Building a Social Forum - International Meeting — Paris, France — 3 / 5 June 2006

The process initiated by Babels since September 2005 to organize an international meeting is growing and taking form. You will find below a series of concrete details. If you’re interested in this process, please read this document carefully.

A *deadline* was set for the process regarding "participants" : March 1st, 2006.

Logistics

Date of the meeting : June 3-5, 2006. Initially scheduled for May, we had to *change* the date of the Meeting because the date for the European Social Forum 2006 in Athens was changed.

Location : Paris, Paris region (France). We are currently negotiating with the City of Saint Denis, which hosted the 2003 ESF, and with organizations linked with the different social Forums, to see whether we can book the location where the Meeting will take place mid-February.

Budget : the people who are taking charge of this inform us that they have obtained sufficient funds to make the Meeting feasible. As of today (February 2, 2006), 40,000 euros are available to cover travel expenses for participants (see a detailed report by the budget workgroup on this topic).

Participants : The International Meeting will not be an open meeting but a work process. Since we started working on it in September 2005, many people around the world have shown interest in this project and have made it possible to flesh out the details. The type of participants reflects this evolution : 60% of the budget is reserved for "Babels participants", in other words, for people who are actively involved in interpretation and translation.

Registration deadline : March 1, 2006. For organizational reasons, this date is non-negotiable : we will need time to request visas, to find the cheapest possible plane tickets, to find solidarity housing, etc. We will not be able to consider as participants those who will have shown interest *after* this deadline.

Practical information :

 We strongly suggest to those *who can afford it*, in particular to those who can come to Paris by train or using low-cost carriers, to book *at their expense* a train/bus/plane ticket as soon as possible, if tickets cost 80 euros or less. We work with a solidarity budget : if you can afford a ticket to Paris, please pay for it. This will make extra funds available for more participants from other countries.

 There is enough money to guarantee the participation of 100 to 200 people, but we cannot cover costs in the same way for everyone. In the event that you cannot cover your own travel costs (using your own income, with the help of an organization, with the support of an informal group of friends, etc.), whatever the reason, the budget for the Meeting will be able to cover a round-trip flight to Paris, as long as *we* book the flight. We will *only* cover air-travel costs, *excluding* any transportation costs to/from the airport and any visa fees. There will be no reimbursements after the Meeting.

 For those who request this, we will take care of housing. We will offer solidarity housing, thanks to different networks of activists belonging to local organizations participating in the Social Forum. We will ask these activists to host the participants *only* for the nights of Friday June 2, Saturday 3, Sunday 4 and possibly Monday, June 5.

 Food
— We will try to organize merry meals for the evenings of Saturday and Sunday, with the help of local community groups.
— On Friday night, we will try to organize an informal welcoming party.
— Saturday, Sunday and Monday, a simple lunch will be served where the Meeting will take place.
— Other than food on-site, we will cover no other expenses.

 Special cases and personal initiatives : Obviously, we will try to examine and resolve any special case. As a rule, anyone can help support the organisation of the Meeting. All participants are invited to help the others, be it for linguistic facilitation during each activity, or to guarantee that there is coffee or tea in the morning, etc.

The Program of activities.

The Program process is the backbone of the Meeting. The program is, first and foremost, a collective work process. It is not a series of one-off events, with no work beforehand, or with no work after the event.

 Any and all activity proposals will be posted on the Babels Forum

We ask everyone wishing to participate actively in the Meeting to select or propose one or two activities he/she wishes to "promote". A "promoter" will have to work with other promoters of a given activity to prepare working papers on the proposed topic, several weeks before the Meeting. In other words, one must be actively involved !

 Each person can "Promote" no more than 2 activities. This is to guarantee that there is room left for others, and to make sure that everyone participates in some activities he/she did not choose to "Promote".

 There is no limit to the number of "Promoters" for each activity. It is highly recommended to have "promoters" from different countries : the Meeting is useful in that it enables a lively dialogue between people who are not used to working together other than through electronic media.

 Each activity should try to follow the following template (see the end of this message to see how to propose an activity) :
— TITLE
— Two or three paragraphs presenting the activity.
— Number of sessions needed for this activity : 1 or 2.
— Languages for the activity (Note : linguistic facilitation during this activity must be organized by participants themselves. We will have equipment for each room. This equipment will enable the use of two languages.)
— "Promoters" : Name / Email / Country / Languages used.
— If there are longer documents, a bibliography, etc., participants can use a number of electronic tools and the wiki in particular http://www.babels.org/wiki Beware ! Please read the instructions to avoid any confusion. Remember to put the URLs of your activity in the presentation text for your activity to help others find the relevant information.

 Topics for these meetings : As was said earlier, the process begun in September 2005 has made it possible to diversify the potential points to be discussed during the International meeting. Here is an incomplete list of major topics which have already been mentioned :
— Interpretation (Languages and politics / Selection process and transparency in the decision-making / Creating networks of volunteers for new projects in new spaces / Preparing volunteers for a Forum / etc.)
— Translation (Translation of Forum worklists / BabelsMag / Organizing translation for Forums / etc.)
— Equipment (Organizing equipment / Sharing knowledge / etc.)
— Social Territory (Building a Social forum around alternative proposals)
— Collaborative electronic tools
— Memory of the Social Forums (Thesaurus of political concepts / Sound archives / Access to information and distributing content / etc.)
— Studying the Forums (Network of sociologists-anthropologists-political scientists / etc.)

Contacts

We will soon put online a list of people or groups of people in charge of special tasks. As was said earlier, these people will be, first and foremost, participants — not a "service". If something does not exist (yet), anybody can try to make it happen and help organise the Meeting.

Logistics : Actual organisation of the program / Welcome / Solidarity housing / Resolving special cases / Organising travel. Soon, different workgroups will to make these different aspects clearly visible. For the moment, use :
 Email

Participants : To register as a participant / To propose an activity or join an activity / To seek help to present an activity / To receive a letter of invitation to request a visa. For the moment, use :
 Email

After March 1st, please verify online the new list of contacts. It might have changed !

In the name of the facilitating group Isabelle, Jeanne, Laurent, Philippe, Yan