Moscow Convention Cancelled. A Wake up Call for the Movement?

I learned earlier this afternoon that the Moscow convention has been cancelled as a consequence of the near total shutdown of European airspace due to the cloud of volcanic ash. My heart goes out to the folks at Cooperatives Europe who no doubt will have been working on this event for some months.

This is undoubtedly a major blow for us at www.europe.coop and indeed everyone involved in .coop globally. Domains.coop had generously sponsored the planned workshop session on Branding and Image Building, scheduled to take place on Wednesday, and both myself and Paul Hazen, president of the .coop Registry (and also CEO and president of NCBA) were going to Moscow to fly the flag for .coop and press home our arguments in support of widespread adoption of .coop.

Reflecting on the lost opportunity caused by the cancellation - which is of course the right decision for Cooperatives Europe to take - got me to thinking about the carbon cost of staging an international convention of this nature, and whether it is time to review the cost benefit analysis of physical gatherings like this.

With next-generation broadband infrastructure really beginning to make major inroads throughout Europe, offering services such as high definition video conferencing at affordable prices (certainly in comparison to airfares and all the on-costs of travel to real events), surely we should looking at these technologies to enable 'virtual' conferencing, drastically reducing carbon and other costs, as well as avoiding things like clouds of volcanic ash.

Of course these technologies may probably never fully replace the unique experience of face to face gatherings, especially in places like Moscow, but they can certainly shift a lot of the burden and enable us to get much better value from the rare opportunities we do get to meet face to face with our colleagues and counterparts from other corners of Europe, or further afield.

The role of internet networking clearly has an important and increasing part to play in bringing together cooperators from around the globe. And of course the .coop domain name has a central role for all of us interested in building a trusted place online for ethical, cooperative trade.