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Tim

Like last year, the vast majority of session proposals for SXSW ‘11 in the Open Government category seem to focus on transparency and open data. Here are five sessions that look interesting from a participation perspective (including ours, of course):

Social Powered Community Planning – How Now
Open Government through Participation: Designing Successful Online Consultations
Rebooting Iceland: Crowdsourcing [...]

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Conversations Elsewhere

by Tim on August 27, 2010

Three interesting threads to highlight this week:

For the second time, NCDD ran a “featured member” post and attracted a few good questions and answers: Today’s Featured NCDD Member: Healthy Democracy Oregon
Over on the NCDD Forum, Matt Leighninger asks (great discussion, to be continued): Better to convene, or to aggregate? (and how?)
My own post on online/offline [...]

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How to Do a Citizens’ Assembly

by Tim on August 27, 2010

Over the past few weeks, Melbourne, Australia-based Ron Lubensky has written an series of posts explaining the concept of a Citizens’ Assembly and defending it against unfounded criticism:

July 23, 2010: Open letter to Julia Gillard, Prime Minister
July 26, 2010: Assembled citizens make sense
July 26, 2010: Another good op-ed supporting Citizens’ Assembly about climate policy
July 26, [...]

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Second Life and Empathy

by Tim on August 24, 2010

Reading up on the Knight Foundation’s Technology for Engagement Inititative as they’ve just announced their first round of five projects to receive funding, I came across Boston, MA-based Engagement Game Lab. From their mission statement:
The Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College is devoted to forging a place for games in urban civic life.  The faculty, [...]

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In preparation for the upcoming series of NCDD 2010 Regional Events (including the one right here in the Bay Area, October 29), Sandy Heierbacher (Director, NCDD) has asked for input on a question I know has been on the minds of many in the NCDD community for the past few years: “How can we best meld/combine [...]

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Certified

by Tim on August 23, 2010

I had the distinct pleasure to attend all five days of IAP2’s Certificate Training Course in Public Participation last month (check their training calendar for upcoming training opportunities in your area). As I mentioned at the time, it was time well spent!
As per the training materials, here’s what the three training units encompass:
Planning for Effective [...]

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A couple of months ago, I started an innocent thread on Govloop: OpenGov unconference in the SF Bay Area?

Speaking of barcamps, we should really do an unconference about this stuff in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I know at least a couple dozen people who have expressed interest (a number of whom were at OpenGovWest in [...]

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Conversations Elsewhere

by Tim on August 13, 2010

Just a few threads to point to this week, a couple of which prompted me to highlight IAP2’s core values and code of ethics:

Andrea di Maio covers a report by The Guardian on Programme for Government, I point out that this was not crowdsourcing and reiterate the list of possible reasons why this effort failed (in [...]

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As is the tradition with South by South West, they do a great job of allowing the community to help design the conference program. Their famous Panel Picker application went live this morning, and this is the session proposal we submitted:
Open Government through Participation: Designing Successful Online Consultations
Public participation—the process of engaging citizens and stakeholders in collaborative [...]

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Last week, San Francisco saw the 2010 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy, a five-day international event that included the two-day U.S. Conference on Initiative and Referendum.
Due to scheduling conflicts, I was only able to attend on two days and not for very long but made a few good connections nonetheless.
The San Francisco Declaration on [...]

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