Some eDemocracy links from Tom Smith’s blog:
Designing for Civil Society - David Wilcox on technology, engagement, governance.
Reengagea blog written by Jonathan Briggs and Seb Dance about UK politics, citizenship and participation.
On Sunday 11 July, Steven Clift addressed a small gathering of Christchurch citizens interested in starting an Online Public Commons initiative.
Steven is an inspiring advocate of online citizens forums. He is a founder and long time supporter of the world class examples of these in Minneapolis and St Paul, Minnesota.
We met at the inspiring Beckenham Service Centre where we were treated to a tour of the South Christchurch Library and Learning Centre.
A small group of people have agreed to further explore the possibilities for this kind of initiative in Christchurch.
All content in Northwest Voice, a small free Californian print and web newspaper, is submitted and edited by volunteers.
Freecycle is a network of networks of people giving stuff away to each other online. They have a good model for replicable locally run online communities… and they use Yahoo! Groups and teach people to use subject line conventions. Very similar approach to ours at GroupSense.
Steven Clift has updated his resource on how to Start an Issues Forum.
The Technology section now mentions: “A new, soon to be released open source tool, GroupServer combines the best aspects of e-mail lists and web forums. “
It’s true!
Liz Rykert of Meta Strategies has pointed to these “Tools and Experiences” on online consultation collected by the Public Works and Government Services Canada Innovatec program.
Meta Strategies are strategists and consultants in the technical and social aspects of online media with a focus on community development.
With Maureen James, Liz wrote “FROM WORKPLACE TO WORKSPACE - Using Email Lists to Work Together”. I read this in 1998. It’s a useful resource and has a free online version.
I am back from the USA with much to blog and much to delight and intrigue of a day to day nature. As my molecules are reassemble, I will post here on one or two matters - in the order in which they occur to me.
I saw a few copies of the Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century, while I was in the US. I’d recommend this for a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to deliberative democracy in the US today, whether online or in traditional settings.
The prize for Most Prolific Photographer goes to Griff Wigley. Griff’s pictures capture the mood of this firts day nicely.
The others of us are tagging our ODDC pics at flickr. And my shots from our post conference retreat in the woods are skeetermocracy.
This Radio NZ interview text like a teen features two teenagers who run a course in texting at their local high school community ed programme. Their students are mainly older folk who, often motivated by wanting to communicate with their grandchildren. They know that letters don’t get replies.
The teenagers describe various classroom challenges that will be familiar to adult educators and they describe their responses with the confidence of the enfranchised.
After nearly four years developing the underlying open source technology GroupServer, we decided that it’s too good to keep it to ourselves. Sure, there are variouls successful GroupServer sites but we figure that lots of people don’t want a whole installation, they just want some groups or a site. So we decided to build a site where they can have that. After many months of polishing the interface and building the ’shop’, OnlineGroups.Net is open for business.
OnlineGroups.Net allows you to create your own site and then add online groups. Sites and trial groups are free. Our online groups work equally via email and the web. There are other tools that provide this but we believe that OnlineGroups.Net has the most usable interface. What other tools don’t do is allow you to have your online groups on your own site. With a little help from us, OnlineGroups.Net sites can be completely customised.
We want to have tens of thousands of sites running on this service so that we can make GroupServer better faster, and build our specialised services business. So please, start a site and try out our online groups, tell us what you think of them and, if you like them, spread the good word (web feed).