Sustainability Principles Online Dialogue - Welcome

Thank you for your participation and interest

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 11:33:41 -0500

Thank you for your participation and interest in the Sustainability Dialogues. The dialogues ran from July 10th up to August 18th and are now closed for further participation. The Buckminster Fuller Institute does have plans to develop more online dialogues in the future, please check our website for updates.

» Click here to access the content from the dialogues

Please give us your feedback on the Dialogue !

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:17:44 -0400

With the Sustainability Dialogues closing tomorrow I just wanted to post this quick reminder to leave your feedback on your experience. The Buckminster Fuller Institute is interested in potentially repeating these types of Online Events and we are very interested in what our participants have to say about their experience.

Please click here to fill out our quick feedback form.

Thank you
- The Buckminster Fuller Institute

Thank you for your feedback !

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:03:41 -0400

Thank you for taking the time to provide us with your feedback !

Please click here to return to the Sustainability Dialogues main page.

- The Buckminster Fuller Institute

How to use Discussion Forums

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:28:38 -0400

The Sustainability Dialogues site is a structured set of forums that closely correspond to the Sustainability Principles document. The forums can be used to discuss specific sections of the main text in detail. Click here for more information about what Forums are

User Content is created by posting either topics to start a discussion or by posting comments to reply to existing content.

1. The above screen shows a part of the Sustainability Dialogues Online Forums. Click on the Dialogue Forums link in the top-menu to access the forums. Click on a specific forum (blue text) to view the actual forum topics that have been posted.

2. The above screen shows the General Discussion on the Approach as a Whole. As you can see at the time of this writing, this forum contains a total of 3 topics (Use of this Material, Representation of the Five Domains, Approach as a whole).

3. Click on the Post new forum topic link to start a new discussion.

4. Pick an appropriate Title for you posting and enter you content. You can then optionally Preview your posting or just Submit it to the site.

5. The above image shows the confirmation after posting a topic to the forums.

Entering Comments

1. To comment on existing topics (or on other comments), simply pick a topic that you wish to comment on from within a forum and use the comment forum at the bottom of the page (see below)

2. Then just enter your comment and optionally add a Subject. You can then either choose to Preview the comment or just Post the comment to the site by using the buttons at the bottom of the input form.

3. Shown above is the posted comment.

4. To reply to a comment simply click on the reply link underneath each comment

» Click here to return to the home page

Welcome to the 'Principles of Sustainability' Web Event -- Extended to August 18th !

Tue, 23 May 2006 11:46:43 -0400

Testing the Gossamer Albatross - NASA Photo
Dryden Flight Research Center ECN 12604 © 1980

"If you wish to fly and want to successfully construct an aircraft in order to do so, you need to understand the basic principles of aerodynamics. Similarly, if we are serious about ensuring a sustainable future, we need to be guided by a set of principles which underlie sustainability as an enduring state."

— Michael Ben-Eli

You are about to join an inquiry into the Principles of Sustainability. The dialogue is hosted by the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) and began on July 10th. Due to the sustained quality and level of interest we are extending it through August 18th. It is organized as an open forum for the ever growing BFI network. We greatly appreciate your willingness to contribute your ideas and insights to this important discussion.

Below is a brief overview of the dialogue and how to get started:

Introduction to the Dialogue

BFI is hosting this dialogue out of our commitment to further Buckminster Fuller's legacy and vision of delivering complete sustainable success for all humanity. In his own quest, Fuller always insisted on a rigorous inquiry into first principles as a first step. With some scientific principles, such as the laws of thermodynamics, universal acceptance and a high degree of operational clarity has been achieved.

But do we have the equivalent clarity with the challenge of sustainability and lacking it, can we hope to achieve sustainability as a prevailing state?

Here at BFI, we think this is a critically important question that must be explored.

Without sound principles to guide us, we risk having our well intended actions actually exacerbate the sustainability crisis instead of solving it. We are excited by the opportunity to join with you in examining a fresh set of rigorously developed sustainability principles!

Dialogue Facilitiator & Principles Author

The principles we invite you to engage were developed by Michael Ben-Eli, a former student and close collaborator of Buckminster Fuller. They are informed by several existing frameworks and inspired, in particular, by Fuller’s work. Ben-Eli's principles were developed in order to advance the intellectual basis for implementing breakthrough sustainability practices.

Michael will actively participate and facilitate the dialogue.

Use of Results

Our intention is to use the dialogue to help refine this new framework and offer it as an open source resource. Michael will work closely with BFI Staff to synthesize the outcomes and post the results to BFI's homepage.

In addition to facilitating this online discussion, we at BFI, are particularly interested in using the insights gained in the process to help shape the design of our own edcuational programs and to inform the way we evaluate their results.

Plan and Structure

The online dialogue will be open to participation 24/7 for several weeks commencing July 10, 2006

The dialogue is structured to include several discussion forums:

A forum for general discussion on the framework as a whole
A forum for discussion about the definition of sustainability
Five themes, each related to one of the five key domains:
I. The Material Domain
II. The Economic Domain
III. The Domain of Life
IV. The Social Domain
V. The Spiritual Domain
A set of three discussion forums for each domain to include:
- The Underlying Premise
- The Principle
- The Policy and Operational Implications
Michael will spend time each day reviewing and responding to inquiries and suggestions.
To help you get up to speed on the dialogue's progress, there will be a running summary of discussion highlights posted by Carl Frankel, former BFI Board member and author of In Earth's Company, Business, Environment, and the Challenge of Sustainability and Out of the Labyrinth: Who We Are, How We Go Wrong, and What We Can Do About It. Carl Frankel's summaries will commence on August 1st.

How to Participate

The first step is to complete the 'User Login' process. This involves choosing a Username and a case-sensitive password and then validating your identity using your email. Click here to begin or click here to read detailed instructions on how to create an account.
Read through Sustainability Principles - Complete Text. The 'Complete Text' document contains the neccessary material you need to participate in the dialogue.
Once you have read the document, you can enter the discussion forums by clicking on the Dialogue Forums link in the top menu. From there you can jump into any forum that seems interesting and begin discussing the text. As you will see, the discussion forums are closely aligned to follow the complete text document. To post discussion topics or comments simply click on a forum of interest and then click on the 'Post new forum topic' link. You can also read existing topics and leave comments. Click here for more information on how the discussion forums work.
Or you can also click on "Join the Dialogue Now" to view and access all the discussion forums.

Information you have posted during login and in the personal profile section will not be shared with anyone. BFI will only use this information to communicate with you about:

Issues concerning this particular dialogue while it is in session
Future postings about the results of this dialogue
Future BFI online discussion events relevant to Sustainability Principles

Please always provide proper attribution (name of forum, name of author, and date) when using excerpts or quotations from topics and comments posted to this public forum.

» Join the Dialogue Now — Read the complete text

Acknowledgements
Initial Concept and Coordination: Joshua Arnow, BFI Board member
Project Advisor: Roger Hurwitz, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

How to create an account on the Sustainability Principles site

Wed, 10 May 2006 12:53:02 -0400

Creating an account on the Sustainability Dialogues site is very easy and only takes a few seconds. An account on this site is different than an account on the BFI.ORG homepage. The below screen shots will walk you through this process. All that is required is to pick a username and password and then to provide a working email address, which is used to validate your account (something that we need to do to protect the site from spam).