable development and Agenda 21.
- Today's Podium piece is in three parts, under the title The Zero Emissions/Virtuality Link: A Perspective from the Program for the Human Environment, Rockefeller University , by Jesse H. Ausubel, who is Director of the program.
- Arrangements have now been made for the first group videoconference to be held at 17:00 Paris time. The call-in number for the session is 00.49.30.399.28.2622 (the Teles host conferencing site in Berlin). Please note there is room for a maximum of seven participants; so do let us know if you will be joining us. Our expectations for participation are modest, given the limited response that we have had on this to date. nonetheless the session will be run as a pilot/testing phase and all are invited. A report on this event will be placed on the site, and we are hopeful that the planned second such conference on 25 August will be well attended.
- (PrimeHost site goes down for 12 hours blocking updating of materials but not user access. This is however only the second such breakdown that we have suffered in the last three years of site operation.)
- Our Podium speaker today missed their virtual boat, but has promised, quite promised, to have a sparkling presentation for us next week.
- < A copy of a briefing by James Robertson, a href="ftp://ftp.the-commons.org/pub/zero-ems">The New Economics:, recently commissioned by the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission in order to provide, in their words, "a value-added review of recent alternative-economic-paradigms work as it pertains to sustainability, with a particular emphasis on the practical/policy implications", has been added to the Library shelves. The author has indicated that he may also provide a brief presentation of the main findings and recommendations of the project for the Podium in the coming days.
- Robert Ayres has indicated that he may be preparing shortly a Podium piece in which he gets down to details as far as his "call for case studies' is concerned. We all await what he has to say with interest.
- Web Hint:A number of handy utilities have been placed in the Tools section of the Electronic Library. These can be useful for document compression (zipping), encoding and decoding,and accessing Word 6/7 files if you cannot do it directly through your word processor. All this is explained in the Conference's Library HomePage.
- Today's Podium piece is really a tool, but it is one that we can not only use immediately and well as is, but also possibly something that we can get together to add to, focus and strengthen for the purposes of continuing work in the area of concern of our meeting. We have entitled the presentation Toward a Zero Emissions Bibliography It has been contributed by the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University, with the Vishnu Group. In its latter depths (fortunately the entire rather lengthy document has ben indexed and hot linked for easy reference), it contains some very useful links to leading Web sites which we would draw your attention to in particular, given our virtual preoccupations.
- Mayday! alert for tomorrow's videoconference. Until now, we have as yet heard from none of you about participation. This is understandable not only because for many of us this in unfamiliar stuff, but also a number of our European colleagues who might otherwise beam in happen to be on vacation. Nonetheless we shall be holding the session, even if only as a trial run, and will report to you on it next week. But if you do have the capability, get in touch even at the last minute and you will be welcome. Once again, the number for the conference is 00.49.30.399.28.2622 (that's in Germany).
- The organizers have prepared and uploaded to the Library a print-out of the main Web pages for the site as of this date. This is handy for viewing offline, but of course has none of the power or learning potential of the site itself. Looks a bit scrappy at this point, but perhaps worth downloading for those who are feeling not quite so sure of their Web skills (for now).
- The Podium: Don't' be shy! We want to hear from you about topics, authors and presentations that will stimulate and be of value to the others in our virtual group.
- Today's Podium piece, Zero Emissions and the New Economics , has been contributed by James Robertson of TP2000 (UK). A complete copy of the briefing that he recently made to the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission, on which this presentation is based, will be found in the conference's Electronic Library
- We have been asked about whether or not the content of the library are directly searchable from the browsers. In point of fact the library contents (i.e., the ftp site) are OFF LINE, and thus not directly searchable (as are the various pages of the site itself). Nine times out of ten, people simply download whatever it is they are looking for and print directly. While there is also a "view" option in the better browsers, this can be a pretty slow process and really doest't make much sense for the longer documents. One option of course is to download and then call up the piece in your word processor, from which you can then search to your heart's content.
- The page on the site which sets out the basic argument of the conference, The Zero Emissions Theme Considered, has been expanded (and we believe considerably improved). May we draw your attention to it and the comments that it is stimulating.
- The first group videoconference is scheduled for the end of the day. Since we have not heard from any of you about your participation, this will be limited to a testing and debugging exercise (after three years of point-to-point videoconferences on a daily basis for work, this is our first attempt at bringing together up to seven participants in the same group. We shall report the results on Monday.
The week-end was given over to the following tasks:
- First cut of Discussion Forum brought on line (more work required though)
- Ditto for Case Study Showcase
- This "What's New" page has been substantially reorganized and extended.
- A first round of critical comments and observations have come in on the Conference Invitation and filed into that site for further comment and discussion.
- Continuing work on the several Navigation sites, and in particular to improve the help provided for new Web users
- A major contact effort was made via email to see if we could encourage approximately 80 concerned groups ad institutions around the world to contact their members and networks, and inform them of the conference
- The conference Web site and it supporting materials are coming along very nicely.
- The quality of the Podium presentations (and the presenters) is high.
- But we are not yet getting the quantity of participation that is needed.
- It is now clear that this is going to be one of the major challenges of this month (and indeed that perhaps one month is just not enough time to get the news out on such an innovative, hence unfamiliar, undertaking such as this).
- More on all this in due course.
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