E-Democracy.Org – Project Blog

Here is a video of most of my presentation at the Networked Neighbourhoods event in London the other month. I start on the third minute. Unfortunately my FlipCam filled up so the rest of the even. Also see the blog recaps by Networked Neighbourhoods, and Kevin Harris. This was part of my UK trip in July.

Also, speaking of the UK, Networked Neighbourhoods is having an unconference on September 25th and CityCamp London is October 8-10. E-Democracy.org is a big supporter of CityCamp and host the ongoing online exchange. We invite those attending the London neighbourhoods online event to join their international peers on the similar Locals Online exchange.

Neighbors Online Presentation from E-Democracy.org on Vimeo.

Below are the slides from the Activate Conference which I adapted for the presentation above. Sorry about the abrupt end to the video. Want more? How about a 90 minute webinar reviewing the field? After I concluded with comments on our Inclusive Social Media efforts and Neighbors Online stats, the event went into discussion mode. It was a great event. Thank you Kevin and Hugh for making it happen.

Editors Note: This Inclusive Social Media update is from Julia Opoti (pictured on right), our Community Outreach and Information Leader focused on Cedar Riverside. In related news, we’ve been experimenting with Facebook advertising and now in addition to the 275 full forum members we now have close to 750 followers on Facebook (many younger residents).

By Julia Opoti

When I first started as an outreach coordinator for e-democracy, I thought that my work was cut out for me. After all, I had been writing about the Cedar-Riverside community, particularly its large Somali population, for several years. It was not long before I realized that I would have to re-think my strategy. However, not all my efforts have been in vain. I will share here what I have found and over the next several months I will share how I navigate these challenges.

Over the last several months, I have met with community activists, health care advocates, university employees, students, and residents. I walked from store to store discovering a mall I did not know existed. I even attended neighborhood meetings, neighborhood safety meetings and community events. I spent time at the Brian Coyle Center where I got further acquainted with community organizers. Every Tuesday, I would buy my vegetables from the small farmers’ market These opportunities allowed me an almost-insider’s look into the community.

For the small business I quickly learned that many of the owners did not have an online presence neither did they have emails. In some instances, the store owners and their employees did not speak English making communication a challenge.

Still, I gathered emails where I could, but haven’t seen an increase in member’s posting new content or responding to forum topics. However, a quick glance at forum stats show that readership is steadily increasing. I also found that many of the community organizers are already registered on the forum, but only lurk. I sought to know why.

At an informal meeting with several Somali women I learned that the negative press and abrasive online comments on websites such as the Star Tribune newspaper have resulted in a complete distrust of non-Somali websites. One woman said that as a community organizer, her daily battles are constant, and she did not have the energy to constantly “defend her community.” While e-democracy forums are facilitated, and users are required to use their real names protecting members from such diatribe, these women are still hesitant to participate.

What about softer, cultural issues like explaining Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting? Again, they spoke about online attack fatigue. As I look ahead to future postings and building trust it will be important to include topics that do not rile up controversy such as profiles of businesses and people in the community; and resources.

E-Democracy is a unique position. Unlike many organizations the forum doesn’t want anything from the community. Not in the literal sense anyway. Of course, for the vibrancy and the posterity of the forum, participation is key. A key factor is making sure that people understand the the forums diversity is only as rich as its member participation.

When Brian Noy posted on the forum about the low sales in the Brian Coyle Center’s farmers’ market, I met with him to see how he could best promote it. He was creative in his postings by featuring a weekly vegetarian recipe. However, the reality was that the people who needed to see it most were not accessing it. His best approach, it turned out, was speaking to community organizers housed at the Brian Coyle Center that I introduced him to that day who could in turn communicate to their different constituencies.

As I continue with my outreach efforts I am keen on developing strategies that would allow the community to trust this particular forum. For a community that is very oral with most information relayed through word of mouth and community gatherings; how does e-democracy fit in? For literate Somalis digital engagement is actually not an issue as there several popular forums (Hirraan, Somalia Online, Somali Life, SomaliNet) and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. However, how do we engage them in a wider issues forum like the e-democracy one? Considering digital inclusion, how does e-democracy make a case for communities with little or no access to the Internet?

PS. There are other communities of color, like immigrants of Oromo, Ethiopian, Eriterian, Korean and Mexican descent, in the Cedar Riverside Neighborhood that I will be profiling over the course of the month.

Kids at National Night Out at Riverside Plaza. E-Democracy.org recruited 15 new forum members that evening using paper sign-up sheets.

We’ve created a new section on our site with links to all of the print materials we are generating in our Inclusive Social Media effort promoting neighbor Issues Forum for all.

Here is the text of that page as of today.

• 1. General Brochure – Meet Your Neighbors Online!
  • Adapt this two-page trifold brochure to suit your local forum and distribute copies at community events to raise awareness and grow your forum. (Publisher file)

• 2. Minneapolis-St. Paul Multi-forum General Poster – Join your neighbors to discuss local issues, exchange information, build community, and simply be neighborly.
  • Post these to bulletin boards at local businesses and public venues throughout the neighborhood. The simple tear-off URL serves as a “take away” to remind people to look up your forum when they get home. (Editable version at Google Docs)

• 3. Customizable Poster (Power Point Template)
  • Tailor this poster to your forum and post to bulletin board in your neighborhood. Be sure to update the tear-off URL!

• 4. General Flyer – Two per page – Multi-forum flyer to support recruitment across neighborhoods.
  • Adapt this two-up flier to suit your local forum and distribute copies at community events to raise awareness and grow your forum. (Editable version at Google Docs)

• 5. Sign-up sheets à la carte
  • We’ve used a variety of these tailored to specific forums such as Frogtown and Cedar-Riverside, as well as put together these “multi-forum” sign up sheets to support recruitment across neighborhoods.
  • To successfully add these new members after your outreach efforts promptly scan (or to speed uploading enter the data into a spreadsheet yourself with at least first name, last name, and e-mail in their own columns – keep your forms handy because some will bounce) and e-mail to: OR fax to: +1-612-605-0137
  • While Forum Managers may invite people via the website, we prefer to upload 5 names from paper sign-ups for you. When a Forum Manager does it themselves, people must click on a link in their e-mail to verify – which most people miss. Behind the scenes, our technical support team can upload people without verification. New members only need to set a password on the web if they want to post via the web.
  • Tip: Use a black pen (no soft point without a soft tip) bold stroke and definitely read the e-mail address back to confirm. Double-checking the handwriting can improve your success rate by as much as 30%!
  • Minneapolis Neighbor Forums Sign-up (MS Word) (PDF)
  • St. Paul Neighbor Forums Sign-up (MS Word) (PDF)

• 6. Customizable Single Forum Sign Up Template – MS Word – US Version (MS Word A4 – UK/NZ Version)
  • Tailor these to suit your needs to help you collect names and e-mail addresses at neighborhood venues and events.
  • See submission instructions above. We will pay the cost to do manual data entry for any forum in our network. In-person outreach where you get people to sign-up right then and there is the most effective way to grow participation in a local forum. We want to make it as easy as possible.

The other day I had the privilege of participating in a debate on BBC Radio 4′s You and Your’s program about anonymity in online commenting. Have a listen.

At the Guardian’s Active conference I asked, why major online news sites are so content with empowering the angriest people in society with the design of their online news commenting systems. I am personally most interested in the local level where I see the mainstream media with online news commenting essentially promoting division and discord by intent online in local communities. They are not reflecting a conflicted society, they are giving mega phones to the 1% on the extremes and allowing the other 98% of us to be driven away. At some point I hope media sites begin to survey their communities on the damage to their own reputation for poor stewardship of online interactivity. Our own experience is that simply promoting real names as the default (and I recommend pre-moderating those unwilling or unable to stand behind their words with their real name) deals with 80% of the incivility problem.

While I certainly oppose government requirements that people must use their real names online, I strongly encourage democratically spirited organizations to promote real names because it gives people far more power and influence not to mention making online spaces more attractive with greater civility. Facebook is eating the interactive lunch of online news sites stuck in the 20th Century of “no one knows you are a dog” online. That said, I don’t care if World of Warcraft uses aliases or real names (link to Guardian article that tipped off the BBC).

Thanks to the folks at The Guardian and their Activate 2010 conference I’ll be in the UK next week.

The “official” Twitter hashtag I’ll use for updates during the week is #edemuk – I’ll use this for logistics and announce any spontaneous opportunities to connect.

My big message all week will be Local Matters, Civility Matters, Inclusion Matters. In terms of “what’s new” and exciting since my last UK visit are the emerging digital inclusion lessons from our Inclusive Social Media efforts in lower income, high immigrant neighborhoods. If you can’t make any of the event, watch my recent webinar.

• June 29-30 – Bristol – Straight from the airport to the Knowle West Media Centre, then later a pub gathering at 8 p.m. at Llandoger Trow with Brislington and Greater Bedminister participants from the Neighbourhood Issues Forums that we host in Bristol. Everyone welcome. On June 30, Stephen Hilton with Connecting Bristol is hosting a discussion on digital inclusion and e-democracy. Contact Stephen for details.

• July 1 – London – Activate Conference – Watch the video preview of my keynote speech. Other speakers include Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Tom Steinberg with mySociety, Clay Shirky, Beth Noveck with the White House, and many more. My job, as described so well recently by a BP official, is to tell the story of how we “small people” are using the Internet to empower ourselves.

• July 2 – London – Community Organising : What contribution local online? – Please register now for this free event organized by our friends with London Networked Neighbourhoods runs from 3 to 5 p.m., followed by a pub gathering at The Albert, 52 Victoria Street. If you can’t make the event, I invite all my e-democracy friends to join us there.

• July 3 – London – E-Democracy.org UK Meeting – At 10 a.m. on Saturday, our UK-based Board Members Mary Reid and Edward Andersson invite any of our local Issues Forum leaders and volunteers (potential volunteers welcome too!) to join us near Kings Cross. Contact us for the full details. (Mary Reid is new Board Chair of E-Democracy.org, blog announcement pending.) No plans as of yet for Saturday evening, but I hope to connect with some of our Newham forum friends.

Update: Drafting guide from here.

I had the honor of speaking to the national League of Women Voters conference in Atlanta last week. It was a great crowd.

In the coming two months we will be developing the first draft of the Sunshine 2.0 guide for local Leagues (and anyone really including governments themselves) to evaluate their online “sunshiny-ness.” In addition to my prior blog post, these slides help illustrate some of my thinking going into this work. As I prepared these slides, I wondered if those who use terms like “Government 2.0″ see that reality in these slides or if the real transparency and interactivity is still too challenging to happen widely in most communities. Your thoughts?

Our survey remains open for drafting input.

Key to the League’s approach is working with local governments to help them score as high as possible for the benefit of their community. So, rather than beat governments over the head with poor grades from out of the blue, the guide will suggest key measures or indicators to look for online or in policies. Imagine a League volunteer sitting down with a government communicator or webmaster for a thoughtful exchange. Some missing democracy items be “fixable” in a day by interested local governments and others will likely require them to put pressure on their vendors to upgrade them to the democratic standard or for new features to be installed. We certainly hope to hear from more governments on how they would like to be “judged” so the Sunshine 2.0 standard connects to reality in the years to come.

As the work progresses, we encourage you to comment on the blog and watch this space or Twitter for updates or my broader @democracy Twitter account.  Sign-up for blog e-mail updates on the left so you don’t miss a beat.

Special Invite – Note the Pew Internet and American Life report author special Q and A discussion on the Locals Online community of practice.

According to the just released Neighbors Online report from Pew Internet and American Life, 27% of American adult Internet users (or 22% of adults overall) use “digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.”

This is an amazing number and a great starting point.

Today, we finally have baseline for the growing neighbors online movement. The other week we hosted a webinar on how  to use technology for community building. This week we have some real numbers to help us develop strategies to broadly serve and connect as many people as possible not just those who easily show up – because if we don’t we will soon be talking about how we red-lined neighborhoods out of the community and democracy building opportunity of a generation.

In summary, to reach the 27% of Internet users engaging locally online:

• 14% read a blog dealing with community issues at least once in the last year (while the frequency of visits wasn’t measured in this survey, 1/3 of general blog readers check blogs each day)
• 13% exchanged emails with neighbors about community issues (think informal “to:” “cc:”)
• 7% say they belong to a community e-mail list (this intensive and typically daily experience is the cornerstone of E-Democracy.org Neighbors Issues Forums experience) – this equates to about 10 million American adults connected most days with their neighbors online in community life!
• 6% communicated with neighbors by text messaging on cell phones
• 5% joined a social network site group connected to community issues (like Ning and Facebook)
• 3% followed neighbors using Twitter (note the embryonic trend of geo “hashtags” like #nempls – we feed it too)

Aaron Smith, the report author, in a private exchange noted to me that 2/3 of respondents only did one of these items. This bolsters my view that the “there there” very local spaces online is almost a natural monopoly – so making a unified online space available via multiple technologies is essential (we use e-mail, web, web feed, Facebook, and Twitter in an interconnected way for example) to reach more people.

Update: Aaron provided Locals Online with a special cross-tab on the “joiners” which is quite interesting. Access from here. Here is one tidbit: 74% of those who talk digitally with their neighbors (77% of e-list members) have talked face-to-face about community issues with their neighbors compared to 46% overall

The Inclusion Challenge

It has been our experience that the vast majority of “organic” local online places started by passionate volunteers (some placeblogs are quasi-commercial, but outside of such blogs, this is not an adjunct of journalism) serve middle and upper income communities – urban homeowners. The people who know about neighbors forums – LOVE THEM – based on the feedback we’ve received on our forums (including the one I host) and the all the new volunteers emerging to serve the 10+ new communities (often jealous of what they see just next door to them).

First some good news focusing mostly on 7% on neighborhood e-mail lists (although we do see local social networks, blogs, etc. all blending together at some point anyway):

• Whites and Blacks participate equally at 8% of Internet users
• Urban participation  is 10% and suburban isn’t far behind at 7%
• Women participate strongly at 9% in fact, we could say we need more men who are only 5% (this is not the case with political interaction online where white men dominate)
• With the community blog numbers, both young adults (16%) and African-Americans (18%) Internet users have read a blog with community issues at least once in the last year compared to 14% overall.
• Update – Some further analysis specially provided by Pew on the 22% of all adults who use “digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.”:

Household income comparison – percentage within each group who “talk digitally with neighbors”:

Among all adults
Total: 22%
Less than $30,000: 12%
$30,000-$49,999: 20%
$50,000-$74,999: 26%
$75,000+: 39%

Among internet users
Total: 29%
Less than $30,000: 19%
$30,000-$49,999: 26%
$50,000-$74,999: 29%
$75,000+:41%

We launched our Inclusive Social Media effort with Ford Foundation and St. Paul Foundation support to develop inclusive Neighbors Issues Forums in lower income, high immigrant neighborhoods – or what we felt are areas that are completely missing out from the community building power of local online engagement. We see the Internet as the most cost-effective “ice breaker” opportunity out there that can create new bridges and sustained bonds. With intervention and resources for real outreach and inclusion, neighbors online will do far more than just reflect existing social capital.

So now we have numbers on the digital participation divide we must close – among Internet users (not just the general population, so we are talking connected people):

• Only 2% of those with household incomes under $30,000 are on a neighborhood e-mail list, still only 3% up to $49,000 while between $50-75,000 it is 7% and over $75,000 it is a whopping 15%
• Only 3% of Hispanics (both English and Spanish Speaking) are on a neighborhood e-mail list – while they don’t measure Asians or immigrants specifically, our guess is that the percent would be even lower – our efforts target the highly East African Cedar Riverside neighborhood and the plurality ~40% Southeast Asian (Hmong) with African-American (20%) and White (20%) Frogtown neighborhood)
• Only 2% of rural residents belong to a neighborhood e-mail list (while terminology may have been a factor here, we’ve learned a lot from our Rural Voices effort to launch 4 community forums in rural communities and would like the opportunity to invest more in this area – in fact we’ve recently submitted small grant proposals to bring the majority Native American and also lower income Cass Lake Leech Lake forum into our Inclusive Social Media effort which will put a simple one hour a day Community Outreach and Information Leader on the ground)

Next Steps?

Here are some rough thoughts that we add to over time:

1. Inclusion Matters – As an organization, E-Democracy.org needs to focus on bring these powerful online community building opportunities to all – especially the people and communities being left behind. We need more partners and funders to make this happen in the next phase of our Inclusive Social Media effort in 2011 and beyond. Interested in helping? Contact us. In the near term, we need to find resources to work with the vibrant Powderhorn Park Neighbors Forum to build on their expressed interest in recruiting more Latino participation. They have had some bi-lingual postings, but the community in looking for ways to build more connections as they confront in part a summer of youth/gang related violence.
2. We Need a Good Directory Look-up – Most people don’t know about online community spaces (I think). If they did far more would join. We need to create a technology/format agnostic directory with geographic and map based look-ups for these two-way local online communities. We need to build on the work of Placeblogger and the UK-based GroupsNearYou site which isn’t actively being developed.
3. Neighbors Online Week – With a good directory, we can then promote such sites nationally/globally. I want the President of the United States to be able to say (like the White House did with the launch of Serve.Gov), go to X site, connect with your neighbors – ACROSS the political spectrum – and build your community.
4. Move the Field – OK, so while we’d love to have many more people start a forum with us, most of you will do your own thing. It is human nature. As part of our inclusion-oriented Participation 3.0 initiative we’ve convened dozens of local “hosts” for peer to peer exchange on Locals Online. Let’s make it hundreds, share effective practices and lessons, and inspire thousands of new “hosts” to start or effective grow local online spaces that work. Based on the Pew numbers, we estimate that there could be 30,000 neighborhood e-mails list hosts for example. They are almost all working in isolation. Time to connect!
5. Neighbor.be Open Source? – I think there is a need to connect nearest neighbors online and wonder what we could do collaboratively with interested developers.

Closing Remarks

If the Internet was first about going to the world, then connecting privately with friends and family via social networking, the revolution is finally coming home to everyday public and community life. We don’t want the Internet to replace a face-to-face conversation over the back fence, we want it to make those real connections among neighbors possible for everyone in a busy modern era where getting to know your neighbors is extremely difficult. We don’t want the hyped location-based mobile technology to be viewed as the way to connect with your existing friends because you are surrounded by uninteresting strangers. We’d rather use technology to have fewer strangers starting from where you live everyday. In short, meeting your neighbors online might just be the best opportunity to connect a nation in public life and counter those intent on pulling us a apart with online partisanship and political diatribe masked as online interaction.

Special Invite – Join the Pew Internet and American Life report author in a special Q and A discussion on the Locals Online community of practice now!

UPDATE – Coverage and Discussion Round the Internet

• Jeffery Smith – CivSource
• Marisa Trevino – Latina Lista
• Kevin Harris – Networked Neighbourhoods (UK)
• Leonard Witt – Public Journalism Network
• ReadWriteWeb – Led to the most Tweeting about it …
• Chicago Sun Times
• Next American City

Fun to watch “neighbors online” tweeted around the web. Hmmm. PewInternet should adopt a hashtag with the release of each new report.

I had the honor of being a “virtual” guest of Grassroots Grantmakers yesterday.

Listen and watch the presentation. Or click through the slides-only further below. The audio alone is available in MP3 format (~90 minutes).

If you are involved in local community building online or want to use these approaches and tools in your neighborhood, be sure to join your peers on our new Locals Online community of practice.

Click the word “Vimeo” to watch a larger version or the four arrows icon to go full screen.

And the slides without audio:

High Tech Meets High Touch: Using New Technology for Community Building (Webinar)
Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Grassroots grantmaking is high-touch work in an increasing high-tech world.  We have seen what happens when citizen leaders get together in the same room for peer learning or dialogue on issues.  What new possibilities are opening up to further connect residents within and across neighborhoods using new technology? What is happening under the radar today and how can we make it more inclusive and benefit all communities?

Join us to talk with Steven Clift, Executive Director of E-Democracy.org, the cutting-edge national organization working on this question.  For some background now, see: http://e-democracy.org/inclusion and http://stevenclift.com.

Update: Drafting guide from here.

Please offer your comments on the blog or via our short survey.

The other week, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released an excellent report on Government Online. When I left Minnesota state government in 1997 after launching our main portal in 1995, I left because the sense I got was a clear interest in “services first, democracy later.” Like many years later. My heart is in democracy and community building, not collecting taxes online or automating service delivery.

So I did a victory dance when when “48% of internet users have looked for information about a public policy or issue online with their local, state or federal government” topped  Pew Internet’s survey list, just above “46% have looked up what services a government agency provides.”

It turns out that Americans are demanding both services and democracy online. In fact, according the study, 87% of American feel it is very or somewhat important for a government agency to “provide general information to the public on its website” and 85% believe government should “allow people to contact agency official through the website.” Wow. Americans don’t normally agree that much.

Getting informed and having a say on public issues is not what most government websites give publicity to today. It is still a services first world that treats citizens as customers. This is particularly true at the local level where city council and school board decision-making information and data related to transparency and accountability are often more difficult to find than needles in the haystack. Agendas and minutes can usually be found, but not always in a timely manner and often missing are the key public documents and handouts used by our elected officials (some model governments makes everything available systematically). While many provide information on their democratic processes, it is not what it could or should be if you believe in the public as participants and with government “of and by” not just “for” the people.

So what should it be? What do we as citizen ask of our governments online?

There are many fresh reports on what a government could do with so-called social media, but what is actually so important that we should grade our governments on their activities online?

To that end, E-Democracy.org is working with the national League of Women Voters to assist them in framing a new guide in their Openness in Government series tentatively titled Sunshine 2.0. The guide will be geared toward use by local League chapters in evaluating and starting a local conversation on local online support for democracy.

My personal sense (as an “expert”) is that we need to start somewhere. Finger in the wind alert.

That means we need to figure out what to measure and to try to give some ranking to what is most important. I’ll be taking the first cut at a draft. While we could identify hundreds of measures to judge the role of our local governments, civic organizations, and media online with their support for online transparency, participation, and collaboration (yes, the pillars in the Federal Open Government Directive), you have to start somewhere. We also need to be open to more rigorous standards over time. Just as students must improve with each year, so must the institutions of democracy.

So, to get the conversation started (please comment via the blog, our short survey, on the CityCamp Exchange, or on GovLoop), here are some proposed “indicator” measures that should separate the wheat from the chafe. There might be 100 measures, but I’d like to start with measures that show increasing levels of attention to creating important opportunities for effective and meaningful public participation.

Rough list of ten “indicator” digital sunshine features to quickly determine if your local government is a leader.

1. Government has a simple e-mail newsletter (and/or blog) with regular updates about “what’s new” on the website and other key news. (Bonus: Updates also provided via Twitter or a Facebook page.)

2. Government provides all elected officials a government e-mail address and lists them publicly. (Bonus: Requires its use for all public business.)

3. Government has a uniform calendar of all public meetings and provides all meeting agendas online. (Bonus: Agendas include links to all meeting documents and are placed online as soon as they are distributed to public body members.)

4. Most public meetings are webcast live in video or audio and available on-demand for at least one year. (Bonus: All public meetings are digitally recorded and placed online.)

5. There is an easy to understand “get involved” or democracy section available from the home page. It explains the governing process, how to participate, and how to contact/connect with elected officials if you seek to change how something works (versus channeling a service question or complaint to the right department.)

6. Government site provides personalized e-mail alerts of other notices on “what’s new” across their site. (This is normally the number one tool I recommend for government to provide the public “timely access” to government information when they can still act on it.)

7. Each elected official has their own section on the website for them to use in governance to communicate with their constituents that they (the official) can edit/have easily updated. (Bonus: The government provides an e-mail announcement list for each elected official to use and/or a blog with an e-mail notice option.)

8. The government links to community sites including local media sites, civic organizations, local online forums/blogs, etc. (Bonus: The government has worked out relationship with local library or other organization to maintain civically focused directory of local links and community content.)

9. The government uses online survey and input options beyond the general web comment form or e-mail box.

10. The government hosts two-way interactivity among the public and the government OR the government participates actively in two-way opportunities for community dialogue (and link to those places in their community links directory). (Bonus: Government has adopted social media policy which clearly encourages civil servants to provide information and answer questions online just as they would do in-person or on the telephone.)

11. Government provides open data sets for unrestricted download and use. OK, so there are 11. I want the open data promoters to tell us why this is more important than the items above.

If the Cleveland-Park neighborhood e-mail list in DC can reach almost 10,000 subscribers, why not 500 people in your neighborhood? Go for it.

In my own Standish Ericsson neighborhood we are close to 500 members or just over 10% of households… and let me tell you, it is awesome. If you have been looking for the most effective, sustainable, rewarding, and powerful way to build local community and promote public engagement then look no further than “locals online.”

As part of E-Democracy.org‘s Participation 3.0 effort and our focus is on “moving the field” rather than just our model (more “Got Milk” and less buy our brand), we are working to convene people across the many sectors of online civic engagement. Locals Online is the place where hosts of neighborhood e-mail lists, blogs, social networks, and more can connect and swap stories and lessons. Join us and sign the invite letter.

8 Million Participants, Ten of Thousands of Hosts – And Growing

One of the buried factoids from the Pew Internet and American Life Project last year is that 4% of American adults or 8 million people are members of good old “neighborhood e-mail lists.” If the average neighborhood e-mail list is 200 people (could be more or less) that means 40,000 people have step up to successfully create an online public space for their neighbors. Even if it is 20,000, no one had any idea this movement promoting the future of engagement existed at this level. No one.

This could grow fast.

Whether it is on YahooGroups, Google Groups, Ning, or Facebook, a quick hunt for local online groups brings up perhaps 10 empty shells with just a few members for every one successful local online public space. The technology made it easy for 360,000 people to fail at a low cost and 40,000 of us broke through and managed to convince our neighbors to join us online (very much a close to one person a time adventure from my experience) to the tune of 8 million overall.

The neighbors movement online is completely below the radar and most successful efforts barely know about the local online spaces beyond their immediate area. We want to change that by gathering a few hundred hosts of online neighborhood efforts in a space we can use to exchange stories, lessons, and advice Imagine if we simply captured our top ten lessons and the success rate for new neighborhood spaces went from 10% to 20% by spreading our collective advice. We’d serve another 8 million people (far more globally for that matter) in no time. Wow. That might be the easy part. The real challenge is finding the first few hundred online neighborhood hosts who don’t yet know they are part of a movement.

Can you help by sending the local revolutionaries you know to http://e-democracy.org/locals