Date: January 18th 2009

hello fellow ecotopians,

a few words to introduce myself and my connection to ecotopia and eyfa
first: i attended the last 7 ecotopia gatherings in a row and i am
currently member of the eyfa board (since 2008). oh, and i host and
maintain all eyfa websites via ecobytes.net.

since i went to my first ecotopia my life has changed significantly. the
influences i got at the gatherings, the lessons i learned, the friends i
made, the countries i visited (i hitch-hiked to all of them) have had a
major impact on what i am now and what i live for. and, hell yes, i want
future generations to have their ecotopia, too!

ok, about the questions, let me be your person on the inside. although i
am not representing the eyfa board here, just for the record. ;)

i find it a little difficult to use a document based medium like the
tiki for a message based discussion, that's why i will address some
things on this page to this list:
http://ecotopia.belzignet.de/tiki-index.php?page=what_it_takes&bl=y

> EYFA has been stunningly unresponsive to even the most trivail requests
> about this event

eyfa has always been short with staff and time the last years. and since
they kind of crossed ecotopia off their list of projects to work on for
this year, not many (none?) resources go into it. and i can imagine that
no one at the office takes the time to reply to ecotopia@eyfa.org
emails. that's an assumption from what i have seen in the office so far.
also, the staff has almost completely changed this year. insert brain
drain blues here..

> (like can we have your permission to use the name "Ecotopia" since
> you ar enot any more?) (it not real true I recieved a email from EYFA
> that there is no copyright on the name and we are therefor free to
> use it,wam)

i agree with wam, the name is free for use. although some sort of
official statement from eyfa about this would be desirable. i like the
name, we should try to claim it.

> So it would be foolish to expect they will promote this event
> internally.

not so foolish if you were at the "future of ecotopia" brainstorm
workshop at last year's ecotopia, like yours truly. :) shannon promised
all sorts of support for people that want to take over the future of
ecotopia. and i can imagine that they would also post something on their
newsletter list and website that points ecotopia fans to this collective
here, as soon as there is some sort of plan, proposal or announcement
for a 2010 gathering.

it would be foolish to expect them to see us as competition. they will
help. they also means me.

about wam's reply:

> I agree with Paxus that a bunch of people who clicked on an
> invitation to join a Facebookgroup is not a basis for having sureness
> that enough people will help realizing Ecotopia ? or even come there
> when it is organised..

in the last years it took about 1 person full time for approx. 6 months
to work on ecotopia, then 2-3 more for the weeks before and after the
gathering. these numbers need to be confirmed, but that's how i recall
it from the board meetings.

at the site a lot of work was done by the local partner organisations (1
to 3 ngos). a similar model could be chosen in future.

> Also not having the famous EYFA database

are you referring to the network mailing list? i think that's the only
contact database type of thing in use for promoting things.

> or not being part of the ative EYFA network is not really a big help.

consider yourself part of it now. :)

> It is clear we have to rebuild an new network of possible helpers and
> participants...

i would say in the last year about 20% of the participants came
regularly. the rest of the people changed from year to year. so it was
always some kind of new beginning.

it would be a good idea to directly contact some of the key
infrastructure people that showed up every year to build the kitchen for
example, and ask them about participation or hints.

i will be in amsterdam in two weeks, visit the eyfa office and also ask
about "ecotopia reloaded" and their new, much shorter and
conference-like summer activist gathering of course.

i wrote the ecotopia online application software, and i will of course
chip this in. along with any type of website/mail/whatever hosting (on
renewable energy) - if needed. also a few k towards the 10k mentioned by
paxus would be no problem.

good day!

my 20ct - meinhard of http://benn.org/