Australian Social Forum

I have just finished volunteering with the Nordic Organising Committee on the European Social Forum 2008.

As a forum it was a great success. Thousands of participants from all over Europe, and importantly the world, involved themselves in around 300 events, 220 of which where interpreted by the Babels organisation using the ALIS system (Alternative Interpretation System).

The forum effectively ended with a massive demonstration and parade, that for the first time brought the entire forum together. The atmosphere was lively and optimisitic. Families and the people of Malmo participated or witnessed the demo as it wound through town.

The most cohesive community at the forum was Latin America and their cooperators in the Kvarnby Folk School based in Malmo. The Latin America area, Jesus Park was a reliable and living space for information, nourishment, community and life.

For many, the most valuable experiences where the new personal relationships and networks, while the formal ESF process is beginning to publish many outcomes.

By corporate conference standards, the ESF2008 had many problems; transport, accomodation, coordination, information etc. However, when put into the context of the extremely low cost of particpation and the resources available, the ESF 2008 was an amazing success.

My personal involvement was volunteering with ALIS, the media center and the documention and memory projects. This basically meant the ALIS system and boothe set-up and dismantling, the creation of training videos and photographs for technicians and interpreters and generally helping the phenomenally hard working ALIS set-up team lead by the Australian Kajute, with close support from another Australian Robin and a super-Swede Karen.

In the area of documentation and memory I helped produce some ALIS training, created a basic image archive on a professional Flickr account and begun but didnt really use Blip.TV and YouTube.

Jonas lead the documentation, memory, registrations and media center team and I helped him set-up an excellent media center, that was used to host a radio program and was used a meeting place and low key media center by various people.

Many of the left media in Sweden, where accredited press operating out of the Press Center, working for a range of left and independent media. Newspapers of unions, the Left Party, social democracts etc

At the media center we didnt see many Indymedia, with a notable exception from the UK.

The ESF Action Network, a parrallel organisation independent of the ESF Nordic Organising Committee, attracted many of the young and more radical left.

I also had the pleasure of becoming friends with Dimitris, an Athenian who developed and administered the main ESF 2008 website, has a hand in OpenESF.net and also volunteers on the excellent Indy.gr Greek independent media website.

Another new friend was Ethan, the tech lead, from The Open Plans Project, whose sofware runs the excellent Livable Streets project in NYC, the OpenESF and OpenFSM websites.

I also got to met and exchange information with a skilled and experienced hacker (in the true sense) MC who explained a great deal about the Swedish anarcho syndicalist or libertarian socialist union SAC.

As I wrap-up in Malmo, Sweden, I have been trying to bootstrap some cooperative projects.

Amongst the tech guys there is interest in techology cooperatives.Thanks to the Drupalcon is Szeged, Hungary, I met Jim from the Chicago Technology Cooperative and he connected me to some great work being done in tech worker cooperatives in the US. For instance HOWTO guide for tech freelancers to form a worker coop co-authored by Jim for the Freelancers Union .

After some glib conversations around a media workers cooperative iith some Swedish left media types, I feel like I have hit a wall, though I am still inspired to do it.

I still havent unpacked the propoganda model as it applies to left or liberal or independent media. Project Censored has done some excellent work extending the propaganda model to the liberal or progressive media, and a young English academic studying in Griffith University, Michael J Barker, has also done important work on the effect of liberal foundations on the left, independent and liberal media.

In short, I am not sure I know where to go with the concept of a multi-platform media cooperative.It needs to happen, but its a more complex and difficult problem than I can solve. Right now, I am thinking of spending time with the Project Censored people in Sonama County.

The last cooperative project, is a Global Permaculture Workers Cooperative. I have had initial contact with the Green Workers Cooperative in the Bronx in NYC which incubates such cooperative projects. I am trying to bootstrap that project, and somehow will fly to NYC this weekend for a bloc party.

The lessons;

• Europe is not perfect, but has great traditions of social democracy, solidarity and civilization that are worth fighting to protect and develop
  
• Latin America is organised, confident and a resource for the theoretical and tired left in Europe, North America and Australia.
• The media and the web are fragmented
• Task or process management is a serious bottleneck in organising events such as the ESF
• And, of course, another world is possible, and indeed, many of the elements and aspects already exist, its a matter of weaving a fabric through struggle, hard work, skill and creativity.
• I almost forgot, do I still want to organise an Australian Social Forum. As the Swedish say, absolut!