Greg, > > Maybe (again) I have used the wrong word. What would it take to > > loosen the concept of 'meeting' from the temporal constraints/ > > intensity/ concentration your response seems to imply? > > I wasn't trying to imply anything. In response to my suggestion for a *digital meeting, your reply, involving publicity, funding, providing RA relays (and presumably transcribers for the text-bound?) etc seemed more relevant to an analog (f2f) kind -- but isnt it just that kind of staging which *generates* the sense of urgency that asynchronous communication has happily dispensed with? > > Does one think differently when one is in a hurry? > > Yes, because they believe they have to act quickly to prevent > something from happening or continuing to happen. Surely, if there was some real-time event which needed to be either executed or forfended, the existing structures could act as well as an interim transition team? But my q was more general: the difference between IRC and email conversations, for instance is well known. > > Is there a difference between publicizing a meeeting and working out > > an agenda? > > Yes. Ideally, one would work out an agenda before publicizing > meetings, so the meetings followed the agenda, and participants would > have time to consider the issues beforehand. In digital terms, however, how would one make this distinction of before and after? -- even if it was felt to be necessary? Isnt it conceivable that those who are 'working out' the agenda would be identically the same as those who will 'consider the issues beforehand'? > Beyond what I said before (I think it is due to ICANN not living up to > the requirements of the White Paper), I don't know. Anyone else want > to comment? Tell me again, please, why sponsoring "a framework of coordinated international meetings, to ... discuss the transition" should emotionally involve anyone in the success or failure of the (a) transitional *product of those meetings? --------------- A recent comment by Subcom'te Marcos seems to me to be relevant: "We're going to take the conflict out of confrontation and monologue, the give and take between the parties, and we're going to take it to society. But that opinion should have influence. That's what inspires the Consulta [or the IFWP?] then. "In order for this to be possible, we conceived the Consulta as a mobilization, a movement, something that moves. That's how we thought of the stages to propose: "First we announced that there would be a consulta, and what the consulta would be about. We called on the people to mobilize themselves for that. The next stage is that the zapatistas ['experts'] could meet with and dialogue directly with the people. It was no longer going to be through intermediaries or communiques... The people are going to learn directly from the zapatistas, just as they are. It's the way of knowing what they are thinking, and at the same time the zapatistas will know what the people are thinking regarding their problems. "In this sense, the Consulta is already a success. We achieved what we wanted, and not for us. How much decision-making power can we have from the Selva Lacandona? We achieved it because civil society has memory, it knows what these five years have meant in the country's history, and it knows very well what led to the EZLN's appearance." (reported by Hermann Bellinghausen, La Jornada 3/11/1999.) kerry
