Electronic networking is a marvellous technology when practised by initiates. For an average conference group it may be alienating or irrelevant to their participation in the meeting dynamics. Some grounds for this (which have been noted from a number of meetings where messages and summaries were being uploaded and downloaded):

• the majority of the on-site participants unaware of the process; it was not seriously integrated into the conference framework by the organisers.
• location of the "communication centre" such as to discourage casual inquiry by participants, especially if at an international gathering such enquiries can only be made in English
• distancing of computer sophisticates from others
• intimidation of the uninitiated or politically naive by those who understand how conferences can be manipulated
• electronic junk mail and the seeming irrelevance of many of the downloaded messages, which reinforces any tendency to label such participation as "flakey"
• and general message overload
• discouraging form of the hardcopy (message layout, bizarre characters, etc)
• discouraging display of the hardcopy (people who consider themselves important do not want to be seen paying serious attention to print-outs stuck to walls)

An increasing number of experiments are being made with computer conferencing as a means of linking people not present at a single physical location, such as a conventional conference site. Both the messages sent via terminal to the distant participants, and the messages received from them, can be incorporated into issues of the Bulletin. In fact, to save typing, the locally-received handwritten messages can be typed directly onto the terminal, edited, combined with incoming messages, and then (a) produced from the terminal as a clean copy of the Bulletin issue for local reproduction and distribution, and (b) released over the terminal to the participants at distant locations, who may also reproduce it (see "Case Study 4").

If you are intending to use wide-area computer networks (such as global electronic mail/conferencing networks, do so because this offers significant additional advantages, such as long- distance networking capabilities which exceed "super-telex" and "super-fax". It is not sufficient to demonstrate that the technology exists and works. It has to mesh usefully with existing modes and move beyond them to further enhance the interactive process at the conference. It must also be accessible to the conference participants. This implies an adequate number of terminals and perhaps trained personnel to assist users. Technically it is irrelevant whether the computer is on-site.

Consider a bottom-up approach, building upon on-site standalones (PC's) or, more ambitiously, local-area networks (LANs). If all is working well, these may be used to download messages, in LAN mode, etc and to upload into wide-area networks. We caution against an initial "top-down" approach, even if you are extremely familiar with a wide-area networking facility and their distant hardware devices. The key word is to create a "robust" system which fails "safe" (mindful also of the frequency with which fail safe systems tend to fail by failing to fail safe!).

Written by Nadia McLaren, Union of International Associations, with revisions and HTML layout by Robert Pollard, Information Habitat: Where Information Lives.