Initially, Tim and I decided that we wouldn't go to Lyon, as it was purely academic, and as practitioners, we neither had time to write an academic-style paper, or listen to theories that had no bearing on our work. However as time went on, and the practitioners day was announced, and we later timed our 2011 Community Forge General Assembly to follow it directly, more and more of our colleagues appeared to be coming, so in the end Community Forge showed up in force. The conference kicked off promisingly, with a plenary on the movement's intellectual infrastructure, in which useful and interesting information was shared, but it became apparent that this was not a forum for organising the movement.
I was generally so exhausted by between conversation that I didn't attend too many of the other sessions, but the ones I did were very mixed. There was a full description of mutual credit, and some Japanese academics had attempted to model liquidity in mutual credit systems, though the results seemed to me to have little practical value. Other sessions ranged from utopic economic models to Timebanks USA, Transition Towns and other strategies.
There were also a few media projects going on, so we should get exposure in Hungary and elsewhere! We prepared and distributed CCmag flyers to everyone, and learned about projects near and far, young and old.
Community Forge and its guests arranged its accommodation via Route des SEL, for whom we are building a web site, but had no opportunity to preach what we practiced. I was impressed with Bernard Lietaer's ability to find time to advise even comparatively minor currency projects.
The third day, for practitioners was in the Lyon City Council building. That meant no wifi, and a stiff council chamber setting. There were 2 hours of interested project introductions, which were, nonetheless, monologues which could have been provided beforehand. The breakout groups had some interesting discussions, but alas we didn't stay for the final plenary as the Cforge crew and guests had to leave early for the weekend - but that's another story!
Click to read the briefing papers.
For me the take away messages were:
- Academics should work more closely with practitioners
- Academics should get better at sharing data using the internet
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