The Baha'i SED Conference involved a "pre-conference session that started from Wednesday evening and will last to Friday afternoon. Two parallel sessions were offered by Erica Tousaint (sp?) and Peter Adriance.

Erica's session (which I am not attending) covers building and maintaining unity in Baha'i Communities. Talking with some of the attendees of this session, I understood some of the main points being covered involved the idea that within the Baha'i Communities, we are all learning by trial and error. With this implication comes the idea that no one person knows the way to the building of that future Baha'i Society that must come - we are all learning this as we go. As one of the persons I've talked to regarding this presentation, and to paraphrase badly 'in the Baha'i Faith, their is no morality police' and thus when conducting their lives, Baha'is should maintain their own rows when plowing.

The other parallel session involved a rather "open-ended program where attendees could get whatever their focus of interest was. Attendees at this session were mostly interested in an "international" program but I did meet another gentlemen (Clay) who is a plumber by trade and is currently developing a Baha'i Camp that would teach Alternative Energy, Consultation Skills, Diversity Training and more ( see http://www.thundereagleridge.org). He is quite far along with his project and much personal time and energy has been spent.

Other attendees I would classify as "professionals" - those whose occupations mandate implementations of SED projects - Not offically "Baha'i" but perhaps Baha'i Inspired. These professionals would be considered administrators and not necessarily "hands-on" in a litteral sense. It occurs to me that the general interest in SED if for applications in far-off and distance/isolated localities - at least this is where the discussions are focused.

General discussions on my attended sessions were a discussion on how the Internet could be used in the promotion of SED activities. Some of the tools mentioned involved the expanding applications associated with Web2.0.

JohnK