Messages from the Pale Blue Dot

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin: Pioneer in Citizen Reporting

Director’s Cut - Friday, 10 July 2009

Originally published as part of a series of articles appearing in our publication Linkages Update at http://www.iisd.ca/whats_new/directors_cut132.html

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin: Pioneer in Citizen Reporting

By Kimo Goree, Director of IISD Reporting Services (IISD RS) - kimo@iisd.org

The term “citizen journalism” has become very popular recently, referring to both traditional bloggers and to average citizens who have turned the video and still cameras of their mobile phones into tools to capture and distribute news of events worldwide. In fact, many commentators have suggested that one of the reasons for the decline in the popularity of traditional media, such as newspapers and network TV news, is that consumers of information can now get their daily dose of the news from other non-traditional sources. Without a doubt, the information universe is expanding rapidly due, in large part, to more and more individuals writing and publishing in blog formats, creating their own non-traditional news.

Well, ten years before the proliferation of blogging and an independent, non-traditional media, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin was providing information on environment and sustainable development policy events on the internet. Prior to any model of how this type of journalism should be done, how it should be financed or what the editorial guidelines should be, we were at the cutting edge of citizen reporting. From the Rio Conference in 1992, to the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 and the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, our teams of young academics were sitting in the back of the room, taking notes and reporting using the new and emerging computer-mediated technologies, on the statements of governments and international organizations at these key world summits.

However, we have never considered ourselves to be “journalists” and none of us has had any journalist training. In fact, if we had called ourselves “journalists,” we would not have been allowed the access we enjoyed by taking on the role of independent conference reporters, not unlike court reporters, who were not media. There are traditionally five types of participants at international meetings, such as the ones we were attending:

Government Delegates: These are the negotiators, who have carte blanche access to any meetings;
Intergovernmental Organization Representatives: These are the bureaucrats from UN agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Secretariat or the World Bank. Usually the representatives from these groups are allowed to access all meetings as well;
The Secretariat: These are members of the organizing body that facilitates the meeting, provides support to the process and has access to all areas. They are also prohibited from lobbying, speaking with the media or speaking on matters of substance;
Non-Governmental Organization Members: The NGOs are relative newcomers to most international meetings and the rules for their participation vary from process to process, but they are often excluded from informal consultations, contact groups and drafting sessions where transparency is sacrificed for expediency during the negotiations;
The Media: Journalists are the lowest members of the participants “food chain” and there are traditional rules regarding their access and where they can circulate. Usually they cannot go down into the area where delegates are negotiating and are not permitted in any but the most formal and “open” of sessions.

When we first started publishing the Earth Summit Bulletin and later the Earth Negotiations Bulletin,we decided that the best way to influence the process was not by using our publication to lobby or advocate for any political position, but to help level the information playing field and promote both transparency and the free distribution of knowledge to all of the participants. If this was in some way influencing the process, it would only influence it for the better by providing useful information to the decision makers, enriching the “infoverse” and informing the entire public policy formulation cycle.

As “knowledge brokers” rather than journalists, we wanted to be considered the neutral, trusted intermediaries who were willing to spend the long hours taking notes, gathering information from throughout the negotiations and synthesizing this down into objective, timely reports that could be easily read and digested by the participants. This type of influence was subtle but important, contributing to raising the tone of the meeting through the provision of knowledge that the participants could use to negotiate better, or at least we hoped.
However, we had to have badges to get into the meetings and had to find our proper place within one of the five groups listed above. We were certainly not government delegates. We did not want to be journalists, since that would limit our access to policymakers and exclude us from meetings. As NGOs we would have been discriminated against as well and, as we were not lobbying or advocating, we did not want to be accredited as an NGO. We briefly considered becoming part of an intergovernmental organization, such as UNEP, who would provide us with access to meetings. But, beginning in Rio when we were made part of the UNCED Secretariat, we realized that we had more in common with the members of the Secretariat and they had a vested interest in supporting our work. By providing daily reports, in a neutral and objective manner, we did a job that benefited them and removed pressure on the Secretariat to inform participants what was going on in the meeting. So, since 1992, we have always participated at meetings as members of the organizing secretariat and never as either the media or as NGOs. 

There were no other groups doing what we did at the time and no competition. We often joked that no one would want to take on the enormous amount of work that we did, starting the task of synthesizing a meeting only after the other participants had ended for the day and publishing it all the next morning after an inevitably late night. However, there we also no other groups to learn from as we pioneered this form of citizen reporting.
One of the important factors in our success from the beginning was that, with the advent of computer communications, the cost of publishing was dropping rapidly. For the first few years, before people had email and before the internet, one of our largest expenses was photocopying and mailing our reports to subscribers all over the world. There is no way that we could afford today to print and mail each of the more than three million PDF files that were downloaded from our website last year. So, email and the web made it possible for us to rapidly increase our readership and, eventually, in 1996, we stopped publishing the Earth Negotiations Bulletin in paper format and moved completely to an electronic publication.

But, the internet also allowed us to become a “boutique” publishing house. With a readership of under 15,000 subscribers in the early years, our email publishing costs were so low that we could service the small but powerful (and information starved) community of diplomats, UN staffers, NGOs, academics and media who followed the negotiation of multilateral environmental agreements very closely. It is only in the last few years that other organizations have realized that there are audiences other than the general public who have information needs and have begun to publish for micro-audiences.

The other decision that led to our early success was in marketing this “citizen reporting” as a shared common good that should be supported by governments in the interest of the processes we covered. Our funding model, which emphasizes smaller contributions from a broad range of governments, has been very successful and has provided us with the resources needed to sustain our work for more than seventeen years. While other websites have turned to advertising or subscription fees, we have been able to provide more than US$3 million a year in information for free to our readers through the donations of governments to our work.
As more and more online readers turn to non-traditional and direct sources of information, the number of citizen reporting sites is sure to increase. However, finding reliable and trustworthy information amongst the plethora of sources will continue to be a challenge for the reader who dares venture away from longtime sources such as the major TV networks and established news outlets. The benefit of finding a site like ours is that some citizen reporters actually understand the issues and can report with a level of understanding that the average journalist cannot match. In our case, our writers on issues such as climate change, biodiversity and chemical management are experts in their fields and the quality and accuracy of our reports, while not read by the hundreds of thousands like the New York Times or a Reuters story, provides greater insight and insider knowledge of the issues at stake.

As we prepare for the Copenhagen Climate Change talks in December 2009, it will be the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reports prepared by our “citizen reporters” from the negotiations that savvy readers will use to follow what is really happening in the crafting of a post-2012 agreement. While the mainstream media like CNN and the Financial Times may sit in the press conferences, our writers will be in the contact and informal groups where government delegates will be actually working out an agreement. Come join us on the road to Copenhagen at http://www.iisd.ca  and meet our group of citizen writers at http://www.iisd.ca/about/team/

Collaborative Distributed Management in IISD Reporting Services

Director’s Cut - Friday, 19 June 2009

Originally published as part of a series of articles appearing in our publication Linkages Update at http://www.iisd.ca/whats_new/directors_cut131.html

Collaborative Distributed Management in IISD Reporting Services

By Kimo Goree, Director of IISD Reporting Services (IISD RS) - kimo@iisd.org

No one has ever invented an organization quite like ours. As a result, there was no road map left behind by previous entrepreneurs who had attempted the establishment of conference reporting services to guide us in the creation of the Earth Negotiations Bulletin. We have been left to invent, step-by-misstep-by-step, this enterprise. Occasionally we have met dead-ends, failed at new initiatives and learned from our mistakes in how to organize, finance and manage this unique endeavor. From what I have heard from the founders of other small organizations like ours, this is not an unfamiliar experience. Luckily, we have survived our first seventeen years and, perhaps, these fortnightly columns in Linkages Update may help document the lessons learned in the expansion of a small non-profit start-up.

One of the early challenges in handling our growth has been in getting the right balance between staff and management in a virtual organization. Our objective has always been to keep our fixed operating costs low by having as few full-time staff as possible. However, during the first ten years of our existence, from 1992 through 2002, we seemed to lag one or two years behind our growth, always failing to create new positions and hire new staff in time to handle our volume of work until the existing team was spent. Like the proverbial frogs in the warming pot of water, who don’t realize that they are being cooked until it is too late to jump out of the pot, we somehow always pulled out all of our frogs partially parboiled, turned down the heat and threw ourselves (the frogs in this example) back into the pot again.

Two important decisions that we made during the 2002-2004 period have resulted in the stable management of Reporting Services over the last five years. The first decision was to undertake a more careful analysis of the workloads of existing staff, the tasks and responsibilities being shared across the organization and then to create in-house management positions including a full-time Operations Manager, Digital Editor, On-Line Editor and Deputy Director. This stabilized our management function so that the necessary tasks were being adequately handled. In the last two months, as our Your Meeting Bulletin work has increased, we have hired two half-time staffers to handle the marketing, contracting and staffing for our non-ENB meetings. Getting the right staffing levels has been essential to the smooth running of Reporting Services.

The second, and perhaps most important decision, was to flatten out the management level of IISD Reporting Services to include the Team Leaders, who are responsible for the writers, digital editor and logistics coordinator at the meetings we attend, in decisions related to their meetings. In 2003, we shifted all of the responsibility in the field to the Team Leaders, who now make the primary recommendations on the size of their team, team members and output from each meeting. During the negotiations, it is always the Team Leader who is responsible for the decisions on what to cover, content, output and any problems faced by our team. While other IISD staff from New York, Winnipeg, Ottawa or Geneva may attend meetings, they never out-rank our Team Leader in the field in terms of meeting coverage. Devolving leadership to the field level during meetings has helped empower our Team Leaders and solved many problems. By distributing management down to the Team Leader level, the responsibility for completing tasks has been coupled with the authority to make all of the decisions associated with those same tasks.

This flattening of the management structure to include our Team Leaders has extended to our annual team meetings. At these events, we discuss issues central to the organization of our work, encouraging input from our Team Leaders in all areas, including recommendations on new products, pay rates, travel policy, evaluations and staffing. 

From 18-22 May 2009, twenty-five of our Earth Negotiations BulletinTeam, including staff and consultants from all parts of Reporting Services, gathered outside of New York for three-and-a-half days of discussions on the operations of IISD Reporting Services. In a bottom-up approach involving all of the participants, the group produced a nine-page document with recommendations and an Action Plan in all areas of our work. The team has suggested changes in areas including our ENB on the Side production, pricing structures for Your Meeting Bulletin, changes to our content management database structure, improvements to our payments system and ways that we can communicate internally. This Action Plan will be reviewed in September to ensure that progress has been made in the work that we have decided is necessary to improve our organization.
IISD’s reporting services management philosophy and the resulting structure emphasizes collaboration and participation in management, as well as distributing the management tasks to the best level at which they can be executed. This frees me up, in my work, to concentrate on the larger picture rather than the daily details, and in the generation of the resources and new products that keep the operation going.

Quick Spin past Windsor Castle

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7813319 

Of course, I love cycling up cols and big loops in the countryside. But there is also nothing better than a long ride before getting on an airplane. I enjoy being in serious calorie-debt and then being presented with hot nuts, appetizer, main course, cheese plate, ice cream and chocolates on the plane.

Here is a shot of the Thames from the grounds of Windsor Castle, which you can see in the background of the shot below.

Out of the hotel at Heathrow Airport at 5:00 am to the astonished bemusement of the early airline crews loading into the buses. Then a fast ride out towards Henley through mostly flat countryside and small towns.

2,647 calories and almost three hours later I was back at the Sheraton Heathrow hotel (green marker in the above photo), packed and headed off for the feast from London to Chicago on United Airlines:

I love the First Class suites on the newly configured UAL planes. And, on arriving in Chicago I got a message from Pam that my flight from ORD to La Guardia had been cancelled. But, before I could even check at the transfer desk, the United Airlines Global Services representative was waiting for me in baggage claim with a sign that said, “GOREE” and she had my new boarding pass and luggage re-route slips. So easy!

Finally home now and thinking about cancelling my Switzerland trip and staying put in New York for the next two months. All of my trips for the rest of July and August are in the up-state area, first to the Finger Lakes and then to the Adirondacks. Ah, to be in the same time zone for eight weeks!

Chiltern Challenge: 100 km in Oxfordshire

Joe was right when he said, “Beware of any race that has the word ‘challenge’ in it.” Another useful tip would be to look up both the ride profile and do a bit of research on the name of the ride.

“Chiltern” sounds so banal. I thought it might refer to town where the ride started or, perhaps, the hospital that benefitted from the fundraising associated with the ride. Little did I know that “Chiltern” referred to a famous set of hills: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiltern_Hills So, what in the world was I thinking when I signed up to ride 100 miles of hills? If this ride had been the New York region it might be called the Catskills Challenge or something and I would have been warned off.

Here is the ride profile from garminconnect.com: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7663802

So, after leaving Karen and Jamie’s wedding at a reasonable hour and forsaking alcohol at the reception, I left Dorchester at 5:00 am and arrived in Henley-on-Thames in time for an 8:00 am start.

The first 30 km were not pleasant. Straight out of the Henley Rugby Club and we were heading straight up 160 meters, back down 100 meters, up and down and then up 200 meters. Yes, all in the first 30 km.

The day was hot, I was jetlagged and was living on very little sleep and when the route split, separating the 100 mile from the 100 km riders, I decided that today I would do the metric century rather than the imperial century. Good choice!

Lovely countryside, but my butt was dragging. However, in the last 30 km I ended up riding alongside of two lovely women from London and Oxford. Janine (I think) commented on my NY Cycle Club jersey and we chatted a bit.. and I asked if I could grab her wheel. She snapped back, “Just as long as you don’t grab my ass.” I said, “No maam”  but was thinking that it would have been very difficult to a) catch her; b) find anything much to grab. The two of them pulled my ragged butt at about 30-35 km/hr over the last part of the ride.

The funny thing about this ride was that they had a full lunch at the second to last rest stop. I kind of like cookies, bananas and water at my rest stops and would prefer to finish the ride before having lunch. However, I guess the set-up was for a more leisurely rider who would stop, eat, digest and then get back on the road to finish.

However, the lesson learned was not to attempt a century ride that has the word “challenge” in it or at least to figure out how flat the ride is before starting.

Wedding and Cycling in Dorset

Jamie Bellord and our ENB writer/team leader, Karen Alvarenga Oliveira, were married on 27 June 2009 at Lulworth Castle outside of Dorchester in Dorset (Thomas Hardy country in southwest England.) As usual, an international trip for business or pleasure provides an opportunity for a cycling adventure. So, I booked a First Class ticket from NY to London using my surfeit of air miles, packed up my bike and headed to the United Kingdom.

Diego Noguera, the Digital Manager on our IISD Reporting Services team, and I met up at Heathrow Airport and we drove to Dorchester, about two hours from west of London.

Karen and Jamie had instructed gentlemen to “wear morning dress”, which is something that I had never done before but relished the opportunity to go formal. With some help from the international customer service at Moss Brothers, both Diego and I rented the required attire for formal weddings held during the day in the UK. (Photo above: Lingfield morning coat with matching waistcoat and pink Creswell cravat.. winning combo.)

Here are Diego, Asheline Appleton, Alexandra Conliffe and Leonie Gordon, all friends of Karen and Jamie’s from our ENB Team.

Leonie and her absolutely adorable daughter, Elena (who fancied my top hat.)

Alex, Diego and Asheline were stunning on the most perfect of summer days in Dorset

Before picking up Asheline, Diego and Alexandra at 3:00 pm, I got in a lovely bike ride for about two hours in the Dorset countryside, just east of Dorchester.

Easy spin except for the flat that I had somewhere near Puddletown and Moreton. I’m pretty sure that the heat of the day caused the patch I had applied outside of Winnipeg to leak, particularly since the flat took place very slowly. But, I changed the tire, rode slowly on the tire only partially pumped (to avoid a pinch flat) and made it to the church on time.

Cycling Jasper to Banff: Three perfect cycling days

(This is a ride that I did from 18-20 June 2009 and have just been too busy to get it up online)

There are few places on earth as perfect for cycling than the route from Jasper to Banff, south through the Jasper National Park into the Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. On three days, from 19-20 June 2009, Ellis Grossnickle and I rode the distance, with help from our friend Phil Ramey, who accompanied us in Ellis’ truck.

Here are some photos from the adventure:

This trip had its inception in a conversation that I had with Aaron Cosbey, an Albertan and a colleague of mine from IISD in Winnipeg, who I had asked if he might recommend a good place to go cycling near Calgary. I was planning to be in Winnipeg for the IISD Board meetings and meetings of several of the IISD teams through 16 June and was looking for a chance to explore some of the adjacent province and ride in the Canadian Rockies. Aaron suggested riding from Jasper to just outside of Calgary and I spent a few days trying to figure out exactly how to do this without support.

I mentioned the trip to Joe Barton, who said that he would be interested in doing the trip. Our original plan was to meet up in Calgary, rent a car one way to Jasper, dropping off supplies and clean cycling clothes in Lake Louise. We would spend the first night with our vehicle about 100 km south of Jasper and, the next day, drive to Jasper to drop off the car and begin our trip back to where we spent the first night. The idea would have been to have Fedex or DHL boxes at the overnight locations and we would express our clothes home, picking up the clothes we had left “pre-positioned” on our trip north.

However, as we discussed this on Facebook, Ellis read about our plans and asked if he could come along. He was planning to be in the area with his truck and thought we might be able to share the driving and riding between the three of us. The idea of having a support vehicle, particularly in June when the weather could suddenly turn wintry, seemed like the good idea.

All was proceeding smoothly until about three weeks ago when Joe fell while descending Lincoln Gap in Vermont, separating his shoulder. Joe had to cancel but Ellis’ friend Phil volunteered to ride his motorcycle to Calgary and serve as our SAG driver for the trip.

On Wednesday, 17 June 2009, I flew in from Winnipeg and we met at the Calgary Airport, stashed my bike box at the Sheraton Four-Points outside of town, bought up some beer and drove to the Columbia Icefields Parkway Chalets to spend the first night.

DAY ONE – JASPER TO GLACIER

Early Thursday morning we left our belongings in the Chalets and drove with our bikes to Jasper for breakfast. Using our mobile phones, we went war-driving down the main street and parked at the Whistler Inn, which had a strong wi-fi signal. The waitress got us the online password and the three of us set up our laptops, checking stock prices, accessing mail and chatting with colleagues. We had to get three things filled-up… gas tank, stomachs and Internet. By 9:30 we were on the road, Ellis and I on our bikes and Phil driving the truck leap-frogging us as we headed up toward the Athabasca Glacier.

This is the first day’s map.

Unfortunately, Garmin only released at the end of the week the firmware upgrade that fixed their problems with corrupted TCX files. I had been having problems with my Edge 705 for the last month, losing ride data from some wonderful routes. It was very frustrating to find at the end of both Thursday and Friday’s rides that all of the heart rate, elevation, wattage and speed data from those days had been lost. However, after updating the firmware while i Lake Louise on Friday night, the 705 worked perfectly on Saturday. Not much to do now.

The route from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields is about 100 km and rises from just less than 1000 meters to just above 2000 meters in a rolling up and down route the mostly works upwards. After a lovely breakfast in Jasper we rode throughout the day, arriving in the mid-afternoon.

This is the shot looking west towards the Athabasca Glacier. Ellis took this shot from the parking lot of the Icefields Chalet as I was cresting the climb.

DAY TWO – GLACIER TO NORTH OF LAKE LOUISE

 

This is a shot of the Icefields Chalets, a great place to stay if you are cycling this route. We ran into a number of other cyclists who were doing the same route.

On day two of riding, we started after 9:00 am, following a nice breakfast and rode up to about 2200 meters before the big descent.

This is the view, looking south from the descent just south of the Athabasca Glacier. Most of the road was similar to this. As you can see from the day’s profile the day was a big descent, a gradual downhill and then some serious climbing later in the day.

By around 3:30 in the afternoon, the weather had closed in and the rain began. Since we had the vehicle, we decided that it might make more sense to head to the Post Hotel in Lake Louise and then drive back to this location (about 20 km north of our final day’s destination) the next day.

Here is Ellis packing it in for the day as the rain was beginning to fall.

 

Heading south into Lake Louise in the rain.

It was a good decision, as the rain began falling with some intensity as we drove for about twenty minutes to our lodging and a round of drinks by the fire in the hotel pub.

DAY THREE – NORTH OF LAKE LOUISE TO BANFF

True to our word, we loaded up the truck early on Saturday morning and back-tracked to the exact point where we had abandoned our ride on Friday afternoon when the rain hit. And, because the gods abhor hubris (and we were very proud to have traded the rain for what we thought was going to be a lovely Saturday morning) the rains started again as we drove north. In fact, we laughed when I made the comment in the truck when the rain was a light mist that, “at least we don't have a heavy rain” and suddenly the rain started falling in sheets. Very eerie.

Never underestimate the value of good intelligence. As we were getting ready for the day’s ride in the lobby of the Post Hotel, I had overheard the desk clerk speaking about the road that ran parallel to the main highway. I was sure that we would be stuck riding on the shoulder of Highway 1 with four lanes of RVs and huge trucks. However, when I spoke with the desk clerk he showed us the way to get on Bow Valley Parkway, which runs parallel to the main road and is, undoubtedly, one of the world’s best bicycling routes!

And, so, the yellow line is where we rode, starting back north of the Post Hotel in Lake Louise and Bow Valley Parkway runs along, but not too near, the highway.

After downloading the firmware update for the Garmin Edge 705, it finally started working correctly on day three of this magnificent ride. Obviously they fixed the corrupted tcx file issue (and the unit has worked flawlessly over the last two weeks since this ride.) Here is the GarminConnect.com link for the day’s ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7353968 

 

Someday, Garminconnect.com will actually finish the incorporation of the best features from Motionbased.com into their site and offer the ability to insert HTML code into blogs (one of the best motionbased.com features before they were acquired by Garmin.) But, for the time being, here is a shot of their main page. The elevation profile for the day says it all. The ride was a long, slow, gradual descent along the Bow River.

Ellis took this as I was posing with my bear whistle, which I had only blown one time for real when I had seen the black bear the day before. No bears on Day Three, although there was a grey wolf lurking by the road that Ellis spotted.

Lots of other cyclists on the road doing what must have been a lovely long climb up to Lake Louise.

Day Three was simply the most beautiful day of riding that I have had in many years. The rain cleared within the first half an hour and the day was sunny, 15 degrees and mostly all downhill for three hours of easy cycling. After two days of long climbs and many hours in the saddle, it was the perfect ride for the last day. I now understand why everyone had said that the best way to ride this route was to go from Jasper to Banff. It was not for the winds, which mostly blew from our westerly quarter, but the first day’s climb was nice and gradual, the middle day’s ascent was manageable, but the last day was pure cycling heaven.

As the Bow Valley Parkway ended, intersecting the main highway just about five kilometers north of Banff, we decided to end the ride with the memory of cycling down Bow Valley rather than semi-trailers blowing past us at 120 km/hr for the last little stretch. So, we loaded up the bikes in the truck and headed into Banff for beers and lunch at Earle’s.

Ending in Banff as a good choice and much better than my original idea of riding all the way into Calgary. That would have been a lousy extra 100 km and added four hours or more onto the ride on the shoulder of a busy highway.

We checked into the Four Points Sheraton and Ellis and Phil went off to pick up Phil’s motorcycle in town. Adventure complete and I flew home, leaving the guys to their truck/motorcycle trip through the Rockies.