Daniel Rainey

ODR Forum

Friday was the last day of the ODR Forum in Prague – and the day the SMU student team presented their take on “Getting Past eCommerce.”  Patrick Keller, Elizabeth Norton, Rosie Almas, and Ramel Nasseri made the trek from Plano to Prague, and received a very positive response from the ODR group.

The Forum this year has been interesting in a number of ways.  First, and most noticeable to the participants, was the unusual heat wave that hit the city.  A week ago it was cold here, but this week it is sweltering.  The Forum was held in an 800 year old palace where air conditioning consists of opening the windows, which we could not do because of the street noise below the windows.  But everyone survived, and in fact enjoyed the interaction.  The other obvious difference this year was the inclusion of some group discussion and dialogue to augment the usual panel presentations.  The exchanges were lively, and the results can be found posted on this blog – later this month we’ll transfer all of the discussion material to the conference web site and www.odr.info.

P This year was described by more than one participant as a watershed year for ODR, with UNCITRAL, the EU, Latin America, Italy, the UK, Japan, Korea, and China all involved in significant ODR efforts.  erhaps the most significant “take away” from the conference will be the effort to use the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution as a vehicle for input to the European Union ODR statute, and to the UNCITRAL ODR standards discussions.

Prague ODR Forum Next Week

The ODR Forum is coming up next week in Prague, and it appears that there will be a lot of e-commerce activity surrounding the Forum this year.  Last Friday (June 15) the U.S. State Department held a follow on meeting to discuss the developments at the recent New York meeting of the UNCITRAL ODR Working Group, and it appears that at least one of the U.S. government participants from those meetings will be in Prague.  The level of activity is invigorating, with legislation or project development at five levels:  discrete commercial sites (e.g., eBay), individual countries (e.g., Spain and Italy), groups of countries operating within established political structures (e.g., the European Union), groups of countries operating in concert outside of an over-riding political structure (e.g., the Latin American initiative coming from Buenos Aires), and the UNCITRAL project driven on the Track I level by the UN.  Also at the Forum will be the most recent attempt to bridge the divide between e-commerce and the rest of the ADR world – Modria.com.