A couple of years ago, I attended the Second (2005) Conference on Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice at Standford University. Of all the conferences I’ve been to in the last few years, this was the most academic of them all - and I loved it. I really enjoyed the mix of academic papers and discussions about real world projects, with folks who I’ve know for years and others I’d long been hoping to meet.
This year, through some kind of clerical mistake, I was asked to serve on the program committee for the 3rd Conference on Online Deliberation.
Sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and UC Berkeley School of Information, University of California (Berkeley, California, USA)
June 26 - 29, 2008
It has been twenty-one years since the DIAC Symposium for exploring the Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing was first convened in Seattle.
Now, in the early days of the 21st century humankind faces challenges of even greater proportions than those perceived in 1987. The ability of people around the world to discuss, make decisions, and take action collaboratively is critical to addressing these challenges. Unfortunately, this fact is rarely acknowledged or promoted by decision-makers.
Researchers, scholars, activists, advocates, artists, educators, technologists, designers, students, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, journalists and citizens are rising to these challenges in many ways, including the development of new communication technologies that build on the opportunities afforded by the Internet and other new (as well as old) media.
DIAC-2008 combines CPSR’s 11th DIAC symposium with the third Conference on Online Deliberation. The joint conference is intended to provide a platform and a forum for highlighting socio-technological opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls in the area of community and civic action.
In addition to the wide range of planned events there will be extensive opportunities for collegial discussion at the conference. Register now for an innovative and compelling exploration of the future of meaningful social participation. We have kept registration fees low to encourage wide attendance.
Scott Aiken’s one of the founders of E-Democracy.Org (with Mick Souder, Steven Clift, and Scott Fritchie) reports some exciting news from his Michigan 2.0 blog:
E-Democracy & Michigan
… the Board at the Birmingham Community House agreed to invest in a partnership with e-democracy.org to develop an Online Issues Forum for Birmingham / Bloomfield Hills. The Online Issues Forum is like an electronic town hall in a local community that allows citizens to engage in a civil discourse about relevant local issues with stake-holders in government, the school board, the library board, in the media, and others. This is an exciting development and I’m eager to dig in and help the project evolve over the next year.
Welcome Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, we look forward to working with you.
E-Democracy.Org is leading the online outreach for the Minnesota Minute effort of the Bell Museum.
As a complement to public service ads that will run on television, the Bell Museum invites you to submit your own Minnesota Minute (and become eligible for a prize). Visit minnesotaminute.org today.
If you find yourself standing out in nature or perhaps in your yard, why not do your own short video with your mobile phone or digital camera? If you have a Camcorder and know how to edit video, go on right ahead.
** Announcing the My Minnesota Minute Video Contest! **
To celebrate Minnesota’s 150th Birthday the Bell Museum is sponsoring a video contest open to everyone.
Tell us how the natural world around you is changing. Share your ideas for protecting our environment and preserving our natural world. Or just tell us why a natural area means so much to you. Keep your Minnesota Minute video short (30 seconds is great, under 5 minutes required) and upload it to YouTube now. Tag it with “MyMinnesotaMinute”.
Beginning on Earth Day (April 22, 2008) weekly prizes will be awarded through the end of May.
To see samples of other My Minnesota Minutes, visit:
This contest is part of a Web and TV event which celebrates Minnesotans who are working today to protect our natural world for tomorrow.
The project is hosted by the Bell Museum of Natural History, University of Minnesota. It is sponsored by Blandin Foundation with outreach support from E-Democracy.Org.
P.S. Would you like to help with online outreach? From April 22nd - May 31st, we are contracting with a couple “one hour a day” paid outreach helpers. Online organizing experience required. For more information e-mail:
These video statements were collected by St. Paul E-Democracy volunteers, at the Rondo Community Outreach Library, as part of their State of the City collaboration with the Mayor’s office.
An online Issues Forum is about more than the technology necessary to host an online discussion. A successful E-Democracy.Org Issues Forum is based upon local volunteers working in their community to connect their online discussion with existing processes for public participation and policy making.
Recently, the volunteers of St. Paul E-Democracy (myself included) demonstrated how a local Issues Forum can be part of a larger effort to create discussion in a community.
St. Paul E-Democracy volunteers partnered with the Mayor’s office to combine an online discussion with a series of face to face “town hall” meetings where members of the community were able to raise their concerns and publicly discuss the “state of the city.”
Mayor Chris Coleman invited participants of the St. Paul Issues Forum to raise questions and discuss the State of the City in the forum as part of a broader effort to engage the public. Later, Mayor Coleman recorded video responses to questions and issues submitted via the forum.
Our work on our “Online Rural Voices” initiative is underway. Phase one, is identifying community blogs, citizen journalism projects, and other online citizen media projects in Greater Minnesota.
If you live in Greater Minnesota, we invite you to fill out our SHORT SURVEY. We’re using this survey to gather some data about how people in Greater Minnesota use the internet to share news and information with others in their local community.
See (and add to) the list of projects that we’ve identified, so far.
On the topic of community blogs, a national conference on Placeblogging is coming to the Twin Cities this summer.
This conference is targeted at active citizen journalists and placebloggers interested in sharing best practices. Registration from the conference is $139, but stipends are available.
Interview with Steven Clift on Building Town Halls Online
2 April 2008, 11:00 AM EDT
Participation in public life, in local democracy and civic affairs, is in a serious decline. From time pressures experienced by two income families to a growing cynicism about government and politics, local communities face a fundamental threat to their ability to meet public challenges via democratic processes and participation.
Steven Clift has succeeded at creating the equivalent of local town halls for the online world. Multiple contemporary barriers impede participation in politics and the citizen sector, resulting in feelings ranging from confusion to powerlessness to distrust. E-Democracy.Org achieves the impact of community meetings more conveniently, less expensively, and by reaching more people.
Over the last couple months, I’ve had the privilege to participate in an independent online exchange hosted by OpenDemocracy.Net with the goal of assisting the UK Ministry of Justice with plans for a large scale online engagement. Whether they engage thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even top a million people, the fact that a government is thinking about “engagement” rather than the typical one-way informing people online is quite significant.
Part of what I contributed was an outline for a potential online Minnesota town hall event designed to build consensus (a very very difficult thing to do in any medium). Someone challenged me to come up with an outline that might use this medium to bring people with differing views together. If you’ve experienced our Issues Forums, you know that that is completely counter to how people naturally use the Internet in political discussions. Almost all posts come from someone with a different take, a nuanced fork, or someone providing additional information - but rarely does the online environment measure substantial agreement (other than sensational online polls on some sites) based on dialogue. Anyway, here is the Minnesota Listens idea that I first posted to the DoWire Consult online group for feedback - add your own here:
So let’s imagine a two week online event on what Minnesota should do about climate change (or some other issue or a set of top themes at our 150th anniversary as a state) …
Minnesota Listens
A two week online exchange among Minnesotans about our future.
Topic and Panel Development - 3 Months Preparation
- Draft short discussion point documents
- Gather short videos, photographs and other mixed media to create contextual starting point that is screen readable
- Secure two major keynote speakers - one to open the event, one to close
- Craft small set of expert panels for participant Q and A and high quality debate
Pre-Event Promotion - Over 2 Months
- Attract 1000-2000 registered participants prior to the event
- Seek participation to better ensure diverse representation - geographically, politically, ethnically, gender, age
- Recruit a mix of “average citizens,” interest groups, community leaders, and elected officials
- Pre-event interest/opinion survey
Open Online Event
Prime online event participants with e-mail newsletters/updates before and daily through the event.
W-Th - Event Opening
- Keynote #1
- Panel #1
F-Sa-Su-M - “Home Room” Hello
- Start two-way interactivity in small private discussion spaces of 15-20 members
- Develop a format where everyone says hello (posts something) in this “safe” environment
- Tell as story about X - topically related
- Assign participants in stratified manner based demographics to create a diverse mix
Tu-W-Th - Major Thematic Debates
- Public, moderated and facilitated
- Hire writers to produce daily summaries sent to all participants via e-mail
- Produce issues summary and questions from debate for deliberation in the small groups
F-Sa-Su-M - “Home Room” Small Group Deliberation
- Discuss issues summary questions as a group
- Answer preliminary survey questions individually with report to group
- Require group to development and report various agreements via structured form aggregated across all small groups
- Allow path for “agree to disagree” or minority position reports
- Writer/staff rapidly synthesize small group results and report to all participants
Note: Additional public or private group discussions could also be designed such as a discussion among local elected officials, etc. A focus on the time required for participation is essential.
Tu-W - Closing and Public Poll
- Final synthesis report release on website, to all participants via e-mail, media promotion
- Final Keynote
- Allow broader public to rate/rank/vote on produced recommendations for X weeks after the main online event closes
This is my rough cut at how one might craft a **well-funded** high e-touch online event/consultation with the goal of moving the results beyond statements of difference or a basic online survey based just on expert scoping of the issues.
What would you do differently? What do you like about the format?
Would this be worth the $250,000 or $500,000 or $50,000 it might cost to produce this?
Or better yet, share your outline for the online event/consultation you’d like to see.
E-Democracy.Org Program Director, Tim Erickson (that’s me), is the lunch time speaker at a symposia in Columbus, Ohio today. We’ve received late notice that the symposia will be streamed live over the internet.
The Las Vegas Issues Forum is being managed by Bob Wallace and Julie Olague, who became the first people to launch a local Issues Forum in their own community, using our “Start-A-Forum” template.
In its first few weeks, the Las Vegas forum has been focused on issues such as:
(NOTE: This position has been filled. - posted April 16, 2008)
Last week, E-Democracy.Org’s Board approved an extended consulting contract with Tim Erickson to serve as our paid Program Director and to coordinate our grant funded Rural Voices and Neighborhood Forum projects. While Tim has been paid for small projects in the past, this is a huge and exciting step in our transition from all-volunteer to volunteer-based initiative with a small staff. This will enable us to better support an increasing number of communities and volunteers.
Stay tuned for a future Neighborhood Forum project outreach posting (anyone out there know someone who speaks Somali or Oromo who is interested in online communities?). Here is our posting for a contract position designed to help us improve the support we provide to the thousands of participants across our now eleven community Issues Forum network.
HELP WANTED: Issues Forum Support
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
E-Democracy.Org is looking for someone interested in helping us build the online infrastructure for democracy in the digital age.
E-Democracy.Org is a locally based organization that is internationally recognized leader in the field of online democracy. We
work with volunteers across the country and around the world to set up vibrant online spaces where community members, elected officials, and local journalists share ideas and information. We are currently in the midst of a transition from being an all-volunteer organization to hiring staff and contractors to help launch and support new e- democracy projects in communities around the world.
We are looking for someone with a combination of community organizing and technology skills to serve as a part-time contractor, providing technical and organizational support to our issues forums participants and network of volunteers.
Hours and reporting: 20+ hours per week, for three months, with the potential for an indefinite extension. Will report to E-Democracy.Org Program Director, Tim Erickson. Hours and working location are flexible.
Compensation: $15-20 per hour depending on qualifications and experience
Qualifications: A general comfort and ability to work with computers and the internet, an ability to troubleshoot technical issues on your own and problem solve user issues, excellent writing skills, and good people skills. This position would include, but is not limited to:
1) User Support
a - providing online support to Issues Forum participants
with basic questions, such as: how to login, how to
create or update a personal profile, how to post
a message, or how to change email settings.
b - updating our support FAQ and creating new online
resources, screencasts, or video tutorials to help
participants better navigate our site.
2) Project Support
a - helping set up new forums, including working with
volunteers to update their home page and customize
their forum charter.
b - scheduling and organizing online training sessions
for forum managers and project volunteers.
c - monitoring Issues Forums and providing
support as needed/assigned.
d - editing and improving our “start-a-forum” template
and providing support to volunteers as they use
the “start-a-forum” template to launch an Issues
Forum in their own community. pages.e-democracy.org/Start_A_Forum
This is the project blog for E-Democracy.Org. We're moving fast and furious, so hang on for the ride. Current contributors include Steven Clift, Board Chair and Tim Erickson, Forum Development Director. Steven Clift also blogs on e-democracy issues in general at DoWire.Org.
