Long road to Rio

It’s been a long road since I’d landed in Currajuggle and Mongarlowe… a road that has taken me back to Melbourne and Sydney twice, Akira’s 21st, Ma’s sudden heart related operation and on to Rio de Janeiro from where I now write these few words.

I’ve been here for over a week now attending the 10th APC Council Meeting during which we had set out the framework for our strategic plan for the next 5 years. We’d also ratified the revised Bylaws and voted in a new Board which saw me revoted to the Board and take up the position of Secretary.

The Council Meeting went directly into APC’s Equitable Access day, a series of forums and workshop style presentations that formed a kind of prepartory meeting to the Internet Governence Forum (IGF) which began yesterday.

I first visited Rio in 1992 as part of APC’s communications team which provided the Earth Summit with access to email for both the Global Forum (the NGO component of the Summit) and the UN meeting. Now we’re here to mobilise our Internet Rights Charter into the processes of the IGF.

Me, myself and i… the Summit

A report on my participation at the iSummit 06, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Read the full report here, or download PDF (includes extensive footnotes and photos).

Punk Commons

The iSummit has attracted former filmmakers, television producers, lawyers, IT specialists, remix artists and amongst the many more vocations declared here, we even had a “I was once a punk rocker” in our midst. They showed us photos of themselves in dreadlocks just to prove it. A few hours later they declared, “as a punk rocker…”!

Road to Rio

In 1992 I wrote an article exploring the hopes and aspirations of a movement seeking to encourage the world’s leadership to urgently address the environmental degradation that ails us still. I was in Rio for the Earth Summit.

There was no doubt a wave of hope that swept through all participants there, but despite the means being so apparent, we find ourselves in 2006 where this is talk of a resumption of commercial whaling and governments the world over are considering Nuclear as a “viable and clean” energy option. If, as Lawrence Lessig puts it, creativity is built on the past, clearly common sense is not.

If we’re unable to address the big issues, how can we expect to deal with the details, that which contributes to the sum of many parts that constitute the power bases that sustain poverty, wealth and everything in between?