By Enrique Lescure
What the cooperation with Green Free Will has meant for us
Ultimately, the Green Free Will (GFW) Cooperation has been a success, and the biodome shell is now standing in Nordmaling. This has proven that we can contribute positively to the improvement of the local community, and also raised our media profile. The biggest positive feedback has been the talk we held during the Survival Kit Festival in Umea in October 2014, when we had the opportunity to describe the EOS for an audience of around thirty people.
This raising of our profile shows that the strategy pursued since May 2012, when we agreed to enter our relationship with GFW, has yielded much in terms of media exposure and positive feedback. It has also showed that EOS is about more than theory, that we intend to actively contribute to the raising of the environmental standards of a community.
The Biodome Project has a long way until it can reach the goal of a self-sufficient, automated, artificial eco-system. But thanks to the efforts of GFW and EOS members, it now has been manifested in reality. That is a large step for Alexander and Ann-Sofie and their team.
The internal changes that must occur during 2015
The EOS is entering a dynamic and challenging year, where we have an opportunity to transform ourselves internally and structurally. What I am referring to is of course the Board Election of 2015, which would occur during the Annual General Meeting in May month.
This Board Election will see the election of two new EOS directors. Dr. Andrew Alexander Wallace has declared that he will not stand for reelection for his directorship.
During the course of 2014, I had the privilege of hearing many proposals on how the Board could be improved. I presented these proposals before the Board, and we have agreed to initiate a process where we moves towards a professionalisation of the Board and a replacement of what doesn’t work with what is proven to work.
Firstly, we must disconnect the functional sequences from the executive functions of the Board. Sequence directors should not necessarily be board members any more, and consequently board members would not become sequence directors automatically any more. The functions of the Board will be to advise the sequence directors primarily, and the two functions will be autonomous from one another.
Secondly, board members will be divided into acting board members and board members, where the first ones would be those who either see themselves as deputies until the positions could be filled.
Thirdly, the EOS Manual needs to be updated to reflect on these changes.
Many more changes will occur as well, but those changes will rather be of substance than of forms.
How the future should look
(Enrique Lescure, Board Director)
I have declared my candidacy for one of the Board directorship positions during this year’s Board election. My reasoning for my candidacy is that I have experience within EOS as one of the founding members and have experience with networking and recruitment. Also, I have played an important role in the Umea Biodome Project.
What I believe is that EOS should use the period of 2015 to 2020 to build on the gains harvested by the Biodome Project, and that we should focus on the growth of our organisation’s width and depth.
With width, I concretely mean that we need more active, devoted members, both to be able to more effectively handle our core presence on the web and locally in our communities. With depth, I mean the quality of what we are doing and how we are reaching our conclusions. We need to utilise the principles laid forth in The Design while we are making our decisions, and a central key aspect is that all active sequence operatives and board members have read and understood The Design.
Concretely, my first steps will be to structure up and recruit people to the sequences of administration and finance. The seuqence of administration has traditionally been responsible for the website, but the problem is that while the website is maintained efficiently, changes which the Board has voted on and agreed on have not been effectively implemented. More seriously, no new technate.eu mail addresses have been given since the board back in 2005-2010 introduced them.
We need to expand the amount of people who are administering the website, in order to modernise the website and making it a better expression to the public of what we intend to do. Moreover, we need to expand the website with a hub for blogs, a permanent EOS Youtube channel and a POD Radio show if possible (quantitatively and qualitatively).
The same can be applied for the sequence of finances. Traditionally the most “boring” and legalistic area, it has been handled by the Board directors, as it has proven to be difficult to find any active and devoted sequence directors to that area. We need to find these people and actively seek them out. Preferably, these individuals need to reside within the borders of Sweden and be familiar with Swedish law. Concretely, one of the SeqFin directors would administer the bureaucratic work while the other would focus on making the members pay their annual membership fees.
These are the two sequences most needing attention right now, and I will devote my work in 2015 to solve these issues.
For the longer term, we need to become better at raising our media profile and to utilise our capacities.
Meanwhile, we also need to raise the knowledge of the EOS and of the EOS Design amongst our members and sympathisers.
Also, I intend to recommend for the Board to have a female co-director in the Board. While I do not advocate a gender-binary constitution as a fundamental foundation for our organisation, I believe it will send a signal and that it also will serve to increase our appeal amongst everyone.
That is just one of the ways I intend to facilitate constructive change with.
The EOS Horizon 
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