As I see it, the purpose of the PLANETWORK Conference is twofold:

On the one hand it is simply meant to be a venue, an open space, for a group of people with wildly heterogeneous but complementary backgrounds, and convergent planetary objectives, to come together to share visions and brainstorm - the vision thing. This activity should not be underrated as in many ways it constitutes the most difficult and most rewarding work; to strive to forge new collective visions of what is possible, and of how we might get there from here.

At the same time, as the immediate answer to that theoretical component, there is the practical question of how to better integrate, interlink and combine the existing web presence of now literally thousands of ecologically oriented groups, individuals and organizations into a more coherent whole. Many are already working on this problem, and many more are thinking about it in varying degrees of complexity. The question before us would seem to be one of how to connect these various elements together in a way which maximizes their effectiveness, while minimizing duplicated effort. At this point I have no clear answers as to how to accomplish this in detail, only a strong intuition that by bringing together a critical mass of those individuals and groups interested in the problem at one time and place with the right tools, something very interesting will be born out of it.


Jim Fournier

November 23, 1998

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