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New Sust. Ag. Disc.: SARDBB



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 14:30:09 -0500 (EST)
From: Bob Hart <bhart@nywork2.undp.org>
To: sardbb-l%nygate.undp.org@nygate.undp.org
Subject: short version

AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN A GLOBAL INFORMATION EXCHANGE PROCESS
 
The United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Sustainable Energy
and Environment Division (SEED) and INFORUM (an international NGO
that supports global electronic partnerships) invite you to join and
use the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development (SARD) FORUM.
Because SARD spans issues as diverse as soil biology and world trade, 
SARD-FORUM has been set up as a matrix of Electronic Mail Lists rather
than as a single List. The matrix is formed by 3 hierarchical levels:
Nation, Community, and Farm; and 2 disciplinary foci: socioeconomic 
and biophysical (as depicted below). 
 
                            Disciplinary Foci:
System Levels:      _ Socioeconomic   Biophysical  _ 
 Nation            |  NATION-SOC    | NATION-BIO    |   SARD
 Community         |  COMMUNITY-SOC | COMMUNITY-BIO |   FORUM
 Farm              |_ FARM-SOC      | FARM-BIO     _|
                                SARD-NEWS
 
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO SARD-FORUM TOPICS
 
When you join SARD-FORUM you have the option of subscribing to the 
whole matrix (subscribe to SARD-FORUM), a column (subscribe to 
SOCIOECONOMIC or BIOPHYSICAL), a row (subscribe to NATION, COMMUNITY,
or FARM), one or more cells (e.g. NATION-SOC, FARM-BIO), or to 
SARD-NEWS which will be used for news about upcoming events as well 
as for updates on changes in the SARD MATRIX. To subscribe, send
an email message in the format:
 
subscribe listname name@internetdomain
 
where "listname" is a cell, column, row, SARD-NEWS, or SARD-FORUM
and "name@internetdomain" is your internet email address. Leave the
Subject line BLANK. Send the message to:
 
majordomo@undp.org
 
HOW TO SHARE YOUR INFORMATION WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES
 
SARD-FORUM is an information exchange process, not an electronic 
magazine where others do all of the work and you read the results! You 
can, of course, simply subscribe to the SARD-FORUM mail lists and 
download information from others, but the primary purpose of this 
electronic forum is to SHARE information.
 
To help structure the information exchange process, please classify 
what you are going to share into one of 5 categories: NEWS: short (3 
pages or less) descriptions of upcoming SARD related events that your
organization is sponsoring that might be of interest to others, 
REPORTS: short (3 pages or less) technical description of an activity,
methodology, preliminary results, etc. that you think might be of 
interest to others, COMMENTS; brief (2 or 3 paragraphs) reaction to 
a REPORT you received from a SARD-FORUM List, QUESTION: concise (2 or 
3 sentences) asking if anyone has any experience with a technical 
issue you are working on, and ANSWER: short (3 pages or less) response
to a technical question that was sent to a SARD-FORUM list.
 
Before sending a REPORT or a QUESTION, take a few moments to select 
the most appropriate List. In general, unless the subject matter 
clearly covers multiple cells in the matrix, send your information to 
one of the cells (e.g. community-bio) rather than to a column or a 
row. Write up your NEWS, REPORT, COMMENT, QUESTION, or ANSWER in a memo 
format with a header that includes the DATE, TO, FROM, and SUBJECT. 
In the TO heading put in the name of the List where you are sending 
the information (e.g. TO: FARM). In the FROM heading put your name, 
address, and email address. In the SUBJECT heading put a descriptive 
phrase that includes one of the words: NEWS, REPORT, COMMENT, 
QUESTION, or ANSWER.
 
Make sure the information is in ASCII format. Send it to a List within
the SARD-FORUM matrix using the format:
 
listname@undp.org
 
where "listname" can be any of the 6 cells, 3 rows, or 2 columns in 
the SARD Matrix, SARD-FORUM or SARD-NEWS. For example: 
nation-soc@undp.org, farm@undp.org, socioeconomic@undp.org, or 
sard-news@undp.org, etc.
 
WHO RUNS SARD-FORUM?
 
SARD-FORUM is currently managed by a steering committee composed of 
Friedel von Mallinckrodt (email address: friedel.mallinckrodt@undp)
from UNDP/SEED, Malcolm Chapman (Malcolm@undp.org) from UNDP/DAIS, 
and Bob Hart (bhart@undp.org) from INFORUM. As more institutional 
partners join in supporting SARD-FORUM, this committee may be expanded.
The possibility of setting up interconnected regional multi-language 
versions of SARD-FORUM is under consideration. Please contact any
of the SARD-FORUM steering committee for more information.