These were our three most popular posts in January:

• Response to White House Request for Input: What Are the Most Effective Web Tools for Public Participation?
• 2012 Event and Conference Radar
• What Is Public Participation?

Thanks for following along, everyone!

Like last year, we’re taking a quick moment to look back at the topics that stood out over the past twelve months. Here are our top 10 most popular posts of 2011:

• February 14: Calgary Budget Consultation: 13 Design Principles
• February 21: CRS Report on Open Government Initiative
• March 7: How To Create Policy on a Wiki
• March 12: SXSW Future 15: Designing Successful Online Consultations
• March 28: New Guide from NAPA: Tools for Online Idea Generation
• April 21: Micro-Participation In Online Consultations
• May 7: What Is Civic Engagement?
• October 13: Tree Bressen: The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Consensus Process
• October 19: Occupy Research Wiki
• November 28: 2012 Event and Conference Radar

Thanks for all the smart, timely comments we’ve received here and elsewhere. Always much appreciated!

A couple of months ago, we set up our Intellitics company page on Google+, a new social networking thingy from Google.

It’s still early days for this service, but more people and organizations are joining every day so things are bound to get more interesting over time.

If you’re already using Google+, feel free to circle us. Thanks!

2011 finished strong, with December being our second best blog month of the year (our third best ever). Here are the three most popular posts:

• November 28, 2011: 2012 Event and Conference Radar
• December 6, 2011: White House Seeking Guidance on E-Participation
• July 22, 2010: What Is Public Participation?

As usual, thank you for commenting here or elsewhere. Always a pleasure!

Event calendars are popular! Our small list has quickly grown to 24 entries and easily made the list of top posts for November:

1. What Is Public Participation?
2. 2012 Event and Conference Radar
3. Occupy Research Wiki

Thanks!

Here are October’s top posts, including two fresh ones:

• What Is Public Participation?
• Tree Bressen: The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Consensus Process
• Occupy Research Wiki

Thanks for reading!

I’m quoted in the Economist today:

Government by (all) the people

[...]

Successful examples of legislation by the masses are rare. Most people don’t know how to write laws. Tim Bonnemann, the founder of Intellitics, an American firm specialising in public-participation tools, says a better method is to canvas views widely but use a small team to write a draft. The hard part is not the technology (a simple online discussion forum is adequate) but creating a fair and transparent process that assures people their voices have been heard.

For a more detailed take, check out our three-post series from March of this year:

• How To Create Policy on a Wiki
• Blast from the Past: Experiments in Wiki-Based Political Discourse from Way Back When
• Challenges for Wiki-Based Consultations

If you speak Russian and find the time to review the Wikivote.ru site, please share your thoughts in the comments. Thanks!

Here are our top posts from September:

• What Is Government 2.0?
• What Is Public Participation?
• White House Petitions: A Small Sample of Popular Feedback

Some good comments, too. Thanks, everyone!

August turned out to be unexpectedly quiet. Here are the three most popular posts (all from the archives):

• What Is Public Participation?
• What Is Public Participation?
• New York Times Budget Puzzle

Here’s to a more productive September! Maybe there’s a few interesting tidbits to report back from Germany.

Here are July’s most popular posts:

• What Is Public Participation?
• Public Participation: It’s the Law!
• New York Times Budget Puzzle

Onwards to a record-breaking August.

Over on the ParticipateDB blog, we ask: What’s Next for ParticipateDB?

If you’ve been following the project and find it a useful addition to your list of online resources, please let us know what we can and should do to make the site better. A few good ideas have already been added in the comments.

Thank you!

Once again, here are last month’s three most popular posts:

• What’s Next California: What Should The Observers Be Monitoring?
• White House To Seek Input (Again): A Few Basic Tips to Make It Work
• What Is Public Participation?

Thanks for the comments, everyone!

I was invited to contribute one of three short op-eds about the upcoming Deliberative Poll “What’s Next California?” for Zócalo Public Square, an online magazine on civic issues based in Los Angeles, CA. You can read all three of them here (scroll to the bottom for mine): Hurdles Remain, But It’s a Start

The second of the three, by Tim Cavanaugh of Reason Magazine, was refreshingly negative. Excerpt:

By combining polling with top-down instruction from a panel of “experts,” deliberative pollsters hope to determine how voting would change if voters’ opinions could be forced into compliance with establishmentarian thinking – sorry, I meant to say, “if people had opportunity to become more informed and more engaged by the issues,” as Stanford’s Center for Deliberative Democracy puts it.

[...]

Voters don’t need more be-ins with panels of self-interested experts. They see their taxes going up. They see the ever-expanding number of “For Lease” signs in their neighborhoods. They see the state economy falling apart under the misrule of the very same good-government types who organize events like this. And they are either resigning themselves to the collapse of a state government that plays no positive role in their lives, or (in increasing numbers) fleeing the state for places like Texas where the government does not prey upon them quite so eagerly.

Mr. Cavanaugh added a short follow-up on his blog, which has generated a number of equally negative comments.

Setting aside tone for a minute, these comments contain a number of very valid questions and concerns. The conveners should see every negative comment or mischaracterization of the event’s intentions or structure as an opportunity to clarify their message, address concerns and, ultimately, foster trust. The follow-up appeared some time mid-day yesterday, but so far it seems the What’s Next California team has yet to engage.

Following a slow April, things did start to pick up again in May. Our three most popular posts:

• What Is Government 2.0?
• Micro-Participation In Online Consultations
• New York Times Budget Puzzle

Onwards to June!

April turned out to be one of those low-yield blog months, and none of the most recent posts were able to score against the archives. Here are the three most popular ones:

• What Is Government 2.0?
• New York Times Budget Puzzle
• What Is Public Participation?

Let’s hope things pick up again in May.

Almost forgot to list our three most popular posts for February. Here they are:

• New York Times Budget Puzzle
• Calgary Budget Consultation: 13 Design Principles
• What Is Government 2.0?

The March leader board looks quite different so far.

For the third month in a row, our coverage of the New York Times’ Budget Puzzle topped our charts. Here are our three most popular posts for January 2011:

• New York Times Budget Puzzle
• Six Questions For ExpertNet
• What Is Government 2.0?

A bunch of interesting topics are already lining up for February. Stay tuned!

It took a couple of attempts (see here, here), but now it looks like web-based public participation will finally get some exposure at SXSW this year. Here’s the announcement:

Future15 Lineup for 2011: Shorter is Better

At the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival, we launched a series of short-form panel content called Future15s. These fast-paced sessions proved to be very popular with attendees — so we are excited to bring them back for the 2011 event. Posted after the jump is the list of these Future15 sessions for this March in Austin. Each title reflects one 12-minute solo speaking slot, which is followed by a short, three-minute break — then the next speaker begins his or her presentation. All SXSW Future15 speaking slots within a given timeslot cover different angles and approaches to the one particular theme.

Government and Technology, Saturday, March 12

• Reaching Hispanics Through Government Mobile Apps (Laura Godfrey, http://GobiernoUSA.gov)
• How to Fix Government (Jennifer Pahlk , Code for America)
• Zombies! America’s Educational System Eats Brains & Critical Thinking (Tanya Tarr, Texas AFT (American Federation of Teachers)
• Can Government Teams Make Government Services More User Friendly (Drew Scherz, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts)
• Global Citizenship = World Peace? (Lovisa Williams, U.S. Department of State)
• Startup.gov: Reworking Government Through Technical Innovation (Sarah Granger, PublicEdge)
• The Next Rocket Scientist: You (Nicholas Skytland, NASA)
• Lifecycles Tech & Society: Is 14yr Olds too Old? (Shireen Mitchell, Women Wired In/Digital Sisters Inc.)
• What The Government Can Learn From Amazon (Adria Richards, ButYoureAGirl.com)
• Open Government through Participation: Designing Successful Online Consultations (Tim Bonnemann, Intellitics, Inc.)

Should be a fun couple of hours, don’t miss!

Now that the new year is already well under way, we wanted to take a brief moment to look back on 2010. Here on this blog, we’ve written extensively about public participation, examined its relation to crowdsourcing, and have monitored and reviewed a number of noteworthy Open Government efforts.

With well over one hundred entries, 2010 has been our most active blog year yet. By our rough count, these were the most popular posts:

• January 3: Crowdsourcing and Public Participation II
• January 7: Los Angeles Budget Challenge: When Surveys Won’t Take No For An Answer
• January 20: GSA to Offer IdeaScale to Federal Agencies
• February 6: OpenGov Open Feedback Firehose
• February 7: Ten Things to Monitor As Agencies Invite Input On Open Government Plans
• July 26: Book Review: Open Government
• August 24: Public Participation: Ten Simple Ideas for Better Online/Offline Integration
• August 24: Second Life and Empathy
• September 25: Public Participation: Four Common Misconceptions
• November 14: New York Times Budget Puzzle

Thanks for reading, commenting and tweeting, everyone! We look forward to another year of insightful conversations.