It was a huge privilege to meet a group of activists, theoreticians and business sector representatives for the two day seminar »Civil society (organisations): Substance or substitute«which took place in Ljubljana in November 2012, where we took some time to discuss the role of civil society nowadays. The majority of us came from the non-academic sphere focused dominantly on civil society issues. Many of us have spent a big portion of our lives working within the civil society sector. As much as we are part of it, and as much as we can be proud of the citizens achievements throghout the years, we are still aware of numerous weak points and wrongdoings in the civil society field.