Blogging the WSF

Mumbai, Jan 20 - 1) Dimensions of WSF Mumbai

2) Another person's perspective reported

3) Self-reflexive blog about the WSF bloggers (and why they haven't blogged)

1) Dimensions of WSF Mumbai

I don't think that the blogs have described some of the basic features of the WSF because they are the water that the fish/bloggers are swimming in. If you haven't been to WSF, or haven't looked closely at the WSF website (which is most readers of these blogs, I guess), there are a lot of basic realities to be aware of.

Firstly, geographically the site is actually several sites: the main site is split into two neighbouring (but not adjoining) industrial estates. If your workshop is in Area D, in the other estate, that's a significant barrier to attracting participants - who have to leave the big site and walk for several minutes along the road to the Area D  site. It takes about fifteen minutes to walk across the main big site - if there are no marches. There are always marches. The paths are completely packed at all times.

There are five big Halls, most of which could contain a B-52 hangar. They are either for Panel discussions (seating variously 8000 or 4000 people) or they are filled with exhibition stalls (I don't know how many, but there are over 300 in the largest exhibition hall). These are the industrial warehouses. Teh Panel discussions (so far as I know) are the only venues with transmitted translations. For Japanese, Chinese, French (maybe another language?) you sit in the right row of chairs, having bought a headset, and plug in to hear simultaneous translation. For Hindi, Marathi and I think three other Indian languages, you buy a small FM radio tuned into the right channel and you hear simultaneous translation. I haven't listened to any of these, and have no way to judge the quality of sound or translation.

Outside the existing structures, there are 140 hessian huts built especially for the WSF, divided into four areas (A, B, C, and the wastelands of D), for seminars and workshops. These all have lots of fans for ventilation, almost all have PA systems for speakers, and contain between 250 and 100 seats I'd guess - all arranged in rows facing a highly raised dias with a table, tablecloth and four or five chairs for speakers. As was just pointed out to me by someone else frustrated by the lack of participatory structures, this arrangement - dias and rows (with chairs actually tied together) - is a political statement in and of itself, informing and structuring the experience of the seminar or workshop.

There are also hundreds of food stalls, several performing stages, several cinemas, and four large (400-seater?) hessian Solidarity Halls (whose events did not appear in the schedule for some reason) - the Anti-War Assembly was there yesterday.

That's the main site. Down the road there is also the World Parliamentary Forum (I know zero about this, have just seen it on the map this minute, no one's mentioned it in my hearing). There is also the Youth Camp (apparently this was created in Porto Alegre partly in frustration at the lack of participatory structures at the main site) - which is a whole one hour's journey time away. Totally cut off from the main site, this I think has 1500 young people from all over the world in a local school (the pupils have been given the week off!).

There's probably more, but this is an indication of the scale and size and distances involved.

2) Another person's perspective reported - 1

My room-mate at the hotel Shantiidoot (Peace-milk) Richard Lee has been circulating around, he met up with people from Bhopal, spent two hours yesterday, and quite of bit of time the day before trying to help them with projecting their activities to the press and trying to get their performance troupe onto one of the stages - finally finding someone sensible in the Cultural Committee who said, Sure, go ahead whenever one of the stages is free. A big struggle for recognition of a key Indian campaign against transnational capital.

He went to a meeting about Democratising the WSF yesterday which was interesting more for its form than its content. The level of discussion was pretty introductory, whereas the debate about the European Social Forum to be held in London (something Richard is involve in) has been going on for a considerable period. But what was interesting was that the meeting was facilitated by a specialist facilitation group using techniques for involving participants.

2) Another person's perspective reported - 2

Oscar Reyes, also from the UK, had a similar experience, going almost by chance to a workshop on transformative education, where it started by breaking up the meeting into small groups of seven (they cut the strings tying chairs together) with the panellists distributed through the room. Initial statement by one person to the whole meeting, then discussion in small groups. Then getting back into a big group, with discussion and the Panel forming to speak (briefly?) and to respond to what has already gone on in the meeting. Overran its time (like everything else) but a very good experience according to Oscar. Empowering and participatory and giving each person a voice. This I think is key. Not just to open up the mike in front of a large crowd and *allow* everyone to speak (when there is only enough time for a small fraction of participants to speak), but to create small group-big group processes that mean that not only *can* everyone speak, but that everyone *will* speak, and contribute to the flow and development of the dialogue. That is participation.

Just to make clear, this was not a small meeting of 20 people, there were (according to Oscar) 150 or so people in this workshop, and this process worked very very well in his view.

Oscar also did something I should have done, as a blogger-reporter: wandering from room to room to see what was happening, get a feel of the diversity of WSF. Some meetings were in other languages, but most he came across were in English.

3) Self-reflexive blog about the WSF bloggers (and why they haven't blogged)

Leaving the internet cafe next to Goregaon railway station last night, the irony struck me of criticising the WSF and the Anti-War Assembly for one-way, unilateral, non-participatory communication, when I render this criticism via a one-way, unilateral, non-participatory weblog, which you the reader have no opportunity to respond to or interact with. Perhaps I will regret this, but if you do want to respond, my email address is

I got to thinking about the people commissioned to blog here, many of whom I have now met during WSF. Mostly contributors to ZNet in some fashion, they are mostly within the 'inner core' of the WSF process I guess, the friendship networks that have been forged at these international gatherings. (This is a guess - I'm a narrowly focused anti-war campaigner and I've never been to any of the big anti-globalization protests or to any previous WSF.)

One function of WSF is that it is a supermagnetic attractor bringing together in several fields many speakers and 'top' campaigners who have some name recognition or positions of power in major organizations, and who have direct or indirect access to the resources to cross continents and spend five days or more at WSF and ESF and international peace conferences and anti-WTO-summit demonstrations and so on. Creating the conditions for this campaigning 'elite' to forge face-to-face contact and friendship networks is a very important function. (WSF, of course, also gives 'ordinary' campaign delegates and individual attenders the chance to form such connections with each other, and to make some connection with influential figures.)

Why have so few of the commissioned bloggers blogged? Individual cases will differ, of course. One factor is the difficulty of finding internet access (though I suspect most of those commissioned have access to the media centre by 'borrowing' media passes). I guess that it is because the commissioned are also the people in the inner stream of the WSF process - prioritising (while they are here) doing talks, networking, having decision-making meetings, functioning as journalists, making the most of this fleeting social occasion with each other. They got chosen because they are the kind of people who write for ZNet and go to WSF. But the kind of people who write for ZNet and go to WSF are (generally) too busy WSF-ing to do anything extra at WSF! (All of this of course leads to the (accurate) conclusion that my own (relatively) prolific blogging indicates my own lack of significance in the scheme of things here.)

The final thought is that while these commissioned bloggers no doubt have interesting insights about WSF (and I look forward enormously to reading the contributions they do make either today or after WSF), the people I have met appear to me to be in the 'inner stream' of WSF. For people who are frequent WSF/ESF attenders and who mix with (if they are not themselves) those who shape WSF/ESF events, it is probably impossible to capture the perspective or experience of the grassroots attender. If this is an accurate picture of the commissioned bloggers, that fresh, grassroots experience will necessarily be missing from this experiment in multi-author blogging, which nevertheless remains extremely valuable.

I'm honoured to have had the opportunity to write for New Standard News, I will try to write one more blog, but I'm flying out at 7am tomorrow.