Our friends in New Zealand, including Dan Randow with OnlineGroups.Net, held a public meeting on the potential of a regional public Issues Forum for the Canterbury region which includes Christchurch.
A couple of years ago I met with a room full of interested citizens on a cold July winter Sunday at one of their libraries. This is where I was first introduced by Dan to GroupServer. Later that year when the UK expressed interest in that model, we were able to allocate part of that budget on this innovation from New Zealand that we now use for our forums.
It would be great to see a network of Issues Forums across New Zealand which might fit into their national government’s exploration of e-participation.
Let us know how we can help you and we invite you to join the E-Democracy.Org network so together we can build the best global model for local democracy in the information age possible.
Steven Clift
We had ten people at our meeting (including one Minnesotan!). Here’s a report on how the meeting went and our plans from here.
I’m headed to NZ and Christchurch at the end of April, 2006 — for more than a month. I’d love to hook up with you all there.
Contact me a Mark @ Rauterkus dot com.
Thanks.