We're in perfect agreement that a federation is the long term goal here. That's what I meant by "union." The devil will be in the (financial and logistic) details!
Yes on south-south as a thing of beauty. I'm seeing some of that already from my computer in NYC. Since I live in the north, though, I cannot formally suggest what my friends in the south should or should not do at the international level. I know that many of them benefit from and value south-north collabs, for example.
My hope though is that we can shape venues for all orgs to work together as peers, and personally, to make myself useful when needed. I like Roopika Risam's take on this, which is to foster venues of collaborations were local/regional communities decide what counts as a valuable intervention according to their own contexts, and we come together to share our work, to find out which collaborations are possible and to learn from one another. This would be the alternative to a unitary (read universal) system for vetting our programs.
The million dollar question is whether ADHO can become the place where these things can happen, and how! A Bandung for DH would be counter-productive and more difficult to pull off, imho. Wouldn't be my place to help such a group happen either! So for now, I must dedicate my working years and energy to working with one foot firmly in ADHO, and the south-north that implies.
congratulations for a very useful and interesting work!
I would be also interesting to know more about ADHO's expansion plans (I refer to your sentence "how we can move forward organizationally at the global level, through and around ADHO").
Although ADHO's efforts (like this group) should be recognized and encouraged, I think we should remember that ADHO is not a democratic organization with elected members, etc. as most of DH organizations in the world (including members of ADHO...). It is still a strange hybrid between an invitation-based Private Club and a corporate consortium. As I said in various occasions I would much prefer to see a "federation of diverse associations", instead of applying the "unity in diversity" model. That's why I'm suspicious of any "global leadership".
But above all, what I think it would be really strategic is to support and promote South-South dialogue. I'd like to remember here the observations of Octavio Kulesz, author of an important survey of digital publishing in developing countries:
"Likewise, the electronic solutions that certain countries of the South have implemented to overcome their problems of content distribution can also serve as a model for others, thus facilitating South–South knowledge and technology transfer. (...) Sooner or later, these countries will have to ask themselves what kind of digital publishing highways they must build and they will be faced with two very different options: a) financing the installation of platforms designed in the North; b) investing according to the concrete needs, expectations and potentialities of local authors, readers and entrepreneurs. Whatever the decision of each country may be, the long term impact will be immense."
I think that similar questions can be applied to the DH world.