Unfortunately the environmental activist summer camp that I attended the last seven years all over Europe, the gathering of idealists, mavericks and tree-huggers that changed my life into a nomadic hacktivist existence, is not going to happen this year. Unfortunately?
After some 20 years of Ecotopia the organising NGO EYFA, which I am part of as a board member and web-monkey, has decided to discontinue their annual summer camp under the name of Ecotopia. Some people on the EYFA board have not been so happy with this decision, but since the folks working in the office — who are doing most of the hands-on work — wished to radically change the summer meeting, including finding a new name, we found consensus on the issue.
According to what I heard last, EYFA will organise a different, much shorter meeting focussed on activism this summer and possibly the years to come. I heard the term conference-style somewhere. It’s all a bit vague and I’m curious to find out what’s it going to be. Update May 14th 2009: The new event is called Climate Action Camp and will take place near Antwerp 3rd to 9th of August 2009.
However, the Ecotopia biketour 2009 will take place in a similar fashion as before. Check the Biketour website for updates (no 2009 info at time of writing). As for Ecotopia 2010 the Ecotopian community is working hard on what in software development would be called a fork by the name of “Ecotopia?” — taking place near Belzig not far from Berlin. I’ll be there! 🙂
Renew, question, evolve, flow. Always.