Thinking Ethics

One day to seminar

One day to go, and everyone is working hard on the logistics and details. Proper planning prevents poor performance, but what do you do about the flu ? Two cancellations have not been replaced. The weblog has been tested for ease of use for authors; the idea is that each participant will be able to post as an author and make this space participative.

Visibility

Now that the seminar is less than a week away, I am trying to get the press to cover the event, and announce the book (they will review it at some latter date). The Geneva paper Le Temps said they would take it, if I wrote it up, so that is what I did most of today. It will be published on Thursday or Friday. Now that I have written it, I will try to pass it on to the Neue Zurcher Zeitung, who might also cover it, and the International Herald Tribune. Basically, more mileage out of one paper.

prepration

Most of the participants have now sent in a one page memo of best practices or main issues in their field. These memos are free form; some people have copied a relevant text, some have put the issues down in bullet form, and others have written up their ideas on the subject.  The memos are being circulated to the other participants and journalists in each workshop so that they can find out where everybody is coming from. This is the kick off point and should cut down on the introduction time.

10 days to seminar

The Thinking Ethics seminar will take place in Geneva on Friday 18 and Saturday 19, 2005. The objective is to foster the debate by looking 10 years ahead and seeing what might change, likely scenarios, trends and potential problems. The five workshops are:  ethics and performance, ethics and knowledge, ethics and consciousness, ethics and disobedience and ethics in real time. My partner in this venture is the Philas Foundation (www.philias.org), the reference in corporate social responsibility in Switzerland. We have invited six people in different areas to brainstorm in each workshop, and are just finalizing the participants list, and trying to replace someone in the ethics and disobedience workshop who cancelled in the work/union/social dialog field. In this workshop we already have people from the fields of religious and racial harmony, standing up to authority, cyberactivism, violence by children and disarmament and peace.