From: Thomas Greco <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Newsletter – October 1, 2013
Date: October 2, 2013 5:34:53 AM GMT+01:00
To: Richard <•••@••.•••>
Newsletter – October 2013
In this issue
· Changes
· European tour report — Part 1, the Hague Conference
It’s been quite a while since my last newsletter went out in early June. Since then, a great deal has been accomplished. My European tour, which spanned nine weeks from mid-June to the latter part of August, was successful, productive, exciting, and I might add, exhausting. I’ll say more about that below, but most recently, I provided a remote presentation (via Skype) to a group assembled at Kalikalos on Mt Pelion in Greece as part of the week-long workshop titled Occupy Money. Then, toward the end of September, I participated in the 34th Annual International Convention of the International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA) in Las Vegas where I shared the podium with Annette Riggs and Rob van Hilten in a panel session about Understanding Diverse Exchange System Models: From Bitcoin and Berkshares, to Transparent Credit Clearing Networks. Unfortunately, that session was not recorded, but the slides that I prepared as talking points can be seen at http://beyondmoney.files.woallrdpress.com/2013/09/irta-panel.pdf. Needless to say it was not possible to cover them all in the short time provided.Upon my return to Arizona from Europe I had to begin searching for another residence, since the house where I had been renting a room is no longer available. I’ve just moved into another shared housing arrangement which I hope will turn out to be suitable, at least temporarily.
This uprooting, combined with the let-down that followed the summer’s excitement, has caused me to deeply ponder the questions, What’s next? and Where do I want to be? While my energy level is not what it once was, I still enjoy relatively good health and am able to adapt to different environments so long as they provide a reasonable level of comfort for living and working. I’m growing impatient to hear opportunity’s knock, still hoping to involve myself in a breakthrough project that is adequately funded, with an able and energetic team that can achieve results that are on a par with the best business start-ups.
European Tour Report—Part 1, June, 2013
The first 4 weeks of my tour were a whirlwind of presentations, workshops, interviews and discussions. I’ll skip the details and report only the highlights, starting with the Hague conference, then report on the rest of the tour in my next newsletter.The Netherlands and 2nd International Conference on Complementary Currency Systems (CCS)
It was a great pleasure to again visit (for the third time) STRO in Utrecht and to discuss with Henk van Arkel and the STRO team our various projects and common interests. STRO, with projects in several countries, is one of the most effective organizations working in the area of sustainable economics, community empowerment, and exchange alternatives. Together withTime/bank The Hague, they sponsored my first presentation (on June 18) for practitioners and social entrepreneurs. My slide show was titled The Exchange Revolution: Taking complementary currencies and moneyless trading to a new level, which described the various issues that must be considered in creating and managing alternative exchange mechanisms.The CCS Conference in Den Hague far exceeded my original high expectations. I’m very encouraged and inspired by the quality of the presentations and discussion sessions that occurred during the entire 5 days of the conference. It seems that the movement has reached a new high level of competence and increasing cohesion, and seems poised to achieve significant results in both the theory and practice of community empowerment through the creation of systems for providing local liquidity. That, of course, is a prerequisite to transcending the growth imperative and transitioning to a steady-state economy. I expect that progress will be very rapid from this point onward.
Presentations, documents, and interviews from the Academic portion (June 19 and 20) of the Conference are available toward the bottom of the following page:
http://www.iss.nl/research/conferences_and_seminars/previous_iss_conferences_and_seminars/complementary_currency_systems/. You will find what I think is a pretty good interview with me at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuTqSTtda9Q, and brief video interviews of 27 presenters from Day 3 (policy makers day) can be found on the YouTube channel of Qoin:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmwkF5vwvf7Tb_-Dj2RfNg?feature=watch.More video recordings by Hagen Schmidt of some of the sessions are to be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeXIb62EsAUzZPSaF5D3UhP3OCyZ_I35w&ytsession=zRoQ6O1CIC8_AFW0t_zeJ_-x7IobKlbtjUJ-uSSS4ky3MFMH2lzv6L793FARTZPt8VM7__WGP7yONA_ay_22vyV1fa_EQmkW3cvGJsEAQpubWh9iBW8EkIDcGXrl0EqxJlr5TOV9CPzy4d_Jb4QNofz9FdTP_u9b1jbu0UUgzjEOA17z-Jhd9ZjYr_x9wsNKPAEMR_BfRZoAs usual, I took many photos to document my travels and events. The pictures of the Netherlands portion of the tour can be found athttps://picasaweb.google.com/112258124863172998784/2013JuneNetherlands?authkey=Gv1sRgCJHK2pzrh8_cXg
Practitioner Sessions
Among the practitioner sessions that I participated in during the final two days of the conference were the following.* Intertrading. One of the two discussion groups I proposed in the “open space” was about networking credit clearing exchanges together and development of the necessary intertrading protocols. We had quite a lively and productive discussion, which has become an ongoing process since Sebastiano Scrofina set up a Google group for that purpose. If you want to view the posts or join the discussion, go here:https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/intertrading-protocol.
* Measures of value and Units of account. Another session I lead was about measures of value and units of account. This also resulted in a lively discussion. Thanks to Zsuzsanna Szalay, we have a voice recording made with a digital recorder. You can download the file here:http://beyondmoney.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/th-greco-in-hague-23-06-2013valuemeasurement.wav.
* Business Models for Complementary Currencies. Daniel Neis provided input for a session on business models. Pertinent links are provided in his post to a Google group which he has started for discussion on that topic. You can read it, and join the conversation by going here:https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ccsbusiness/ujmWJHa0q-8.
_____________________________________________________
As a side note, it always amazes me to see how effectively the Dutch deal with personal transportation. Besides having a very efficient network of trains, trams, and buses, their use of bicycles exceeds that of any other people I’ve visited, even urban Chinese. They make bike travel safe and convenient by providing many bike “roads” that keep bike traffic physically separated from motor vehicle traffic, and by providing huge amounts of space for bike parking at train stations and other locations.
I hope you are all enjoying the cooler Fall weather.
Thomas
Tom Greco: Newsletter – October 1, 2013
Bcc: FYI
rkm website: http://cyberjournal.org
___________________________________
Begin forwarded message:
