Whether it is Somali Independence Day in Minneapolis (video), Rondo Days, or the CHAT Hmong arts festival in St. Paul, our new outreach team will be in the field across the community this summer.

Our goal is to recruit at least 1,000 new participants across our Twin Cities online neighborhood forums (15 forums open with 18 new forums in the pipeline) with major growth in the diverse, lower income neighborhoods we work with as part of our Inclusive Social Media effort.

Here is our lead summer outreach team – along with their diverse community and neighborhoods of focus:

• Corrine Bruning – Outreach Coordinator
• Ayanna Raven Benitez – Latino (Powderhorn, Phillips)
• Damon Drake – African-American (East Side, Summit-U Rondo, Frogtown)
• Deanna StandingCloud – Native American (Phillips mostly)
• Julia Nekessa Opoti – East African (Special engagement work, Cedar Riverside extending to Seward, Phillips)
• Kaying Thao – SE Asian (East Side, North End, Frogtown)

As great applicants for the part-time positions above (most are two month summer jobs except for Julia and Corrine) came in, we felt compelled to add some additional outreach roles. Let’s call them “volunteers+” for their dedication, as they provide additional grass roots outreach in the community. The idea is to time-efficiently leverage their existing networks and existing activities deep in the community as they recruit up to 100 people each.

Thank you for joining us:

• LaShunda Jackson – African-American/Everyone in Frogtown
• Mustafa Adam – East African Outreach (Any Forum)
• Salmah Hussien – East African Outreach (Any Forum)
• Sandy Ci Moua – SE Asian Outreach (St. Paul-wide)
• Possible – Additional Latino Outreach (West Side St. Paul) – Interested? Contact us.

This project is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, and the Knight Foundation (St. Paul Foundation donor-advised fund).

With all of this “digital inclusion for community voices” work, we are experimenting and generating “how to” lessons we will be sharing via future Inclusive Social Media webinars, via the Digital Inclusion Network, and other means. One lesson we can share now is a reflection on trust.

Trust.

Trust is a powerful thing.

Going to a community and saying “we will empower you, just trust us” simply does not work. If anything, it will get you tossed out. Further, taking a technology-first approach can create distrust and generate conflict if you roll over long-time and essential community voices who happen to be the wrong side of the digital divide. Inclusion isn’t providing an “opportunity” and then being satisfied when few show up.

With this in mind, we had one of the most powerful and humbling E-Democracy.org gatherings in our 18 year history the other week.

Gathered around the table/phone were most of our recently contracted ten member Diverse Communities Outreach Team. While our funded Inclusive Social Media effort is focused on lower income, high immigrant or highly diverse neighborhoods, all of our all volunteer-based forums should strive to broadly represent the full diversity of their neighborhood not just of those who most easily “show up.” The fact that Internet users who make 75K a year are 5 times more likely to belong to a neighborhood e-mail list or forum than someone online who makes 50K of less a year can not stand (15% v. 3%) (Source: PewInternet.org). Our direct experience is that all neighborhoods can benefit from digital community engagement and the digital divide is no excuse to wait.

During the meeting it dawned on me that this was NOT about E-Democracy.org building enough trust to get people to join forums on a website they have never heard of, it was about our team members putting their own hard earned trust on the line.  They are sharing their trust to help build our shared effort and vision that all people who live near each other (of many different backgrounds) should be able to talk to each other in an open, accessible, welcoming, civil, and effective local community building setting online.

Gulp.

(On a related note, one outreach leader noting skepticism in initial conversations, said anything that starts with “e-” is thought of as a likely pyramid scheme in their community.)

So together we are rolling up our sleeves and getting out into the community to reach people one at time so every voice can be heard one click at a time.

Some Video

Say here is our video from our Somali Independence Day as well as May Day outreach.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Share/Bookmark

The slides are detailed so you can skim or go in-depth. Additional download options are at the bottom of this post.

Invite us to present in-person in your neighborhood. Our Outreach Coordinator Corrine Bruning is also available for small group overviews in our target inclusion neighborhoods in particular. So far we have an on-demand video version with audio that goes in-depth (play it below).

In addition to the presentation, we have a new flyer available in our print materials section.

If you would like the start a new forum in your area anywhere please contact us. With renewed grant funding, we are focused on growing and launching as many diverse community forums (see our outreach summer job posting) as possible in St. Paul and Minneapolis. tcneighbors.org is our new promotional web address where folks can quickly find their local forum or request a new one.

How can you help?

If you don’t see yourself starting a new forum in your neighborhood, you can still get involved! Please join our Projects online volunteer group here or monitor it via Facebook or Twitter. We put out calls for assistance there. If you are covered by a forum, contact your local Forum Manager and offer to assist with outreach.

Also, if you are software developer, please join the GroupServer Development group and help us develop new features or join our proposed next generation BeNeighbors.org effort.

New communities?

Are you from outside Minnesota, Oxford and Bristol in the UK, or Christchurch, New Zealand? We are open to hosting forums both at the neighborhood-level but also city-wide “online town halls” based on our classic Issues Forum model everywhere. Eau Claire, Wisconsin is next. If you have the will and the dedication to do real outreach, we have the technology and lessons that plain and simple – work!

This isn’t an auto-pilot, set it and forget model (nothing is), but wouldn’t you rather build your local online community supported by a network providing mutual benefit and support? If not, if you prefer your own technology or think Facebook Pages really work over the long-run (you need 20x the “Likers” for comparable activity so we use rather than rely on Facebook at our core), that’s awesome. Take our lessons and run with it because millions remain unserved. Also join the Locals Online community of practice that we host with hundreds of people doing local good online.

Additional Slide Options

Download options: PowerPoint – Full Version, PowerPoint – Short VersionPDF Online Viewing, PDF Print Full Page, PDF Handout 6 to Page

Watch/listen with extended audio:

Share/Bookmark

And I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad …

And I wanted to — I felt that that wasn’t fair and I should come here and tell you that I don’t — it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America. … Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.

Since then, I’ve been thinking how do the major media online news sites get their Jon Stewart moment for the incivility they are fostering (by poor design, perhaps not intent) with online news commenting. It is not that I expect partisan blogs to be civil, I don’t. But with major media hosted online points that connect people in local and national conversations across political lines, I expect far more than a virtual civil war among partisans. I expect some attention to quality, impact, and democratic mission of a free press.

With the tragic shootings in Arizona, the cause and motivations aside, the acidic and vitriolic nature of online (and broadcast media-based) exchange has hit the center stage. The New York Times noted:

What’s different about this moment is the emergence of a political culture — on blogs and Twitter and cable television — that so loudly and readily reinforces the dark visions of political extremists, often for profit or political gain.

Whether in conversations with online news professionals or the session on civility that I hosted in DC at Public Media Camp, I’ve noted an earnest, “It is a disaster. We know we need to do better. But how?” response. Again, let the partisan blogs have their echo chambers, but for online sites that seek to contribute to the whole of democracy across the political spectrum it is time to step up.

To that end, I am circulating a call widely for a “Civility Online” virtual conference and possible webinar specifically to connect online news and social media hosts interested in enhancing civility with effective techniques, approaches, tools, and technology to make improvements across the field. Sponsors are being sought to make this possible. Note the interest among the dialogue and deliberation crowd. Contact us if you would like to help sponsor this or contribute in some way.

In terms of E-Democracy.org’s experience, we use real names and have a simple ban on name calling. We accept that this requires the subjective role of a volunteer forum manager as we feel the democratic community benefit from strong civility with issue-based discussions is far greater than the backlash from those who think the freedom of any one individual to attack people or groups with name calling and insults trumps that benefit. Most media sites avoid real names (one reason Facebook is eating their interactive lunch) and they are concerned about the resources it takes to truly facilitate in an active way rather than react to just the most abusive posts. The problem is as the 2% of the most vitriolic take over commenting on a site, everyone else leaves.

To build on this theme, see my recent 14 minute speech on “Local Matters, Civility Matters, Inclusion Matters” (slides only here) is now available in video from the UK-based Guardian (see more speeches from other keynote speakers like the CEO of Google, Clay Shirky, etc.) :

My remarks calling for greater civility were controversial because they run counter the cyber-libertarian myth that it is a good thing that no one knows you are dog on the Internet. (No wonder some people then act like animals.) It led to an interview with the Guardian’s podcast and a live radio interview a few weeks later on BBC Radio 4.

Lastly, I’ve seen this problem taking root for over a decade and here is an excerpt from my speech “Democratic Evolution or Virtual Civil War” in 2003.

Join the revolution? I don’t believe the Internet is inherently democratic. To me, most people and organizations are fundamentally anti-democratic by nature. Many of those in power and those clamoring for power are self-centered actors. They operate within the miracle we call representative democracy. Most accept the idea that democracy is good, but these actors do little to ensure its strength.

After a decade working directly with e-democracy issues, I’ve concluded that “politics as usual” online may be the tipping point that finishes off what television started – the extinction of democracy and democratic spirit.

Those hoping for an almost accidental democratic transformation fostered by the information technology will watch in shock from the sidelines as their favorite new medium becomes the arsenal of virtual civil war – virtual civil wars among partisans at all levels.

When I open e-mail from all sorts of American political parties and activist groups, I see conflict. I see unwillingness to compromise.

Let’s be optimists and suggest that the Net is doubling the activist population from five percent to ten percent. The harsh reality is that we are doubling the virtual soldiers, an expendable slash and burn online force, available to established political interests.

As the excessive and bitter partisanship of the increased activist population leaks into the e-mail boxes of everyday people, I predict abhorrence of Net-era politics among the general citizenry. I fear the extreme erosion of public trust not just in government, but also in most things public and political.

Instead of encouraging networked citizen participation that improves the public results delivered in our democracies, left to its natural path, the Internet will be used to eliminate forms of constructive civic engagement by the other 90 percent of citizens. A 10 percent democracy of warring partisan is no democracy at all.

Compounding the problem, the billions of Euros in e-government focus almost exclusively on one-way services and efficiency. Government makes it easy to pay your taxes online – while doing little to give you a virtual – anytime, anywhere – say in how those taxes are spent. Many elected officials are turning off their e-mail for citizens, leaving it on for lobbyists to reach their staff directly, and building what I call “Digital Berlin Walls” of complicated web forms. One-way “e-governments” based on efficiency to the exclusion of “two-way” democracy are the norm. Unfortunately, most governments are saying e-services first, democracy later.

In summary, online political strife combined with governments that are incapable of accommodating our public will present a dark future for democracy in the information age.

Join the democratic evolution!

Everything I’ve just said contrasts dramatically from the exceptional experiences of citizen groups and governments leading the way with the best e-democracy practices.

Everyday in Minnesota, I experience the power of online discourse among citizens. I am impressed by online innovations in many parliaments and government agencies. And I’ve been inspired by the online activism of many groups.

However, we have an enemy. It is not “politics as usual.” They must compete to survive. Our enemy is our indifference to our generational democratic obligations. We have a duty to make the most honorable use of the unique information age opportunities before us.

We have a choice, we can strategically use ICTs to improve our communities, strengthen society, and address global challenges or we can ride the ICT-accelerated race to the post-democratic bottom.

It is time to give more than lip service to e-democracy experiments, research, and best practices.

It is time to bring the democratic intent and values required to make the demonstrated possibility of the new online medium a universal reality.

Build the democratic evolution!

To make what is possible probable, the time for action has arrived.

The new media, led by the Internet, must be used to help us meet public challenges. It must be used to transform anti-democratic states and break apart hyper-partisan and unresponsive politics at all levels. We must be smarter, faster, and more committed than “politics as usual.”
More: Democratic Evolution or Virtual Civil War

So what should we do about civility online?

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1117/feed 4 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1097 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1097#comments Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:39:46 +0000 Steven Clift http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1097

Editors Note: The other month we received an invitation to have a booth in the “sandlot” at the Community Matters conference. Because I’ve been in occasional contact with the head of the Orton Family Foundation, I suggested that we could step that up and also host a virtual round of introductions. The exchange, using our simple and effective online groups technology with human facilitation, generated about 70 excellent introductions which jump started the in-person conference before people arrived in Denver. We did this successfully with the first  CityCamp unconference last year as well. The CityCamp Exchange has evolved into a model dynamic ongoing exchange.

This was one of our first booths “out in the field” so to speak. My primary goal in sending Boa and Julia was to help raise awareness of our Inclusive Social Media efforts in lower income, high immigrant neighborhoods with a new constituency. I’ll let them share their reflections before closing the post with some further comments and answers to questions they received.

In the last year with our push into neighborhood-level work, I’ve come across a number of “silos,” if you will, of community builders ramping up their use of social media and Internet-mediated knowledge exchange. The more planner-oriented Community Matters network (also note the Planning Technology online group) those in public health with the Community Toolbox, new efforts to share local “what works” story sharing fostered by the Craigslist Foundation (more from their labs on the new LikeMinded project), networks in the UK on “neighbourhoods” and now the “Big Society,” those working from civic engagement and deliberative democracy or community dialogue frames, and the Locals Online and CityCamp movements and related uses of social media in neighborhoods often led by technologists are all doing their good work in relative isolation. However, with the excellent silo-busting OurBlocks.Net blog led by Leo Romero and our own interest in convening across fields, the awareness and synergistic connections among these actors presents a terrific opportunity.

OK, Boa and Julia didn’t know they were part of some multi-year grand scheme to network local community builders, but we need to get out more among these networks at in-person gatherings like CommunityMatters to introduce our own work and connect everyone seeking to use technology to build local community and democracy.

By Julia Opoti and Boa Lee, Inclusive Social Media Community Outreach Leaders for E-Democracy.org

Reflections on 2010 Community Matters Conference

The Community Matters Conference provided an opportunity for us, Boa and Julia, to take stock of our e-democracy outreach efforts. It gave us insight as to what types of background training will be required for communities around the nation to be able to understand and utilize Neighbors Issues Forums in a meaningful way.

While both of us agree that the CMC was a great processing tool for community organizers to engage in community planning, we found that we were not adequately prepared for the audience niche.

The conference was attended by mostly planners, elected officials and individuals working in and with government.  Most of the entities came from smaller towns and our inclusive engagement work comes from the urban inner city. From our work in St. Paul and Minneapolis, we know that local communities have already established the importance of being and staying involved using the Internet and its social media tools; for communities we are familiar with has been to increase the number of diverse voices in community and city planning.

We spoke to several people at our “sandbox” (an interactive conference booth time), however many of them were from communities working on new comprehensive plans, thus they were at the conference to seek Geographic Information System planning resources.  Certainly, the majority of the tools in the sandbox were applications that a planner would use to aid in helping communities envision economic development projects, beautification projects and the like.  We wondered if Neighbors Issues Forums could be implemented into some of these platforms to serve as an auxiliary communication tool. We suggested to several of the participants that e-democracy would serve as an effective comprehensive platform for neighborhood communication and collaboration.

As mentioned, the deficit in our participation at the conference was that we weren’t adequately prepared to deal with our audience.  This being our first time at the CommunityMatters conference, we did not know the background and demographics of most of the attendees.  While we did sell certain attributes of Neighbors Issues Forums — including that it is a simple interface, has a low learning curve for computer illiterate individuals, comes with email capability, and that it requires real name use which demands accountability – it would have served us better to have tailored our message to the attendees so we could meet them where they are at.

In the future, we suggest that whenever we attend conferences, we consider the expected audience: who they are, where they’re from, their comfort level with technology, what value they place on community engagement, etc.  We also realized that in order to help people appreciate the value of a tool like Issues Forums, we must first broaden our scope of presentation to include topics like transparency/open government, civic engagement and technology/social media.  We must be cognizant about framing our discussions around why we exist — E-Democracy.org’s mission — in order to connect with our target audience.

The following questions were taken from participants visiting our booth:

• 1. How much does it cost? (We overheard this — they didn’t ask us directly.)
• 2. Can we have a non-geographic group (esp. a group for people working on public health issues)?
• 3. How is E-Democracy.org different from FrontPorch?
• 4. What platform do you use? (Too technical a question for us to answer.)
• 5. How many people do you need in order to start your own forum?
• 6. Can E-Democracy.org incorporate Google Translator?
• 7. How does a politician (city councilor) seed information without getting political?
• 8. Can the forum be part of an organization’s already existing website — added to and not just linked?

Editor’s Response:

Thank you Boa and Julia for charting our foray into broad lessons sharing. In 2011, we will be gathering up our Inclusive Social Media lessons for a virtual and sometimes in-person roadshow at conferences an the like.

Here are my answers to some of the questions you received.

• 1. How much does it cost? (We overheard this — they didn’t ask us directly.)
  • Answer: It depends. Volunteer Forum Managers who are willing to recruit 100 initial participants may start a group for free. Here are tips on starting a Neighbors Issues Forum. We’ve found this works well in areas with high home ownership. With volunteers leading the way, a shared technology base, peer to peer support across communities, etc. our cost structure is extremely low by design. However, if you want to start a forum with real inclusion efforts in lower income, highly diverse areas, then this is where we recommend funded initiatives. Whether $5,000, $20,000 or something more for one or more forums covering 5,000 to  20,000 person population neighborhood areas each, the real cost is just how inclusive do you want to be assuming the most of your inclusion success will come from more traditional in-person community organizing. Adapting our print materials – particularly the paper sign-up sheets -  for use with us or your own independent effort is encouraged. Without paper sign ups we would fail. Period.

• 2. Can we have a non-geographic group (esp. a group for people working on public health issues)?
  • Perhaps. We see as real market failure in common interest networking based on geography. In general it is my opinion that attempting to create a niche online interactive experience narrow-cast to a specific local community silo requires extensive resources. Getting 300 people into an online space is like pulling teeth even with people who are interested in the issue. The public needs a compelling self-interest to join if you want to get beyond the 1% “political class” that shows up already. So our magic lesson – people love – L – O – V – E -multi-purpose Neighbors Issues Forums - our largest two to three year-old forums  have attracted over ~15% of households in our public spaces online in Standish Ericsson and Powderhorn for example. By opening up to “who can recommend a good plumber” our discussions of more civic issue topics now have a far broader audience. I recommend that every community foster and support a distributed network of neighbor to neighbor spaces online (they will not all be on the same platform, but we’d be glad to host anyone) that are there on a sustained and useful when you really need them basis – like when your community seeks to respond to violent crime or when a government consultation is seeking input from the public by coming to an online forum just as they would come to existing community meetings.
    
• 3. How is E-Democracy.org different from FrontPorch?
  • With lots of Vermonters connected with the Orton Family Foundation where they and FrontPorch are both based, I figured this question might come up. E-Democracy.org comes of a civic engagement background with expressly public forums. We started statewide in Minnesota in 1994 with the world first election information website and in 1998 started with the Minneapolis Issues Forum on city politics. We were discovered by the British government and our model was taken to the UK and refined with some neighborhood level forums. We’ve brought Neighborhood Issues Forums back to our strong-hold of Minnesota with great success. Expansion continues. We consider our friends at Front Porch Forum as peers in the Locals Online movement. While they are a business and we are a 501.c3 non-profit, we both generate significant income from grants. The biggest difference is that our Issues Forum model is expressly public by design, covers 5 to 20,000 residents (compared to hundreds of households in Front Porch per online group – however Front Porch currently has more users overall all in Vermont) in each space, each our forums has a dedicated volunteer facilitator connect to other volunteers for peer to peer support, and it is free to communicate city-wide via our complementary city politics forums. As I understand FrontPorch, each forum is limited to residents of a specific area, you may join and post to only one area, and the exchanges are private (or at least not in Google and each to discover through search). We see value in both models and in fact are exploring an private tier of communication in the form of electronic block clubs that are even smaller areas than Front Porch Forum in an effort code-named Neighborly that will connect up into our and others’ public online community spaces. Our biggest concern is that without real investment in more labor intensive inclusion efforts, commercial models may only serve higher income areas. We doubt this is the case with FrontPorch’s business model, but with many top-down commercial entrants like Patch.com they (coming from an online news approach) are cherry picking wealthy communities. We don’t need a new form of red-lining based on social media in neighborhoods. Can anyone commercial or non-commercial inclusively network neighbors online on an ongoing basis without some form of subsidy – be it volunteer labor or grants, etc. – that serves ALL communities or can scale beyond their boutique level of service? We do not know, but we sure are 17 years into making something important happen with an attention to civility and quality exchange versus “we take no responsibility” models filled with diatribe and conspiracy (like most anonymous online news commenting on anything political or crime-related). In the end, this is a huge country with room for many models and providers.
    
• 4. What platform do you use? (Too technical a question for us to answer.)
  • We use GroupServer – an open source GPL platform that effectively combines e-mail and web participation. We also feed our groups into Facebook Pages and Twitter via the blog-style web feeds our platform produces. The key lesson – reach people where they are online based on a universal online public space. Do not split local people up by technology preference or you local online space will be a silo that lacks critical mass. For those who think e-mail is dead, why did the king of social networking introduce a new Facebook Groups platform that marries e-mail publishing with the web the other month? Web-only publishing systems do not work well if you are seeking to build new levels of community connections versus leveraging already existing passion or need (like hobbyist or health online communities for those with the same disease.)
    
• 5. How many people do you need in order to start your own forum?
  • 100. See our giant guidebook for all sorts of start-up tips. Why? With 100 people you’ve done real outreach. You have a large enough group that replies are likely. The 100 people are actually the “network” and not the end points. Each person connects to their friends, families, co-workers, community groups and more off-line and online.
    
    
• 6. Can E-Democracy.org incorporate Google Translator?
  • Good idea. We are experimenting with a link from our Powderhorn forum to a Spanish version via Google Translator. Another option would be to add a auto-translation links in more places. If only Google translated into Somali and Hmong.
    
• 7. How does a politician (city councilor) seed information without getting political?
  • Politicians post to our forums frequently. Here are some tips specifically for elected officials that we are drafting. Many politicians are concerned about being criticized in public and we work to make the forum’s reach powerful enough that they see pragmatic value in using the forum. It helps that at the neighborhood level, local elected officials can say these are my voters. We also have tips on information seeking and seeding. Note my post about the “community information stream” to the Locals Online group.
    
    
• 8. Can the forum be part of an organization’s already existing website — added to and not just linked?
  • While we have had partners help start-up new forums with links and credits, we don’t host generic version of forum like a general technology provider (we do host some interesting online communities of practice like the CityCamp Exchange with their logo, etc.). If you like our technology but what to roll your own thing, you could ask our host OnlineGroups.Net to host something using your site’s look and feel. Also, we do provide consulting services for other groups seeking help with online events and facilitation. Our 17 years of experience can be applied in many settings online and best of all, the revenue generated supports an awesome mission and our public work.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1097/feed 0 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1051 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1051#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 17:12:09 +0000 Steven Clift http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1051 [Email address: news #AT# e-democracy.org - replace #AT# with @ ]. Editor’s Note Greetings, E-Democracy.org supporters! While it’s [...]]]> E-Democracy News – November 2010 – Vol 2, Issue 2

In this Issue From the Executive Director Give to the Max Day Participation 3.0 Progress Report Forums Focus Let us know if you have any suggestions, . Editor’s Note Greetings, E-Democracy.org supporters! While it’s been several months since we last sent you a newsletter, we’ve still been busy working toward our goal of improving civic engagement online and providing resources for neighbors and communities to connect in meaningful ways online. As you’ll see in this issue, our Participation 3.0 efforts are leaping forward, due to the dedication of so many people across the globe. We’re also gearing up for another Give to the Max Day fundraising effort. Over the past couple years, we’ve been struggling a bit to find a format that will make this newsletter useful to you – providing you key information about our efforts, and giving you opportunities to get involved. This is why you haven’t heard from us in awhile. But what we realized recently is that this communication needs to be focused more clearly on what we expect from each of you, so we’ll be working to include content that will be more relevant to you. That’s where we need your help. If you would like to see a story or hear an update about a particular project, . Or if you’re interested in helping with a particular effort, visit our Participation 3.0 page or contact the . We’ll be sending this newsletter out quarterly, with information that augments the more frequent communications (~3 times month) available on our Project Blog and other project forums. We’re anxious to hear what you think. And we hope a more focused product will help you stay more engaged in and informed about our efforts. From the Executive Director We’re at an important time in the history of civic engagement. Now more than ever, we need to harness the power of the Internet to connect people and break down the barriers to participating in democracy. More … Give to the Max Day is Nov. 16 Give to the Max Day is Nov. 16. Read more about how E-Democracy.org will use your donations. Thank you so much for your past and future support. More … Participation 3.0 Progress Report E-Democracy.org groups have made tremendous progress toward accomplishing the goals set out for the Participation 3.0 projects. In 2011, groups will build on the successes and share information about the process with partners and contacts inside and outside the E-Democracy network. More … Forums Focus E-Democracy.org’s unique local issues forum model has expanded to neighborhood-based forums. About 20 neighbors forums are now active. More … Support democracy online. Connect new voices! Volunteer or donate today. Friend us on Facebook. Follow on Twitter.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1051/feed 0 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1026 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1026#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:30:56 +0000 news http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1026 Participation 3.0
2010 Progress Report

At the beginning of 2010, we announced our new Participation 3.0 initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation, that has opened the third phase of E-Democracy.org’s activity since its founding in 1994.

Participation 3.0 initiatives focus on connecting local people everywhere with the best ideas and opportunities for includes local online civic engagement and problem-solving. At the heart of these initiatives is notion that social media are not connecting people for civic purposes, and to keep people connected to civic life, reach them via their preferred channel, rather than isolating them by technology platform.

While our blog has had 30 posts over this year, our quiet on the e-newsletter front is based on our busier than ever hyper-activity.

There are four funded projects in the 3.0 initative:

1. Inclusive Social Media: Deepening Issues Forum start-up efforts in lower-income, high-immigrant neighborhoods of Cedar Riverside in Minneapolis and Greater Frogtown in St. Paul. This includes establishing and leveraging the Digital Inclusion Network and Locals Online to connect hosts of local blogs, social networks, and forums/e-mail lists.
2. Public Meetings: Promoting more open and transparent public meeting agendas online. Leverages a technical working group and creates the start-up LocalLabs deep geek online group.
3. DemocracyMap: Generating a massive open data set on local democracy leading to local place and map-based look-ups to find the governments that serve you and who represents you from the local level up.
4. Next Generation Ideas: Creating models for how local communities can connect with the next generation of tools and collaborating with the League of Women Voters to create support for local governments to bring more “Sunshine 2.0″ democracy online. Leverages an online input group and the ongoing CityCamp Exchange.

We knew 2010 would be a big year for progress on these initiatives, and volunteers, community members, and E-Democracy.Org staff have shown tremendous motivation to achieve these goals.

Issues Forums: With about 20 newer “neighbors” forums, most of them new this year, we have grown our community-based issues forums to more than 35, on three continents. Another 10 forums are in start-up recruitment mode. The two featured neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul in lower income, high immigrant areas each now have active forums with about 300 members each. The Powderhorn and Standish Ericsson neighbors forum in Minneapolis boasts participation approaching 15 percent of the households in those neighborhoods.

Public Meetings: We’ve begun compiling some standards for publishing that allows both readability for the average consumer and the ability for computers to consume the information and republish it – particularly media or community organizations that may want to engage in the discussions. This information is available at publicmeetings.info, and we’ll continue refining these ideas and pushing toward the ultimate goal of greater opportunities to interact with government agencies. A major webinar recording with our partner the eCitizen Foundation from early November is available.

DemocracyMap: The technical working group has been discussing how to integrate the different sources of information on the 30,000 government jurisdictions in the United States alone. The goal is to find a way to create a sustainable open dataset of some 30,000 U.S. governments, their official web address, and more. The group has collected some case studies, existing directory websites, and ways to integrate the data and optimize search-engine availability. We were honored to brief the White House’s Open Government Initiative team.

Next Generation Ideas: The primary effort is drafting a Sunshine 2.0 guide for the national League of Women Voters, that will help guide the level of transparency governments should strive for online. Specifically, a draft set of digital indicators has been developed, along with other guidelines and the beginning of the guide. Early plans for an adventuresome online survey and set of major collaborative grant proposals were put on the shelf for another day as our Inclusive Social Media and DemocracyMap efforts rocketed to the top of our priority list based on early success and momentum. The new Neighborly effort to create a radical platform and social enterprise supporting “local everywhere” electronic block clubs continues to build momentum.

What’s Next?

• Continued outreach to communities that have expressed interest in neighborhood-based issues forums.
• Compiling lessons learned from Cedar Riverside and Greater Frogtown forum creation efforts.
• Providing support to communities with volunteers interested in opening neighborhood or city-wide issues forums.
• More exploration of best practices for publishing public meeting information and encouraging governments to allow constituents to comment online and rank others’ comments. In addition, we hope to encourage governments to receive this information prior to making a decision so it can help guide the decision.
• Promoting the best methods for aggregating data on public meetings, and other government data sets to provide greater access to available government information.
• Finalizing the Sunshine 2.0 guide and related materials.

How you can get involved

E-Democracy.org is primarily a volunteer-based organization. We have several staff who provide a few hours of paid time on a periodic basis, but 90% of the work would be impossible without our volunteers. Visit the Participation 3.0 page on our website to join input groups guiding these initiatives or contact us to volunteer.

Does your community have an issues forum or neighborhood forums? If yes, join them and participate in the conversation. Invite your neighbors and co-workers to join. If not, investigate what it takes to set one up. The key to success is local interest and in-person recruiting. Don’t hesitate to tap into your personal network if you think this space could benefit your community.

Do you have an interest in access to government information or transparency in government? Do you have technical skills related to data gathering and creating integrated applications? You may be the one who has the technical expertise or network of contacts to take these ideas to the next level.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1026/feed 3 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1022 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1022#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:23:58 +0000 news http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1022 E-Democracy Issues Forums
Connecting neighbors and communities with new hyper-local spaces

Since 1994, E-Democracy.Org has worked to build democracy and community online, from the local level up. Our model is unique – we create spaces governed by universal rules that promote civility and individual responsibility, facilitated by local volunteers, with participants who use their real names.

It’s a simple strategy, grounded in the principle that e-tools offer the possibility for people to participate from anywhere, at anytime, in a personalized manner. Most traditional political participation at the local level is based in buildings and in meetings which take place at specific times. Our modern lives mean that people do not have the time to be as engaged via traditional, in-person means. And while nothing can replace the power of the town hall meeting, where neighbors and policymakers look one another in the eye or shake hands, the Internet allows people to engage in civic life on their own terms, and when they have time.

With that in mind, those of us who are building e-democracy need to think in terms of coming home online. The time people spend going out to public meetings is decreasing and if most people’s experience online only relates to going into the world or to private life activities, and not to public life activities, there will inevitably be a decline in democratic public life.

That’s where E-Democracy.org Issues Forums come in. For many years, we’ve had active community-based forums to discuss issues – typically political issues. Just in the past few years, neighborhoods within those communities have asked for the same opportunity, which is how the Neighbors Forum concept started.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 7% of American adult Internet users say they belong to a “neighborhood listserv.” That’s 10 million people. In fact, 27% of American adult Internet users use “digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues.” To us, that’s a great starting point. If only a few hundred people join each list, within no time, we’ll have several thousand people who have actively sought to connect with their neighbors online.

The goal of connecting a critical mass of neighbors is a key part of our Participation 3.0 project, and in recent months, we’ve reached a tipping point with associations and individual neighbors volunteering to start a neighborhood forum.  Once the group has identified a forum manager, the key to successfully starting a neighbors forum is in-person recruiting.

E-mail delivery is the default method for our open-source technology platform, though it can also feed Facebook and Twitter. The key is to give participants options, so they aren’t isolated via technology choice. We strive to keep people connected, whatever their preferred method.

We have nearly 20 new neighborhood forums,  including some that boast participation nearing 15% percent of the households. Here’s a sampling of what local neighborhood forums are talking about or explore the full list of issues forums to find what’s going on in your community.

Minneapolis – Powderhorn Neighbors

• Panhandling and neighborhood crime
• Local services (doctors, car mechanics)
• Meetings with local officials
• Local charitable giving events/opportunities

Minneapolis – Corcoran Neighbors

• Volunteer opportunities
• Community garden activities
• Meetings with local officials

Minneapolis – Cedar Riverside Neighbors

• Community events and meetings
• Rehabilitation of neighborhood high-rise
• Community free food distribution
• Crime and policy/community relations

Oxford – Bristol-Brislington Neighbourhood Forum

• Buses and transit
• Community planning
• Health and safety

Oxford – Headington & Marston Neighbourhood Forum

• Community development
• Cycling and transportation
• Council elections

St. Paul – Eastside Neighbors

• Park and recreation system planning
• Classes and seminars

St. Paul – Frogtown Neighbors

• Zoning and transportation
• Community events
• Local restaurants and businesses

If you would like to start a neighbors Issues Forum in your area, contact us.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1022/feed 0 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1024 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1024#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:20:30 +0000 news http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1024 Give to the Max Day is Nov. 16

We only have a few short days until Give to the Max Day 2010, your opportunity to join 40,000 other donors to support your favorite Minnesota-based charities in one day.

From midnight Nov. 16 to midnight Nov. 17, donors can use the online donation feature to give to charities and leverage matching grants. Last year, donors gave more than $14 million to more than 3,000 Minnesota organizations. We raised more than $3,000, the most we have ever raised in from individual supporters. Thank you.

E-Democracy.org is among the organizations participating in the event, and we hope you’ll take a few minutes to give.

We’ve made tremendous progress in the past year toward our Participation 3.0 goals (see story), but we’ve only just begun to support communities that are interested in encouraging greater civic engagement online. Here’s how we plan to dedicate our resources in the next 12 months:

Goal 1: Engagement

• Expand number of local issues forums
• Improve online tools available for civic activities
• Expand online spaces for local engagement and problem-solving
• Use UK and New Zealand donations to support efforts specific to those countries (our grant funds have been restricted to the U.S.)

Goal 2: Active Citizenship

• Work to make local public meeting agendas and documents more accessible and interactive across the Internet
• Work with public agencies to use the Internet more to interact with the public

Goal 3: Effective Practices and Tools

• Encouraging government agencies to make public data available
• Using publicly available data as a tool to encourage civic engagement
• Neighborly, an open source coding project to help people connect with their nearest neighbors online, for various purposes
• DemocracyMap, a concept that involves creating a tool to look up information about who represents you and other relevant information for a jurisdiction by location or on a map

To donate on Give to the Max Day, visit the E-Democracy.org page.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1024/feed 1 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1019 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1019#comments Sat, 13 Nov 2010 12:16:40 +0000 news http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1019

From the Executive Director
By Steven Clift

In the United States, we’ve just finished a historical election, where a significant percentage of the incumbent officials elected to Congress were defeated. In Minnesota, where I live, we also experienced significant turnover in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, which resulted in the minority parties (Republicans) in both houses gaining majority control.

There’s been some analysis about why this happened, and what it means, including the influence of the Internet and social media. Analysts have said voters felt like their voices were not being heard by those elected, regardless of which political party they represented.

It’s interesting that in the nearly 20 years I have been involved in online civic engagement, that sentiment is still pervasive. People just want to be heard.

In the online engagement world, I have long believed that the answer is creating opportunities for more meaningful participation and greater government transparency. Now more than ever, we need to harness the power of the Internet to connect people and break down the barriers to participating in democracy.

The wired citizen has a multitude of communication tools at her or his disposal in this regard. Governments around the world have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts; they stream their meetings online and post videos on YouTube. Millions of blogs worldwide provide the opportunity for anyone to publish information and opinions about public issues. Most government jurisdictions use the Internet to publish data and other information.

But are we using these platforms to engage one another? Do we have the opportunity to participate in local democracy online after we put our kids to bed, like we can order products or watch television programs online?

What our own personal experiences and expert studies show us is that the answers to these questions are still “no.” But progress is being made. And there are ways to successfully engage communities online.

During the past year, our Participation 3.0 initiatives have generated some remarkable momentum and hopeful results about online engagement – in particular, people are seeking inclusive opportunities to engage locally online. Though we have the world at our fingertips, people tend to stay close to home when they’re looking for resources online. And our democracy depends on providing opportunities to engage with others in our community online.

We’re also learning about ways to connect the different platforms people use to connect with one another (like Facebook Pages and Twitter), so we can add the civic participation elements that seems to be missing. And we’re working to push open standards and data for governments to create greater opportunities for citizens to engage with policymakers online, which relates to when and how public meeting information is published.

The progress on our Participation 3.0 project this year has been tremendous, with many opportunities to learn from new volunteers and to partner with like-minded organizations. We’re looking forward to the next phase in 2011 where we’ll be deepening our Inclusive Social Media effort and continuing to convene online communities of interest around our 3.0 projects and the CityCamp Exchange, and we’re looking for opportunities to share these lessons well beyond our network, and of course gather and generate some new ideas.

So how do we fit in the missing pieces? Tell us your ideas. We’re looking forward to hearing from you with your ideas for taking these efforts to the next level.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1019/feed 1 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1001 http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1001#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:44:45 +0000 Steven Clift http://blog.e-democracy.org/?p=1001 Watch the webinar or listen to the full event in MP3 format. See the source blog post from the webinar host Griff Wigley for additional details.

Slides used by Steven Clift, E-Democracy.org, Executive Director:

Social Media: Local Government Use

View more presentations from Steven Clift.

CROSS-POSTED: By Griff Wigley

Nov. 1 Webinar – Social media use by local government in the US: What are the hurdles to doing it well?

With my civic and business hat on, I’m hosting a free webinar on social media use by local government on Monday, Nov. 1, at 8 PM CDT. It will feature:

* A tour of several local government websites (primarily cities in the US) to see some best practices of how social media tools (blogs, web forums, email lists, webinars, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.) are being used to enable more transparency and engagement.
* A discussion about the hurdles that local government officials face when implementing the use of social media.

The panelists (all bloggers), all have some Northfield connections:

* Betsey Buckheit, Councilor, City of Northfield, MN
Prior to her election in 2008, Betsey served on Northfield’s Charter Commission, Planning Commission, Non-Motorized Transportation Task Force, and Library Board. She’s been a Humphrey Institute Public Policy Fellow and part of the Blandin Community Leadership Program. See her Council news, local issues, and public policy blog here.
* Steven Clift, founder and Executive Director, E-Democracy.org
Steve is also a speaker and consultant on e-democracy and was the guy who brought the UK e-gov delegation to Northfield in 2004 (hosted at the Contented Cow) and a field trip to Northfield for the International Symposium on Local E-Democracy in 2005 (hosted at the Cow and the Archer House). See his Democracies Online (DoWire) blog here.
* Scott Neal, City Manager, City of Eden Prairie, MN
Scott was Northfield’s City Administrator from 1996-2002. His last day at Eden Prairie is today. He begins his new job as City Manager for Edina, MN on Nov. 8. See his Eden Prairie City Manager blog here.

Please register for the free webinar on social media use by local government for Monday, Nov. 1, at 8 PM CDT.

If you’re unable to attend, the webinar will be recorded and archived on the web.

Got questions or comments? Attach a comment here or contact me.

Share/Bookmark

]]> http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1001/feed 0