Archive for the 'Events' Category

Announcing Project Z

These are the slightly modified slides from a quick presentation I gave last night at Web Monday Silicon Valley in San Francisco. It’s a first high-level introduction to our first product, a web application for problem solving and decision making in large groups.

We hope to have the initial pieces of an alpha version in place some time over the coming weeks.

Tools for Participation: June 26-29, 2008 in Berkeley, CA

Interesting conference coming up right in our backyard: Tools for Participation

At the dawn of the 21st century humankind faces challenges of profound proportions. The ability of people around the world to discuss, work, make decisions, and take action collaboratively is one of the most important capabilities for addressing these challenges.

Researchers, scholars, activists, advocates, artists, educators, technologists, designers, students, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, journalists and citizens are rising to these challenges in many ways, including, devising new communication technologies that build on the opportunities afforded by the Internet and other new (as well as old) media. The interactions between technological and social systems are of special and central importance in this area.

DIAC-08 combines CPSR’s 11th DIAC symposium with the third Conference on Online Deliberation. The joint conference is intended to provide a platform and a forum for highlighting socio-technological opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls in the area of community and civic action. Technology enhanced community action ranges from informal communities of practice to democratic governance of formal organizations to large social movements.

We are especially interested in technology development that is already being tested or fielded. We are also interested in theoretical and other intellectual work that helps build understanding and support for future efforts. In addition to exploring social technology, we must at the same time understand and advance the social context of technology, including its design, access, use, policy and evaluation, as well as intellectual frameworks and perspectives that inform technological as well as social innovation including requirements, case studies, critique and self-reflection, and infrastructures for future work.

Our areas of focus include but are not limited to: deliberative and collaborative systems, e-democracy and e-participation, mobilization and organization, negotiation, consultation, sustainability, community support systems, open source models, human rights, ecological awareness, conflict resolution, justice, transparency systems, media and civic journalism, media literacy, power research, citizen science, economic development and opportunity, peace and reconciliation, infrastructure development, policy, education, community networks, research and development for civil society, social software, virtual communities and civic intelligence.

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Intellitics will be there.

Intellitics is a BarCampBlock sponsor

This past weekend, Barcamp celebrated its 2-year anniversary at BarCampBlock in Palo Alto, CA.

For those who’ve never heard of the concept:

BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

From the BarCampBlock press release:

Who should be there? Anyone working on a new startup that wants to get some great feedback. Anyone looking for talent. Anyone talented looking for work. Anyone looking to invest in brilliant new ideas. Anyone looking to find partners for their brilliant new ideas. Anyone who wants to practice a presentation s/he is working on. Anyone who has a passion for blogging, wikis, design, coding and the web in general. Everyone is welcome. Everyone is encouraged to present. It’s totally free and an excellent source of what is hot, new and upcoming.

With a contribution of $100, Intellitics is a proud sponsor of BarCampBlock, long before we even incorporate. It’s our way of saying thank you to the many who — at previous barcamps or similar open events (and often without their knowing it) — have contributed so generously to the ideas we’re trying to implement. If you happen to have been at any one of these events and were involved in our discussions about civic participation and how to bring dialogue and deliberation to the web, this donation was for you:

Yep, it’s all about giving back.

For more information about BarCampBlock, read the blogs, browse the pictures, or follow up on the session notes.