One of the cornerstone characteristics of E-Democracy.Org issues forums, has always been that we limit each participant to 2 post per day (which is now 2 posts per 24 hours). Our goal has always been to encourage as many different people as possible to participate and early on we choose to accomplish this by […]
Shortly before Christmas word began to spread that an innovative grassroots e-democracy project in Richmond upon Thames (UK) may be shutting down permanently. During one of my recent visits to the UK, I had the opportunity to meet the creators and volunteer operators of Online Communities. I was almost startled to see how much work […]
A recent discussion in the St. Paul Issues forum demonstrated the power of Issues Forums to:
• touch upon very practical issues that members of the community must deal with
• to draw out illustrative personal stories / examples that inform policy discussions
• share ideas for personal action
A member of the forum posted his frustration at trying […]
I am currently the Forum Manager for the E-Democracy.Org project in Roseville, Minnesota (The Roseville Issues Forum). Recently, someone posted a short announcement about another forum that opened in a neighboring community. I took a look and decided to write a short comparison of the projects, which I posted to the Roseville Issues Forum. I […]
Its a big day for E-Democracy.Org. After years of volunteering for E-Democracy.Org as a sideline to his professional consulting with governments on e-democracy and e-government issues, Steve Clift has now gotten a three year Ashoka fellowship to support his work directly for E-Democracy.Org.
Coming on the heels of our involvement in the UK Local E-Democracy National […]
Its been a crazy couple of days in the Minneapolis Issues Forum, with (by my count) 111 different individuals posting a total of 203 messages over the course of three days. On election day (Nov. 7th) there were 79 posts! While, we don’t have any official record, this is by far the most active day […]
(Photo by Louis Blaise, found by doing a search on Flickr. I sure hope its really Montreál!)
Just a quick note to let folks know that both Steve Clift and I will be appearing at the IAP2 conference in Montreál next week. Steve will be one of the keynote speakers, speaking at 8:45 on “The use […]
(For more video clips from the Bright Ideas conference in Newham, visit Designing for Civil Society, by David Wilcox)
Last week E-Democracy.Org Issues Forums came up as a subject of discussion at the Bright Ideas conference sponsored by the Newham Council. Dan Jellinek, co-chair of the Brighton & Hove Issues Forum steering committee and member of […]
In October, E-Democracy.Org (with the support of the Blandin Foundation) hosted an online gubernatorial debate, which in turn led to our Voter Voices initiative.
Weeks after the online debate, the Voter Voices project continues to generate BUZZ on the internet. Today, I found one of my own contributions to the Voter Voices project being linked […]
In the St. Paul Issues Forum, the big topic in the forum, of late, has been the local Sheriff’s race. Its been a very long campaign and the Sheriff’s race has been an ongoing issue in the forum since last December, when the local police union voted to endorse Fletcher and the president of the […]