Session proposals for SXSW ’10

Over the past few days, I have had a number of interesting conversations here at No Better Time about how the Open Government Initiative could have been improved.  I have a hunch that a significant level of improvement can be achieved in ways that have little if anything to do with the particular tools.  Hence my session idea: “How to do meaningful online participation using (almost) any tool!”

Some of the recommendations I have in mind:

• Manage expectations: e.g. communicate your desired outcomes, expected impact, limitations, risks etc.
• Follow basic facilitation techniques: e.g. communicate and enforce community ground rules, be present in the conversations
• Be consistent: e.g. stick to your ground rules, show steady levels of convener engagement etc.
• Make it easy to follow the conversations: e.g. compile daily digests, point people to high-quality content or emerging themes
• Give guidance: e.g. explain what output you’re looking for specifically, give instructions/training as needed

Needless to say, this isn’t a complete list and each item would have to be fleshed out in more detail.

Online participation is becoming increasingly popular.  However, a lot of the online tools out there are fairly limited and won’t work off the shelf. Folks who are trying this out for the first time will be running into the same issues.  This session is an effort to bring good practice to these efforts and help people get the most out of their online experiments.

I’d like to submit this session as part of a multi-disciplinary team and look forward to finding a few collaborators.

Related posts:

1. SXSW 2011: Future15 Session on Government and Technology
2. Five Participation-Related Topic Proposals at SXSW ’11
3. Intellitics SXSW 2011 Session Proposal: “Open Government through Participation: Designing Successful Online Consultations”

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