Greetings from the Lisbon Poets Hostel in Portugal. I will make this post quick, since I´m terribly confused by the punctuation on this keyboard, and should probably rest before my presentation tomorrow, but I want to share my experiences today, while they´re still fresh in my mind.

Yesterday, I arrived in Lisbon to attend the International Conference of Community Psychology. With N2Y3 still fresh in my mind, I found myself frequently musing over similarities and differences between the two conferences. They are both conferences, of course, and so certain things were nearly identical in both places - people chatting excitedly in the hallways, coffee breaks, exhausted yet patient staff at the registration table politely explaining that we were to gather according to the alphabetical placement of our first names, not last. that kind of thing. but of course, there have been huge differences, the most notable (for me, at least) being the virtual absence of independent use of technology. of course, official conference business requires use of technology, such as laptops for the (inevitable) powerpoint presentations, and even sophisticated uses of tech, such as personal headphones for live translations of certain sessions. yet the kind of technology that is ubiquitous at netsquared - the livebloggers at their laptops, the digital cameras flashing, the constant texting, not to mention the more recent additions, such as vlogging in the hallways or the crew of second life loving multi-world attendees - these were entirely absent. some, especially the latter, are to be expected - this is a psychology conference, not a technology conference. still, in an era when "online" and "community" go together like peanut butter and bananas, it was strange to seemingly be the only person at the community psychology conference sitting in a corner with my laptop, desparately trying to find a working wifi connection.

This is not to say that tech-savvy commmunity psychologists do not exist, however. The transformative potential of the web was mentioned several times, and I was surprised and pleased to find that a group of community psychologists were largely responsible for creating and maintaining The Community Toolbox http://ctb.ku.edu/en/Default.htm , a site that offers guidance on core competencies for community development, and its new Community Workstation. As someone with a love-hate relationship with the seemingly endless array of online tools available for information sharing and capacity building, I was really impressed by the elegance and simplicity of the Workstation, which combines a variety of essential tools (document sharing, wikis, calendaring) in a central and secure environment. organizations looking to streamline communication without compromising security, or spending an inordinate amount of time trying to learn how to use new tools, are likely to find the Workstation extremely useful.

Okay, I did say that I would make this short, and as I´ve clearly already missed that mark, but I think this is a good point of departure. Tomorrow I´ll be hosting a little discussion on how we can use online tools to continue global dialogue, make the most of our learnings from the conference, and strengthen the loose international network of community psychologists during the two years before the 3rd international conference in south africa. Suggestions are welcome :)

-gina