Budapest contact group call notes

This is an unsorted archive of notes from calls around the period of May-July 2015, which were stored in the Budapest contact group etherpad.

Next call: Friday, July 17th, 10.30h

Topics

• Feedback to Budapest
• Size of the conference

We had discussions on the issue and will still be considering it. There are phisical limits, but also from content view we think that the conference does not have to be representative of the whole happening in the movement. This is why we want parallel events everywhere in the world. Apart from phisical limitations, there is a limitation also from organisational perspetive, we do not have so many organisers. Hall size problematic, we can only fit a lot of people in theaters or similar. We will have to see what happens with applications.
Leipzig had a diversity of participants, not only scientists. We need spaces of interaction of different groups. If we limit it, we should limit it as much for scientists as for the other type of participants. Video conferences dont work the same way as live interaction. 
Leipzig solved the amount with more rooms, only once all the rooms were filled completely. Good conference will also atract volunteers, so maybe the help can be increased. Conference can be used as a way to grow the circles of interested people. 
Proposal: see how it goes. not communicate directly that it is limited to 500 persons but that it is aimed for a convivial conference. only possible to have bigger conference if more volunteers / supporters show up and actually do work. think of a non-exclusive formulation 

• Division of programme / scientific parts / programme team

Questions in there: 
- Why is there no programme team but only a science team?
- How is the programme set-up? Participatory sessions are handled by scientific team. Practical activities outside the university are organized by logistical group. 
- Why is there such a strong focus on scientific parts?
Discussion:
- Workshops need to be handled by people who are experienced with facilitation, not by scientists. Learning methods, interaction. 
- Budapest crew wants to set up new team that takes care of interactive parts. No formal answer yet but are rethinking groups.
- Logistical group will do real practical stuff (fix sth, visit). 
- Also feedback from ESEE: peer review only for practical part. 
In Venice there was a big confustion what is scientific sessions and practical workshops. People did not know what to expect. session was what. Clearly seperate workshops from scientfic sessions by name (and maybe track).
- Programme set-up is drafted now. Will be shared with support group.
- Barcelona Summer School has made some experience with further development of GAP. Will share document with Lidija and Vincent.
Put people from different parts of the progam together -- they should talk to each other on different parts of the program

• Timeline for calls

- Take summer to work overall timeline. Evaluation in September, then scientific team and main lines should be ready.
- Call for special sessions should be ready first, then the rest.
- Please share the deadlines and dates for calls with us, so we can share it within the degrowth community. (approx. Oct-Nov special sessions, Nov-Dec special sessions.) > Lidija will send in couple of days.
- call for practical sessions etc. is also planned, also parallel events, publishers etc. 
Rough idea for the calls: 

Calls needed for 
• Pre-conference events
• Parallel events in other cities
• Scientific workshops and special sessions
• Participatory  workshops and special sessions 
• Practical activities program
• Art programme

Not necessarily calls, but checking for:
• Books and publications
• Partners, alliances

• Coordination with Austrian and other teams

Transition towards less growth - growth in transition. They want to link their work with the conference. They are interested in preparing seesions, promote etc. AT govt refuses to use the term degrowth, so they dont use it. We should get them involved in preparatory events and conference. WE got email from them and we will involve them. 

• Partner contacts
• Feedback from hbs and Eastern European offices, they are interested in the conference, we can get in touch and reffer to support of hbs for Leipzig. Vincent wants to have documents ready in order to get in touch in partners. We'll see from there who gets in touch with whom. 
• foundations have different timelines, we should keep this in mind
• Meeting in autumn: Oct 5-8 or 12-26? filka could do 12-26 Oct, gualter to link with hackaton. Lidija fine for 15-26 Oct. Vincent in BXL 20-22 Oct. October meeting could be 17-18.10. Proposal for meetin around 13-15 November. There are arguments pro and con both time slots :) Nina asks Germans when it's possible for them.
• Misc
• Stream towards Degrowth Budapest: relaunch for the conference, degrowth hubs in Germany - link with activities to have the pre-conference events
• check http://www.degrowth.de/en/stream-towards-degrowth/ 

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Next call: Wednesday, May 6, 17.45-18.35

Topics

a) further comments/issues after the SG comments to the application

Discussion about the working group
- Group in the set-up process: first meeting now, mainly with the core group
- 15 committed in scientific committee
- on programme team only Nina so far > more members needed (first ask core group, then scientific commitee)
- 10 in logistics team (in Budapest)
- 8 persons in PR team (5 from Budapest)
- 6 persons on funding team (5 Hungarians plus one from hbs team)
- reserve of 15 people (not integrated yet because not known to team)
- persons will be linked to Corvinus University (starting to work in September)
- Vincent: in May not that mucht time, from June 15 to Sept 16 full-time
- Lidija now 2h/day, from Sept. 50% of working time
- Mladen (Zagreb) from July on more
- Vincent has a lot of experience in organization in Hungary: more informal, shorter meeting, more last-minute than Germans; they know how to do nice events


b) suggestions for issues to address in Budapest

• keep in mind the different views on what worked well in Leipzig (old fashioned coordination vs use of IT tools)
• Nina will send document showing the IT solutions that Leipzig used, but Gualter points out that you should make a needs analysis first 

c) possible options for future meetings

Summer schools?
- are Barcelona and Rheinland summer schools places to recruit members for organizing team?
- if there are enough content people in the Barcelona or Rheinland summer schools, we can try to attend and talk to people
- programme Barcelona: http://summerschool.degrowth.net/index.php/program
- 'old suspects' can be found in the summer schools (more in Barcelona) for young people we can also find them in the summer schools (more Germany)- what exactly we need we can cover in Budapest
- obviously also place to meet Filka, Gualter, Daniel, Barbara, Nina....

next meeting
- check what could fit for the September or October meeting - maybe some sort of doodle after the Budapest meeting
- after the summer, hopefully when Filka comes back from Bulgaria
- Lidija is in Croatia in September (we could also meet there)
- Nina more likely in France in September....

d) open questions and any other business

• take into consideration the calendar for scientific call, also keeping in mind the timing of the next meeting
• regular calls: beginning of the month - Lidija to organise 
• there is another sort of doodle: https://dudle.inf.tu-dresden.de/?lang=en
• there is a process, called the great transformation, in Germany, by less 'radical' groups than degrowth; they use social-ecologic transformation to make content clearer
• if wanted, people from the degrowth processes can feed in current content-based discussions to Budapest group (but there are too may topics now and there is a need for limiting them)