Knowledge sharing and EcoSur over the past 20 years
From mule trails to the electronic highway symbolizes the EcoSur response to the changing world.
The impact of modern media upon the way that information is transmitted cannot be ignored, and for EcoSur the last two decades brought about revolutionary changes in the way it deals with information. It has learned to ride the electronic waves without neglecting the bumpy roads that still abound. This delicate balancing act is what guides knowledge sharing.
Our path is called “networking”. It has to do with communication, and communication has several faces, among which are attitudes, media and information itself, even language plays its role.
The EcoSur Network uses various media in order to share knowledge, from published material to conferences, from e-mails and websites to onsite consulting. There is an attempt to “keep in touch” in one way or another.
While the electronic age has opened up many new opportunities, it has also presented new challenges, as only those with access to the new technologies can be part of the game. However, having access does not imply communication, nor does not having access imply lack of communication. EcoSur encourages those with the means to engage at the grassroots level in their own environments.
Only by placing knowledge in the hands of the people can sharing have a sustainable impact.
Over the years, a compact group of experts has emerged that has become the key unit or focus of sharing knowledge. These experts can manage the gamut of means of communication, or as the EcoSur caricaturist conveys, they must be able to mount mules with a computer in their hands.
The people associated with EcoSur not only take pleasure in sharing information, contributing to the expansion of knowledge throughout the southern hemisphere, they also create information. We place research and development in this category.
Its enthusiastic beginning in the Dominican republic at the first Latin American seminar for micro-concrete roofing tile producers in October of 1991, has evolved into an ongoing process of open 
source knowledge sharing. Its bilingual website tracks projects ofparticipants and monitors ongoing applied research to share in articles. The resulting technologies are marketed, as well as consulting proferred.
Always on top of things, the editor and webmaster Paul Moreno recently took a 2 month leave to visit some of the projects and places he had been covering at a distance over the past decade. Its this type of grassroots contact that enriches and empowers the network to stand up and say more than yes, we can. EcoSur says “yes, we do!”
