3rd Global Information Village Plaza - The Power of ‘What Ifs’

Moderators:

Nadia Caidi

Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, Canada

Michel J. Menou

CIDEGI, France

Presenters: ASIS&T members, especially SIG/III members, and conference attendees

The Global Information Village Plaza is now in its third year of existence. This new edition differs substantially from the previous ones. The new format will feature a request for questions rather than answers. Questions will be purposefully formulated in a “What If?” format intended to elicit provocative debates and open dialogue among participants. The Global Plaza will however maintain its successful interactive format, aimed at giving ASIS&T members an opportunity to express their personal views about the challenges and opportunities that they encounter in the so called "information society" both at a personal and professional level. As in the past, the overall theme will revolve around the recurring themes of the information society (whose information society?); areas where more research is needed; links to existing resources, initiatives, policy statements, etc. To keep up with the spirit of the Global Information Village Plaza, personal submission of “What If” questions will be sought from the information professionals’ community around the globe. The process is due to run from July through October 2004. It will include posting and discussion on ASIS&T and other professional listservs. The questions will be clustered in a series of posters during a special session. During the session, participants in the Annual Meeting will be invited to first browse through the posters comment and vote on what they deem the five most provocative/relevant questions. Five ‘surprise’ guests (a scholar, a practitioner, a government representative, a student and a colleague from a developing nation) will be selected by the moderators from among the conference participants and asked to discuss briefly the selected questions. A general discussion will ensue. SIG/III plans to publish a summary of the process and its outcome.

SCOPE OF GLOBAL INFORMATION VILLAGE PLAZA 3

Asking the right questions is often half of the answer. “What if?”-type of questions are often deemed irrelevant –or even useless- because they steer us away from agreed upon conventions and set frameworks. There are instances, however, when “what if” questions help us think in new and creative ways about our assumptions and goals.For the past two years, the moderators have been on a quest to engage the information science community –both specialists and lay professional public- in a dialogue about the major features of the so-called “information society" and its increasingly global nature. In particular, we were interested in the lay professional public’s views: what does this “new” society mean to them in a real and concrete sense?This project aims at providing an opportunity for all ASIS&T members and information professional at large to express and share their personal views using the new format of “what if” questions.

BEFORE THE ANNUAL MEETING: WHAT CAN I DO?

In July 2004, a call for participation will be issued on all ASIS&T listservs and other professional lists around the world, as far as possible. People will be asked to send questions to the SIG/III mailing list. These questions will be based on the model of those that emerged from the 2003 Global Information Village Plaza statements and subsequent discussions at the Annual Conference, for instance:

· What if we made it a requirement for admission to information studies programs that students spent at least one year in a remote/rural area; low-income community or in a developing nation?

· What if people from various parts of the world did not want software and products in their local languages?

· What if we left the private sector ‘take over’ the globalization of information products and services?

· What if broadening access to ICTs was simply not enough?

· What if the information science community was the leading voice at the World Summit of Information Society?

The email for the SIG/III list (where the questions should be sent) is: sigiii-l@asis.org

Messages should clearly indicate "Plaza" in the subject line.

All position statements are due by October 15.

Note: Anyone can post messages to the sigiii-l list but if you wish to see what others have posted and participate in further discussion, consider subscribing to the list (see http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigiii-l for details on how to subscribe). The sigiii list is a moderated list (mainly to avoid spamming and unrelated announcements). Of course, you may send your comments about others’ statements posted on the list.

AT THE ANNUAL MEETING

During the session at the Annual Meeting

a) The posters will be placed on the walls around the room. Participants will be invited to move around the room and add their comments on stickers. They will also be able to vote for the most provocative questions.

b) After 30 minutes, individual discussions will stop. The moderators will tally the votes for the five most provocative questions, and invite the audience to gather around a panel of five surprise ‘guests’ selected from among the conference participants. The guests will stand on a platform in the middle of the room, surrounded by the audience. The surprise guests will consist of: one scholar, one practitioner, one government representative, one student and one colleague from a developing nation.

c) Each special guest will be asked to select one question, and will have five minutes for presenting their position about the issues raised by the question. A general discussion with the audience will follow and will be recorded. The idea is to engage a dialogue between the guest speakers; between the speakers and the audience; and between audience members.

AFTER THE ANNUAL MEETING

After the Annual Meeting the final version of the most significant contributions and outcomes will be edited and assembled into a paper for publication in a professional journal (such as the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology).

For more information, contact Nadia Caidi (caidi at fis.utoronto.ca)

or Michel Menou (Michel.Menou at wanadoo.fr).