d. Spanish PC Network

The Europe PC Council asked in oct08:

"Who has the energy and capacity to build up an office and the website?

The council work as it is now does not need an office.

Website: We could ask the British association or any other association

to put on an extra site on their website for the council as a short

version if nobody is able to host and organise a European website

> We are currently arranging to keep the european permaculture domain

> name and would be interested in anyone willing and able to help with

> website design and administration."

I replied:

I would be glad to help with this, and Steve in France is also looking

into these issues so would probably help too

+ I´d only be interested if we can set up * completely open systems *

that others can easily participate in managing, so hopefully any of you

here can chip in when you feel like it too.

here in Spain we have set up various wikis which are very easy to

administer amongst a team of people and so have successfully kept away

from bureocracy and bottle-neck (centralized) old and notoriously slow,

stressful and clumsy forms of working.

eg. the Spanish PC network's site, reddepermaculturaiberica.pbwiki.com

is a good example of self-responsability and co-operation interwining

smoothly and effectively to create a totally self-managed system (now

joining up smoothly with another chaordic set-up, the Transition

Movement network)

not perfect maybe, but:

1) does the job,

2) was set up slowly (starting very small) and over much time,

3) completely run on a 0 budget,

4) cost no burn-out nor stress to any one person or organization,

5) zero ego-trips encountered on the way,

6) still toddling along nicely but quietly, just joining people up

7) nobody controls it, all of us 'own' it

8) if it crashes down for whatever reason tomorrow, there are various

'seed banks' in various places in our network who could re-grow this -

or something better - very easily (I´ve no idea where they all are,

just know they are there)

* * * just like a good forest garden should end up * * *

Futhermore:

a) There is no overall PC Association in Spain (& no need for one),

although all the functions of an 'office' get done, more or less

b) no funding issues to deal with (although funding would be nice we've

done without it since always)

and

c) there are many back-up systems in place (mainly through a

self-starting culture we've been promoting from time),

and all this was designed / let happen in order to avoid the usual

pitfalls with centralized systems.

Highly recomended as a general pattern to learn from for Europe or any

other networks, very easy to set up if start off with self-managing

criteria clearly prioretized

Unfortunately this suggestion was rejected and they decided to go the old-bottleneck way, by putting the information on the British PC Association pages... (news may09)

This isn´t surprising, as tere have been many disagreements over this design also in Spain, as getting away from the old centralized ways of working is a difficult and strange transition even for normally adventurous PCers...

In Spain even now many would consider that there is no design operating here, because various attempts at email group dialogues have ended in rifts and interrupted conversations.

But infact I and others have been actively and consistently proposed (+ acted on) different ways of looking at this than the conventional, centalizing (and I would argue, un-imaginative) ways that have periodically (and regularly) come up for suggestion and trial, and have been busy setting up chaordic structures to support and give shape to the chaordic vision of a really 'networking' PC movement in Spain.

Endless proposals to set up a (single) "Permaculture Association", and even "A Permaculture Centre" have been put (usually by newcomers to the movement who find it distressingly 'disorganized'), but also from power-seeking patterns in our network, worn by some (very few but) older members.

One of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching has been to listen to young students on our course loudly (and quite militantly!) echo the question of why some individuals keep trying to organize everyone into setting up one Association for Spain (one of the agendas at the 'Bioregional PC Network Meetings'), when everything is going so well ...

.. more later ...