ESBG-participants list
-          It is in geographical order, so you see the countries together.
-          For Belgium there were about 20 Casa Calida members (our team and also the active strawarchitects, members of Casa Calida) and the rest were interested architects, plasterers, ingenieurs and some self builders – we haven’nt combined the ESBG with a national gathering, these people joined out of their own interest
 
      List of European national networkers
-          on the Saturday afternoon a group gathered on the theme ‘European networking’ and out of this meeting came a list with national networkers throughout Europe.
-          The list is afterwards enlarged with networkers, that were absent at the ESBG
-          Aim is to reach you all in the future through this list – if you have something to tell to everyone you can contact these national networkers and they will pass it on to their national contacts
 
-          Follow this link and you see the list of networkers:   http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ast9SgPwgMetdGI5ei05a0lEU1FfNHVYVURmZ29aa1E&hl=en&invite=CISaje8J
-          If you have no account, login with:   Email: esbnstrawnet@gmail.com     /    PW: strawbales
 
-          thanks to Herbert of Austria  - you were the driving spirit for this list and thanks to Rikki of Spain – you  setup the excel-addresslist in Google docs!
-          And of course thanks to all the networkers for their engagement!
 
      New European website
 
-          on the Saturday afternoon a group gathered on the theme ‘European website’ and out of this meeting came the spirit that it would be good to have such a common website on European level to share our knowledge, our experiences, our events, information, to do networking and to spread this all over Europe …
-          Nora of Czech Republic/England found in this meeting some new ESBG volunteers to help her with the programming of the website – Nora had already started with a structure and with ideas and now the lay out and the design has almost been worked out
-          They soon will launch this brand-new ESBG-family site, you all will be informed when it is ready and on the air, so keep the champagne cold!
-          The name will be … www.???.eu     - if we say it then you could find the demo version and it should be a big surprise when they release it!
 
-          Thanks to Nora and her team – you put a lot of time and energy in this project and we all + strawbale building in general will benefit of it!
 
      The Leonardo partnership project
 
-          several European countries have gathered their engagement in a European funding program – for the next two years the will regularly meet to work together - mainly on 2 topics: 
-          topic 1: setting up an overview on the state of the art of SB in Europe to come to general standards and certifications useful in whole Europe – how can we bring these SB standards into the common building codes in the national  countries?
-          Topic 2:  gathering experiences of existing SB courses and workshops in Europe and with this information working on a educational program to train SB for self builders but also for building contractors – how can we introduce a worked out SB curriculum into the national educational system?   
-          The partner countries for this Leonardo project are: Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Slovakia and in fact also England (their national agency has decided that England is not getting money for this project, but the other partners will still involve England and will share their own fundings for this)
-          You will be posted on the work and the results of this group through the national networkers and through the European website.   
 
-          thanks to all the wonderful partners in this Leonardo-project to engage in this important work  -  your work will help to bring SB in the mainstream thinking of building Europe and a lot of straw balers will certainly benefit from this project!
 
 
      3 ESBG-films
 
-          the thanks-to-David-laughing film: David sent us the link to the video he showed us on Sunday – so if you want to see it again and have a good laugh, check it out here:  http://transitioncalifornia.ning.com/video/bodhisattva-in-metro-laughing   
 
-          thanks to David - to share the link with us, but of course also for the magical good timing of showing us this film – this really went without words… - it was one of the many wise moments, that you shared with the European ESBG-family and it somehow made you also into a member of this family, as you so kindly wrote to us!
 
-  a nice ESBG-reportage of the Dutch local television broadcasting company L1.nl :    
            http://www.l1.nl/L1NWS/_rp_links4_elementId/1_4109216
-  it is in Dutch, so you won’t understand much, but we are telling the usual stuff about Strawbale building and I am explaining what the ESBG is about – I am sending it to you all, because it shows the nice atmosphere at the Waterburcht and you see the variety of the strawbale workshops on Thursday
 
- ESBG-film made by ESBG participant Heidi Snel of Ökofilm- Germany :
You can find it in Youtube under “ESBG 2009”  or here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEOhPQw8udM
 
-  it is such a nice film, dear Heidi, thank you a lot on behalf of all of us!!!  You made it with such eye for details, it gives a wonderful summary of the programme during all the days and you cached David tasting our good Belgian beer! This ESBG-film will certainly be a cherished memory for the ESBG-participants – vielen Dank!  
 
 
      ESBG-harvest
 
-          several straw balers shared their knowledge and experiences with the ESBG group by giving demonstrations, workshops, lectures and this happened during the whole ESBG – the result is a real harvest of useful information…
-          many of these speakers have already given us their presentations, this material will be gathered in a structural way on the new European website, so its premiere will be a real harvest-feast!  
 
-          Thank you to all these speakers for their engagement and also for the sharing of their information – everybody is really appreciating this and the information will surely be used in many ways!
-          For those speakers who haven’t sent it yet, you still are welcome to send whatever you want to share!  
 
 
      ESBG 2011
 
-  on Sunday morning a ‘next gathering group’ was formed and they have started to meet and work. The goal of this group is to help facilitate the election of the host country for the next gathering. In some Skype conferences they have agreed upon some of the "optimum"
conditions for hosting the next ESBG.
-          The members of this group are: Herbert (Austria), Fredi (Germany), Rikki (Spain), Gigi (Belgium), Sissy (Germany), Nora (UK).
-          This group has already sent an informative letter to the national networkers with explanations,  with a deadline for signalling interest to host the ESBG 2011 and a deadline for sending in a worked out proposal to host
-          You certainly will be informed by your national networker to co-decide and you will be informed on the results through your national networker or through the European website
 
-          Thanks to the members of this next gathering group for their sincere engagement and their positive energy to work on the next host place!
 
 
      Conflict resolution
 
-          people present at the Sunday noon conference have experienced that there was a conflict between Casa Calida and Max of Czech Republic.
-          In hopes to resolve the issues that arose during and around the ESBG, we now have a separate group (Max, Nora, Sissy, Gigi, Cesar – a neutral and external facilitator), who all have agreed to enter the process of conflict resolution to clear up the misunderstandings. We hope in a very confidential and guided way with facilitator Cesar to restore the trust in order to have a united European network, without unnecessary hard feelings.  
-          This information has already been sent to the national networkers, but the next gathering group has also spoken about the fact that we should tell you all that we are working on this conflict in a separate group (next to the next gathering group) - so that is why I am telling you this in this newsletter.  
 
-          At this point I like to thank Max for his engagement and energy he put in applying for fundings through a YIA-project – it was his idea and mostly his effort that we got fundings for young straw balers throughout Europe. Unfortunately, it was also about the YIA that our conflict started… Writing this general ESBG newsletter gives me now the chance to openly and honestly thank Max for his YIA-work, which till now not has happened due to the conflict…  
 
 
      2 personal SB-ideas-calls
 
a call of Heidi concerning her film-work
 
Hello Everybody,
I hope you enjoy the clip on the ESBG 2009.
Since I am addicted to strawbale building anyway I am thinking of making a film about strawbale building in Europe. For this I am collecting ideas, not just content-wise but also and especially about funding such a project. For this I ask your thinking and ideas:
* what do you think should be an important part of a film about strawbale building in Europe? * do you know good sources of EU-funding for such a European project? * do you have ideas on sponsoring such a film project?
* maybe you or your company want to become sponsor yourselves? * Who has good connections to building-related companies (such as Makita - they sponsored the machines at the ESBG)
I am collecting ideas on sponsorship on my website, please have a look: www.ecofilm.de
 
If you have any more good ideas, let me know!
Heidi Snel ÖKOFILM
E-mail: snel@oekofilm.de
 
 
a call for a network for exchanging SB houses
 
-          since some years now, Hein and I are spending our vacations by exchanging our house with another family
-          we love this kind of arranging our vacation – you actually live in the house of a (mostly very nice!) family, while they are living at the same time in your own house
-          it is much more personal than in a hotel or apartment /  you get a good view on the local habits / you live in the life of another family and in this way you learn a lot about how you yourself are living, but also how it could be differently and that makes you aware on your own manner of living /  you make good contact with the neighbours, who are keen to integrate you and to show you around / it is very cheep, you only pay the travel costs
-          wouldn’t it be nice to set up a network to exchange SB houses? We somehow are already a big family, so you already have the trust to open your house to somebody also involved in strawbale building
-          just to  give you an idea, here are two links we normally use to find exchange families:  http://www.homeforexchange.com   and  http://www.homeexchange.com/   (here are many more, but we used them to find our exchange  families)
-          we could make a link for this on the new European website and make our own system and own conditions
-          let us know if you would like to participate in having your vacation in some SB house somewhere in Europe in the house of some SB networker – when there is a reasonable interest, we could look then if this is technically realistic for the new site