Congress Reports

Pictures from the Cybercafe

Vegetarianism on the Internet took another big step forward at Widnau this week – thanks to the cybercafe at the 7th EVU Congress being held for the first time in Switzerland.

The cybercafe has both a computer room, with ten top quality PCs, and a cafe serving excellent vegan food and drink. The computers are in a separate room as drinks and keyboards do not always mix too well... but the room is directly adjacent to the food and drink area making for a very pleasant relaxing atmosphere.

All ten computers are connected to the Internet 24 hours per day for the week of the congress, made possible by the generous support of a local Internet Service Provider, openoffice.ch, which has given the congress a completely free link via a radio connection to their server.

The computers were provided by another local firm, NEWA Computers, who installed the entire network for a very modest fee. NEWA normally provides computer training and sales in Widnau. This wonderful support from the local computer businesses has been organised by Sigrid De Leo, EVU Secretary, who lives in this beautiful part of Switzerland.

With all the equipment and Internet connection in place, Renato Pichler, president of the Swiss Vegetarian Union and EVU Deputy Secretary - who just happens to be a computer professional, set up all the terminals to display the EVU Congress web page as soon as any user opens Netscape. There are links from there to most of the facilities that congress attendees need during the week.

The EVU webmaster is Andreas Moser, from Germany, and he is on hand in cybercafe all week to help everyone with the software. On the first day of the congress he ran a tutorial session for beginners which got them off to a great start in making the most of the cybercafe. This was so successful that the ten terminals have rarely been enough to cope with the demand.

The computers have been put to a variety of uses, perhaps the most common being people reading their emails from friends and relations who could not be here themselves. Some can read their email from their usual service, such as aol.com or hotmail.com – those without personal access can make use of IVUMail using an address at cafe@ivu.org . IVUMail is available from the International Vegetarian Union website and is being used by many members to keep in touch from anywhere in the world.

There has also been discussion on many email discussion lists allowing those at the congress send information to whole groups of people around the world.

Several speakers at the congress have used the cybercafe to write final drafts of their talks in the lecture hall, and print out copies for people requesting them. Some of these reports have them been emailed to other parts of the world for instant distribution to their members.

Probably the biggest use of the cybercafe has been for ‚surfing‘ the World Wide Web – the cybercafe becomes a library with access to an almost infinite quantity of information. Visitors have used this for anything from following up on the information in the lectures to checking the railway timetables to get home again.

One remaining project for the cybercafe is a Europe-wide 'live chat' session - anyone will be able to join in a real-time discussion with those in the cybercafe. In theory anyone the world could participate but time zones could make it the early hours of the morning in some places.... The live chat session is planned for the last day of the congress.

The cybercafe has been staffed by Renato Pichler and Andi Moser, mentioned above, with some help from myself, John Davis, webmaster of IVU. It has been a fascinating experience helping people to make the most of the computers, especially with all the different languages. We have been able to make use of a digital camera to put some pictures onto the congress website during the week, and this report should be followed by others produced in the cybercafe itself.

As far as I know, this is the first time that pictures and reports from a vegetarian congress have been available to the rest of the world whilst the congress is taking place. The next step will be live videos, maybe the next congress will take that next big step for vegetarians.

John Davis,

webmaster@ivu.org