Date: 12 sep 1994

After five english ECO's, here is the one and only ECA: Electronic Comunication for Anarchy. It's purpose is to give an impression about what happened around electronic mail, internet and conferences during the Alternative Forum.


INTERNET WORKSHOPS

In the main hall, there was a 'live internet connection' available to the participants every day from 9 am till 5 pm. Some people used it to make a connection with thhe computer in their own country. This could easily be done because the internet connection was fro free. For instance, people that are used to send and receive email messages via the pegasus computer in australia, could make a connection and acces their own mailboxes. People who use GreenNet in the UK could do the same.

GreenNet had an account opened for the Alternative Forum, called 'guest19', so that the participants of the FA could experience what kind of information can be found on APC conferences.

Workshops on the Internet have been given on thursday and friday afternoon. They where visited by one group of five, one group of seven, a group of three and a Dutch radio reporter.

The workshop demonstrated how you can use internet (=direct link with all other computers in the world that use this system) to:

The command 'WAIS worldbank' gave us a list of system operators of the worldbank computers. In the list, we found two personal addresses, (larry@worldbank.org and kbarrett@worldbank.org). We did also got their telephone numbers and office addresses. But, as expected, when we wanted to use FINGER to find out when they had last used their computers, it was impossible to get this information.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to show other intersting features of the Internet, such as:


WINDMAIL

WINDMAIL is the name of a package that enables you to write and read your email messages without being connected to the host computer. (=central email computer like GreenNet, Antenna or Nodo50). In this way you save a lot of money (because you use the telephone less) and you have more overview of the messages that you are sending and receiving. WINDMAIL has been put together by Michael Pollman (Antenna Netherlans).

APC-CONFERENCES

APC maintains a worldwide system of 'public conferences' on the Internet. A conference is a place where people and organisations can put text files about a certain subject. Other people then can read the text and, if they want 'download' it to their own computer. Many press releases can be found in conferences, as well as documentation and announcements of actions. There are about 1000 conferences on APC networks. One of them is 'act.wb94' which contains information about the Alternative Forum. You can find the speeches that have been held in the plenaries, reports about the worldbank, action reports and all the ECO's that have been published. Most information in 'act.wb94' is in English and in Spanish. Other conferences that you might be interested in are: 'toxic.hazard' (about toxic waste trade), 'motherearth' (about the Walk Across Europe for a Nuclear Free World 1995), 'rainfor.worldbank', 'coc.brettonwds', 'mlateral.news' and 'worldbank.bust'.

TRAININGS AND NETWORKING

About 50 people from different countries have been trained in using electronic mail during the Foro Alternativo. Amongst them where people from India, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain and Australia. More experienced users got a small training in Waffle or in WINDMAIL, so they could start sending and receiving messages from their home organisations.

People from GreenNet (UK), Euskalnet and Altercom (Basque Country), Nodo50 (Madrid) and Antenna (NL), have met eachother, worked together, and exchanged experiences, and this will have a great impact on the future of Spanish E-mail connections.


SPECIAL CONNECTIONS

A Czech group has been making connection directly with their office, and in that way they retrieved urgent information 9 hours earlier then with the regular system we have been using. The price of this connection was about the same as a one page fax, but contained the information of about 5 pages.

At one time, we have asked a friend in the Netherlands to phone us (so it wouldn't cost FA94 anything) and to send us a program that we needed urgently. The connection lasted 5 minutes and the program worked perfectly.


NUMBERS

Since the conference has started, until now (saturday 1 october 22.00 hour) 198 messages have been put in the conference act.wb94 on apc and being read by thousands of people on the network.

40 people had an account on 'WINDMAIL' (connection with NODO50) and where able to send and receive messages directly (with a 3-9 hour delay) to and from their home organisations and friends.

In the first week, about 400 email messages have been exchanged between participants and their home offices !


THANKS

Thanks to Russell from GreenNet, Mario and Zuzen from Euskalnet, Alberto from NODO50, and Ace from Antenna, who made it possible after many hours of hard work to have an electronic connection with the outside world. Thanks to Miles and Paco, who cared for uploading all the texts from the FORO in spanish and english to the APC confernce 'act.wb94'. Thanks to all others who where involved in the organisation of the Foro Alternativo and made it possible to have computers, a room, telephones, faxes and copies.

By Ace Suares