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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.