Early on at the U.S. Social Forum, I was struck by the disjuncture between the huge ambition of the assembly and the limitations of the conference's agenda and slate of decentralized workshops. In their planning statement for the social forum, organizers declared an intention to respond to "a state of national and global emergency" by defining "a direction for what will be the great project of our generation." Needless to say, that's a big task for any convention.