Rendez-vous 51 - December 31, 1999
Philippe Boucher
Cyberjournalist, Editor of Rendez-Vous
Bainbridge Island, Washington State, USA.
I know it is strange to propose a self-interview but as the French saying goes « on n'est jamais mieux servi que par soi-meme » (who could better serve myself than I?) although it is not in the least my intention to be self serving.
I just want to use the end of the year as an opportunity to look back and forward, and share with you a few personal thoughts/feelings about rendez-vous and a few other internet related issues.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to be with me today.
Usually I ask the guest for a self-introduction, here it is.
Philippe Boucher: I have been involved in tobacco control since 1986.
I lived at the time in France and I started with the creation of a small non-profit organization (Tabac-environnement). I then became the Director of the French National Committee for Tobacco Control (in April 1991).
I remained in this position until the end of 1997 when I resigned in a bitter controversy about alleged mismanagement of funds.
I must admit that 2 years later and so many thousand miles away I am still upset when I think about what happened.
It is a painful unfinished business but I guess I will have to carry it along a little longer until it is definitely settled.
I moved to the States in November 98 because nobody was going to hire me in France after all the public bashing/trashing I had taken and the quasi-total lack of support from the people I had been working with all those years.
My family was ready to give the US a try: my wife is American as are our 4 daughters.
So we moved to Bainbridge Island, in front of Seattle, a beautiful place where the great Indian Chief Sealth used to live.
My family was ready to give the US a try: my wife is American as are our 4 daughters. So we moved to Bainbridge Island, in front of Seattle, a beautiful place where the great Indian Chief Sealth used to live.
Two months after our arrival, in January 1999, I proposed to the International Union Against Cancer to write for Globalink (their electronic network and website) a daily column « le plat du jour » as well as produce cyber interviews, « rendez-vous ».
They agreed and saved my life with a $3,000 monthly contract that lasted until July.
We knew from the start that funding was not available for the long term but we hoped we would find some to be able to continue: it did not happen.
I'll discuss later this lack of funding. Another friend helped me out of unemployment: Greg Connolly asked me to work with Arnold, the advertising agency in charge of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control websites and especially the getoutraged.com site.
They are based in Boston but thanks to the net I was able to monitor and moderate the site from Seattle.
This was also a short-term contract that ends today.
Q1. What's next?
Philippe Boucher: I don't know.
14 years in the tobacco control field sometimes looks now to me as a long time and I don't know how long I'll continue to be around.
There are still a few projects I would like to make happen but what about the funding? I don't buy the sort of fatalistic position that would pretend this is the way it is and everybody has to face financial problems because it has been my experience that some people seem to have no problem with funding while for some others it looks like a constant uphill (and downhill) battle. I feel that there is a lot of money wasted on bad projects while others that I find useless are lavishly funded. Not so many people express this type of frustration because this is considered rocking the boat :a major sin.
Let us look for instance at the way internet based information projects are funded or rather not funded.
Is Globalink adequately funded and staffed?
Are Gene Borio's tobacco.org or Stan Shatenstein's TNO's adequately funded and staffed?\n The Advocacy Institute\'s reorganizing was supposed \nto bring a new and stronger basis for information management hopefully for all the main actors.\n An international planning meeting had taken place in Atlanta in March 99 with big players (and funders)\n like CDC, WHO-TFI, the American Cancer Society, \nUICC… what came out of it? I have the feeling the decision makers in most of the \ninstitutions that could bring money don\'t have information management on line on their radar screen.\n",1] ); //--> type of frustration because this is considered rocking the boat : a major sin.
Let us look for instance at the way internet based information projects are funded or rather not funded. Is Globalink adequately funded and staffed?
Are Gene Borio's tobacco.org or Stan Shatenstein's TNO's adequately funded and staffed? The Advocacy Institute's reorganizing was supposed to bring a new and stronger basis for information management hopefully for all the main actors. An international planning meeting had taken place in Atlanta in March 99 with big players (and funders) like CDC, WHO-TFI, the American Cancer Society, UICC… what came out of it? I have the feeling the decision makers in most of the institutions that could bring money don't have information management on line on their radar screen.
It is not that they don't see it as a priority, they don't even see the very basic needs. For many people having a web site is just a trendy thing to do so they'll invest some money in building a site but nothing will go into operating it : how many sites do you see that are not updated for months, that are basically empty shells with the same dusty outdated content… I guess somehow the internet revolution is still for many people quite superficial (and maybe frightening) so they really give lip-service to the web without pushing for the real changes that are needed. So I have been in the frustrating position to try to advocate for new programs on line, basically on deaf ears.
Q2. Why would people resist supporting on line projects when Amazon.com is Time's man of the year?
Philippe Boucher : I think for many people the internet is very threatening. It is a technology that accelerates things so people who are slow and want to continue acting slowly dislike it deeply. So are people who relish in keeping the information for themselves, play power games or like hierarchical structures. The web allows or should allow democratic access to information. Not everybody wants to share the information. For some institutions email really became a very hot, very dangerous tool: to the point where you think they are not going to use it and basically they don't. I know some bureaucrats who will never answer any email. It is true that they were not answering any snail mail either: I guess they will finally adopt a more open behavior but for the moment they are quite effectively blocking the process and stick to their old ways: endless meetings, paper only communication, etc. while it is obvious (at least to me) that there is no way they are going to be able to function for very long without embracing the net tools.
The gap between people who have entered the digital world and those who still only pretend to is widening so the communication between them is getting more difficult. How can you discuss webstrategy, webcontent with people who never visit websites, never surf for info? I recently did a personal tour of the websites created and operated by Health Insurance Units in France. Only about 20% are on line and most of the time the content is very poor. The National Health Insurance Unit, an organization with a budget as large as the budget of the whole state provides almost no information on its website (updated once a week) although there are 18 persons working (supposedly?) in the information department. As for the French Health Education Authority, they don't even have a site! For certain institutions adapting to the internet is quite a difficult cultural challenge. Maybe it will take one generation.
Q3. Why do you think the internet is so important for tobacco control?
Philippe Boucher : Tobacco control is a lot about information and information management. So about everything can be dealt with on line. I just mentioned the French Health Education Authority without a web site: they are still paper based and sending away millions of brochures and leaflets while they are not yet providing any of this info on line. Obviously it is much cheaper and more effective to work on line: teachers and students should be able to access and download relevant info and material. Although there is a lot available on line in the US, there is still not one site where teachers and students could find info and materials that could be used as such in the class room, taking into account the different grades, the different fields…
I also see a multiplication of sites, each state, each group wants its own site, but at the end you get a lot of repetitive and superficial stuff while basic needs are not addressed. It is a tremendous waste of energy and resources. On the other hand, while moderating getoutraged.com I figured it would be useful to have similar sites in other states because the content and the interaction are mostly statewide so in this case it makes sense to have different locally based sites. Still it would be better for each state site to use the same software because there is no need to rewrite each time a new program for the same services.
Such a recycling and sharing of software resources relies on cooperation between the decision makers. Unfortunately, until now I have seen very little of it. The same absence of cooperation is one key to the lack of funding for information services. At this point there is no joined effort to fund better information services: of course joining forces would also prove much cheaper for everybody. Maybe in 2000?
Q 4. What about rendez-vous and le plat du jour ? Do they have any future?
Phlippe Boucher: You tell me. Or rather tell and ask the people/organization that could provide funding for such services. I think rendez-vous is a good format to get introduced with people who are active in tobacco control in various capacities. It brings them closer. Of course I am sometimes disappointed with the outcome of a rendez-vous. Certain people seem very cautious and do not elaborate very much from the questions I ask them. For me the questions are just a springboard that people can use to speak about what they consider important. Sometimes the response is minimal but that's the way it is and it is also interesting to see how people react in different ways to a cyber-interview.
Let us not forget that English is not everybody's mother tongue. I recall someone who wanted to correct my grammatical errors: I certainly appreciated the effort but I also wanted to convey the feeling that you don't have to write and speak perfect English to participate in rendez-vous.
Of course I also would like for rendez-vous in other languages and I am aware that the English speaking countries speakers are over represented: what prevents the French or the Spanish to fund similar programs in their respective languages? I guess a semantic analysis would find the word funding is coming back very frequently but there is no way around it although the internet tremendously lowers the investment level. Of course much can be done graciously by individuals and I think I have done my share of that but if you want sustainability and sustained quality, adequate funding is necessary.
Le plat du jour was born from a request of Ruben Israel who felt there was too much for him to read everyday and wanted something very short: so I thought why not just one item each day? Of course it is very selective but since it is a daily exercise it rapidly adds up: I cooked 123 plats du jour in six months. I think such a daily selection is very useful and I hope it will come back, hopefully with a team of cyber-writers to share the load and bring more various biases. I also would like to see more weekly and monthly reviews. It would also be fascinating to try to use real-audio and produce interviews that could be used by radio station. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ and $ ?
Q5. Any other wishes before the end of the year?
Philippe Boucher : I'll mention 3.
I wish the European Union seizes the opportunity of the new packaging directive to more dramatically improve the warnings than what is planned for now. Gar Mahood and all our Canadian friends showed us the way: it is crucial to turn the pack into an aggressive and effective information tool. Of course this should include references to a quitline as well as to tobacco control websites, and a leaflet inside the pack, as Neil Collishaw suggested so many years ago, to replace the promotional leaflets of the industry.
I hope the WHO-TFI project about sharing the Californian clips does fly and that it includes the possibility to have the clips in a format that can be used by movie-theaters. We know that tobacco control clips showed in movie theaters do make a difference but they are very rare although many local owners of movie theaters would probably agree to air them for free.
We were unable to get any funding for a cartoons exhibit for the world conference in Chicago. I hope Alan Blum will be able to open a cyber-gallery for the many cartoons he has collected along the years. Reminiscing of a favorite cartoon of mine by Oliphant it is with a smile that I can offer you my best greetings for a happy new year for all of you and all your loved ones.
Take care, see you next year!
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