Changes between Version 11 and Version 12 of proposals/international-tech-support

Timestamp:

Mar 15, 2011, 8:04:09 PM (14 years ago)

Author:

Jamie McClelland

Comment:

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proposals/international-tech-support

@@ -7 +7 @@
         The WSF still has one foot firmly in the 20th century: NGOs, Organisations, Institutions, Funding Dependence, Ecologically destructive transcontinental flights and equally anti-ecological forum sites. It has also been having the greatest difficulty, I think, in placing its other foot in the agora offering the greatest freedom – cyberspace.
 
-For the last several years, May First/People Link has sent teams of technologists to build bridges between global convergence attendees and the vast majority of people unable to attend in person, via live video and audio streaming, multi-media web sites, and our collaborative democracy tool. Through our work, we've prioritized building local capacity for supporting the technology and have contributed to a culture of inclusive participation into the very planning of international gatherings.
+For the last several years, May First/People Link has been working on the "other foot" by sending teams of technologists to build bridges between global convergence attendees and the vast majority of people unable to attend in person, via live video and audio streaming, multi-media web sites, and our collaborative democracy tool. Through our work, we've prioritized building local capacity for supporting the technology and have contributed to a culture of inclusive participation into the very planning of international gatherings.
 
-May First/People Link cannot sustain this work without funding. There are three critical meetings in 2011 - Cochabamba + 1 in Montreal, the Paris World Social Forum IC meeting, and the COP17 convergence in Durban, South Africa. May First/People Link is seeking: $26680.00 to help build truly international participation in these meetings.
+May First/People Link seeks funding to continue and expand this work in 2011. There are three critical meetings - Cochabamba + 1 in Montreal, the Paris World Social Forum IC meeting, and the COP17 convergence in Durban, South Africa. May First/People Link is seeking: $26680.00 to help build diverse international participation in these meetings.
 
 == About May First/People Link ==
 
-May First/People Link is a membership organization based in the United States. It is one of the oldest progressive providers of Internet to non-profits in the world. Our membership consists of over 500 members, most of which are organizations, while others are individuals. By joining as a member and paying yearly dues, an organization receives free, unlimited website and email hosting. Our vision is to build a network that values an Open Internet by committing to the use of Free and Open Source Software and making principled decisions regarding policy and practices that affect online communication.
+May First/People Link is a membership organization based in the United States. It is one of the oldest progressive providers of Internet to non-profits in the world. Our membership consists of over 500 members, most of which are organizations (the rest are individual members). By joining as a member and paying yearly dues, an organization receives free, unlimited website and email hosting. Our vision is to build a network that values an Open Internet by committing to the use of Free and Open Source Software and making principled decisions regarding policy and practices that affect online communication.
 
 We believe that the Internet is humanity's way of facilitating the communication necessary to build movements to save the human race and the world. The converging crises in the major capitalist economies, the precarious state of the world environment, the political crisis in government in so many of the world's countries and the usurpation of government authority by international banks and committees have brought humanity to a point of urgency and increasing certainty that something must be done to save itself. When all else fails, human beings come together to communicate and figure out how to survive; that is our legacy as a species.
 
-== Our Work: Technology within the WSF ==
+== Our Work: Democratizing Global Convergences ==
 
 Humanity has been forging ahead in doing that with world-wide efforts like the World Social Forum and the Climate Control movement and, of course, the Internet.  The Internet, a community of more than 1.9 billion people world-wide, is among humanity's principle responses; it's humanity's way of facilitating the communication necessary to make all this collaboration possible. 
 
-May First/People Link is a member of the International Council (IC) of the WSF and is critically engaged in the Communications Commission of the IC. We will be engaged in providing social networking and communications support to a variety of spaces over the next year. This work will build upon on our experiences and technical expertise that has been developed since the first US Social Forum in 2007 and has since included other events such as the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, the Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the 2011 US Social Forum in Detroit, the World Education Forum in Palestine, the UN Conference of Parties (COP16) in Cancun, and most recently the 2011 World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal.
+In 2011 we will be building on our experiences in World Social Forum and the Climate Control movement. 
+
+Our global movement work began with the US Social Forum in 2007, where we helped lead the technology working group overseeing the first social forum with full online registration from beginning to end. In 2008, at Social Forum of the Americas in Guatemala, we held our first collaborative democracy workshop linking participants in Guatemala with participants in New York, in real time. We repeated this workshop at 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil (this time brining in Belem, Guatemala, Quebec and New York in French, Spanish, Portugeuse, and English). In 2010 we were invited to support the Global Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, where we provided a free video stream of all major events using all free and open source software. In June 2010, May First/People Link was central to the organizing of the technology working group and media center. Our Social Forum work continued in October at the World Education Forum in Palestine. In December, the UN Bolivian Mission sponsored our tech support work during the COP16 meeting in Cancun. And, most recently, we provided support to both the World Social Forum in Dakar (where we were accepted onto the International Committee) as well as helped organize the Indymedia Africa center taking place during the forum.
 
 We plan to further our mission as an organization by building up international movements' and networks' capacities by investing in training and infrastructure in specific regions around the world. Additionally, we will build this capacity through exchanges among the social forums and through the event spaces, such as those listed above.