Dear all,

at the last SuSanA meeting in Stockholm (the 14th meeting), the following locations were suggested for the next SuSanA meeting: LatinoSan in Panama (early 2012), East Asia San in Indonesia (April 2012) or Africa Water Week (this event may take place in Egypt in spring 2012, going by rumours which I heard (it was orginally meant to be Lybia in around Nov. 2011)).

You can view the minutes of the 14th meeting here:
www.susana.org/lang-en/meetings/august-2011-stockholm-no-14

Let's discuss this issue here: We invite you to share your thoughts and make suggestions.

Best regards,
Enno

In the planning and deciding on Agenda-what would be the guiding factors.The innovations ,new concepts on sanitation marketing is one of the topic you may consider. The resource generation and networking can also explore to carry out new experiment.

Regards,
Ajit

Hi Enno,

A LatinoSan in Panama sounds interesting, primarily because we usually get to see and read much about sanitation in Asia and Africa, but very little really from the LAC countries.

Cheers,

Sunder

Dear all,

The main pre-requisite for a big SuSanA meeting is to have a local host, normally a SuSanA partner who is interested to host this event, together with the secretariat, at costs as low as possible (usually SuSanA meetings are done on a shoe-string budget)!

They work best when they are connected to a large sanitation event where people are in town already. That's why the last SuSanA meeting in the global South was in Kigali before the AfricaSan 3; there was one in Rio in connection with the World Urban Forum, and in 2009 in Ethiopia together with the WEDC conference. And each year in August there is one in connection with the World Water Week in Stockholm.

I just tried to look up the exact dates for the LatinoSan in Panama and the East-Asia-San in Indonesia. But, surprisingly, Google only brought up the forum posting by Enno! (Good to see that our system works: our postings here are found by Google).
So looks like they are not really set in concrete yet.

I have three further suggestions:

1. A SuSanA meeting, or a side event or working group meeting(s) at the World Water Forum in Marseille in March (who from our SuSanA members are going to this event?).
2. A SuSanA meeting or side event at the Dry Toilet Conference in Tampere, Finland (in August).
3. An attempt to run for the first time a Webinar, where the whole meeting would be online and people would attend via the internet.

Disadvantages of Option 1 & 2: Meeting location not in the global South.
Disadvantage of Option 3: People would require good internet access; difficult to get people to commit and participate if it is a virtual meeting.

What do others think? Where and how should we plan to meet in 2012 (either with SuSanA meeting, a side event or seminar or working group meetings)?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear all,
just a quick one from my side:

I would like to see a next SuSanA meeting taking place neither in the internet, nor in Europe. It should be as inclusive as possible...

There is also the 16TH AFRICAN WATER CONGRESS taking place from february 20th to 23rd in Marrakech, Morocco. But that might be a bit too soon...

What do others think about that?

Best,
Enno

We should still keep option 3 in mind for the future because it's just so much more convenient and saves a lot of energy/resources/funds having a pure online event, also with regard to the sustainability factor and the chance to record these sessions if required.

Also, there are enough places available with broadband connectivity, even in the southern hemisphere. Maybe not at an Internet Café, but at local tech hubs like the iHub.co.ke in EAK. In fact, I'd propose you test this with a live stream from the next SuSanA meeting and then we get to see if if works out or not. Or?

Meetings are not only about sharing powerpoint slides and papers but more like having interaction, discussions and, also important, conversions beside the work topics. Not everyone has access to good internet connection, the skills to participate or the will to sit in front of the screen to follow a virtual conference.

Past SuSanA meetings have shown that real life events help us to bring interested people together, allow us to learn from the experiences of others and to have productive working group session. It makes it easier to be part of a group and to contribute if you know at least some of the people behind the SuSanA working groups, members and partners.

From my point of view SuSanA meetings are important to keep on working along the same line towards sustainable sanitation, which is actually the aim of SuSanA. I personally vote for a real SuSanA meeting preferred outside Europe as long as we have the SuSanA meeting in Stockholm (thanks to SEI).

Looking forward to meeting you in person soon!


Btw. how about the Singapore International Water Week in July 2012?

I could help with planning of an event at the 16TH African Water Association Congress from 20-23 Feb 2012, Marrakech, Morocco.
The organiser is ONEP and they are partner in one of my projects.
However, we would need a quick decision.
Best regards,
Guenter

Dear Günter,
Sounds interesting. Do you mean something like a SuSanA side event or seminar and a booth perhaps? We from the SuSanA secretariat could support you in that.

Is anyone else who reads on this forum going to this event in Marakach in February?

By the way, I wanted to react to something that Philipp wrote:

Not everyone has access to good internet connection, the skills to participate or the will to sit in front of the screen to follow a virtual conference.

That is true but one can also say: Not everyone can afford an airline ticket and the accommodation to fly to an event and attend it unless it takes place in one's own country (and even then an airline ticket might be needed, depending on the size of the country).

So yes, face-to-face meetings are certainler nicer and better in an ideal world, but they are overall also much more expensive and exclude all those who are not working for financially-strong organisations (most of SuSanA's partner organisations are actually local NGOs, see the partner mapping on the SuSanA website). In the past, we have tried to overcome this to some extent by offering travel scholarships. These were e.g. provided by GIZ and SEI. But the SEI EcosanRes Programme is finished now and thus financial resources for such travel scholarships most likely much smaller from the Swedish side. Also from GIZ side we could not sponsor more than e.g. 5 people which is like a drop in the ocean. So unless we get other SuSanA partners being able to sponsor people, it comes back to the fact that people working for organisations with low income (or students, other individuals) cannot attend.

And I haven't even started talking about CO2 emissions which are caused by flights to SuSanA meetings...

But I do agree with what people said above that online meeitngs (Webinars) are difficult to arrange in a way that people really participate and don't get distracted with their other tasks. And that if we do a face to face meeting we should in parallel broadcast it as much as possible over the internet (however, often the internet access is quite poor in the locations, as we pick low-cost venues - so live streaming is next to impossible).

Regards,
Elisabeth

I agree with both the point of views. But for now we still dont have much experience organising online meetings. So I think the working group meetings are something we could start experimenting with online meetings to get acquainted with. Once we have found the online platform that suits us best we could then organise a SuSanA Plenary meeting online.

cheers

Rahul

Yes Indeed.... I agree with Elisabeth. Travel and accommodation costs, especially if your bill isn't being taken care of by a parent or sponsoring organization can be very difficult for many, and as she rightly points out, this may be true even within some countries, let alone international travel.

Also (thinking aloud!), I now wonder if we ought to think of holding SuSanA meetings in events where there is a higher likelihood of people participating, regardless of where they are from, as opposed to region focussed meets. For example, folks from Asia are unlikely to attend the Marakech event (unless of course they are part of a organization that has a stake and would like to sponsor them, or if they have substantive personal/professional interests in African regional issues). This then brings me to another question.... wondering if at some point, one might want to think of regional SuSanA chapters....... and that would potentially have much higher likelihood of participation in meetings etc.....

Cheers,

Sunder

I also think a virtual meeting can not replace a meeting where people meet physically, what gives them lots of possibilities to exchange and interact during all the time beside the official programme.
But of course (especially from a financial point of view) virtual meetings also have their advantages.
I like the idea of Juergento start with a test live stream from the next SuSanA meeting and then to see how it works. As Rahul suggested, working group meetings could be a good opportunity to gain experiences in virtual SuSana meetings - or maybe the event in Marrakech organised with Günter.
The Marrakech meeting (if it takes place) could also be an opportunity to assess the need for regional SuSanA chapters as suggested by Sunder (I recently read about the German Water Partnership which is organised in regional section and had the impression this was quite successful, but don't have any personal experience with this organisation).

But for my point of view, these event should not replace a "big" south meeting.
I do (unfortunately) not have a new suggestion at the moment.
I hear that LatinoSan was sheduled for 2013 and not for 2012. Singapor would be in Asia (which would follow up with Latin America 2010 and East Africa 2011), but attendance form Latin America will probably be very small.

I will be in Marseille, if a meeting/event is going to be organised there, I can give my support.

Cheers

Dorothee