Looking Back On ‘Everything is Connected’ Conference

By Tim Hollo • December 13, 2017

Everything really is connected, isn’t it?

Including how putting on a huge conference is connected to exhaustion and getting behind on other work, with a direct consequence of not uploading content from the conference for almost six weeks. Clear connection there!

After such an amazing two days discussion big green political ideas, with so many of you inspired to continue the conversation, I do apologise for taking so long to follow up. And, for those of you unable to make it, who have been bugging me to make content available, apologies also. It is finally starting to come through!

Audio and video

We now have audio of all of the plenary sessions available on the website! I know many people were keen to listen back to these and to share them with others, so apologies for the delay. We will update this as more become available, but in the meantime, here is:

As you will see, each of these is being posted as a blog post, back-dated to the dates of the conference. The other sessions will be done similarly. So please check back through the blog in the coming days and weeks and we will slowly but surely add more content. The audio is being processed by a wonderful volunteer, to whom we are hugely grateful.

Holiday reading!

There was a great deal of interest expressed at the conference in the idea of further readings! Here is a small collection of books and essays that dig into the ideas we discussed.

Kate Raworth’s wonderful book, Doughnut Economics, is the best way to dig further into her thoughts. Click here.
David Bollier’s Think Like a Commoner is a fantastic short and easy read if you are keen to follow up Stephen Healy’s thoughts on The Commons. Click here.
I explored a whole lot of these ideas in a speech to the New Economics Network conference not long before Everything is Connected. I will be expanding on these thoughts early in the new year, but you can read the start of it here in my speech on a Politics of the Commons.
I can highly recommend George Monbiot’s latest book, Out of the Wreckage, as a typically powerfully argued expression of many of the ideas we discussed at the conference, from countering capitalism’s cultural norms to building participatory democracy, from learning from Common Cause to building a commons-based politics. Click here.
If you haven’t already read it, Naomi Klein’s latest, No Is Not Enough, covers many of the same issues, tying democracy to peace, climate change, human rights, and the fight back against the rise of the extreme right. Click here.
Bill Moyer’s important Doing Democracy is relevant to so much of the conversation, and if you follow this link you will support Holly Hammond’s work that she raised in her session.
To follow up Mary Graham’s wonderful speech, here is an essay of hers from 2008 examining some of the same questions.

That’s just a tiny taste, but it might be enough to keep us all going over the holiday season!

Next steps

We’re in the process of nailing down plans for the Green Institute for 2018, but it will certainly involve an array of ways to keep these conversations going. Ideas include smaller forums on specific issues in various cities, the return of online forums (“webinars”) via Zoom, the development of online conversation spaces through Slack or similar, and more. If you have ideas that you feel particularly strongly about, please get in touch to suggest them!

And some photos!

Here’s a selection of action shots from the conference, showing probably my favourite aspect of the two days: how incredibly engaged everybody was! Many people, including some of the keynote speakers, have noted the extraordinarily high quality of the Q&A sessions! Thanks to everyone who came for making it such a brilliant experience!