Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011: Vitalizing Democracy through Participation

June 23, 2010

Gütersloh, Germany-based Bertelsmann Stiftung, one of Germany’s largest foundations, just launched vitalizing-democracy.org, the theme site for their 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize.
From the welcome post: Welcome to our platform!

On 23 June 2010, the Bertelsmann Stiftung launched this website in order to search for prize-worthy projects for the Reinhard Mohn Prize 2011.
With the forthcoming prize in 2011, the Bertelsmann [...]

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E-Participation in Context (Part 1): Institutional Backing

June 17, 2010

This post is part of a series of discussion starters on contextual aspects of e-participation. Contributed by our student intern, they are inspired by his master thesis research.
In deciding if and what kind of e-participation processes to initiate, it is important to consider not only the capacity available on the side of the host or [...]

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Upcoming Blog Series: Contextual Aspects of E-Participation

June 16, 2010

Over the past few weeks, our student intern has been busy working on his final thesis. He’ll be sharing a series of discussion starters on the “contextual aspects of e-participation” here on this blog starting this week.
Please have a look and make sure to give him feedback in the comments. Thanks!

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Public Participation as Community Problem Solving

June 8, 2010

I’ll be attending the Online Community Unconference 2010 in Mountain View, CA tomorrow. Been meaning to go for a while now and the date finally worked out this year.
I believe there is a lot of potential in figuring out ways we can make online participation more community-oriented. There will be a ton of pretty bright folks there, [...]

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IAP2/NCDD NorCal Lunch Webinar on Stakeholder Score

June 2, 2010

Our local IAP2/NCDD group is doing another lunch webinar this Friday, June 4 at 12 noon:

About the Stakeholder Score Webinar
Environmental sustainability efforts not only reduce company risks, but are emerging as a source of competitive advantage. Sustainability is increasingly central to the operations and ongoing reporting of companies, and increasingly corporate executives are seeking meaningful [...]

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Live from ECR2010: Guiding Principles for Incorporating Technology and ECR


May 26, 2010

I’m in Tucson, AZ this week attending the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution’s sixth national ECR Conference: ECR2010: Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution – Evolving to Meet New Opportunities.
I had been eyeing this opportunity ever since I first heard about the conference back in October of last year. A number of people highly recommended it, and their [...]

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Freenode Channel Guidelines: Blueprint for E-Participation Ground Rules

May 21, 2010

I was just playing around with Freenode IRC (trying to set up a permanent #edem channel), when I came across their channel guidelines. We’re still drafting our community ground rules for Zilino, and I found these very applicable:

Channel Guidelines
IRC is a low-bandwidth method of communication, in comparison with physical presence. Many of the cues of [...]

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In Search of the Perfect Participant Briefing

May 15, 2010

I’ve previously written about the importance of expectation management as an essential piece to successful public participation.
With Zilino, our goal is to support the project organizers in managing participants’ expectations from beginning to end. Specifically, we want conveners and facilitators to be very transparent about the level of influence participants can reasonably expect to have on the decision making process.
As [...]

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IAP2 Core Values Awards 2010 Call for Submissions

May 10, 2010

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) today announced submissions for their 2010 Core Values Awards are now open.  From the President’s email:

I am looking forward to reading the innovations in the 2010 Core Values Awards submissions. These awards are an opportunity to showcase what is leading the practice so that others experience, learn and [...]

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We’re Launching Zilino in Alpha

April 30, 2010

It took us a while, but we’re finally in the process of launching the first alpha release of Zilino, our new web application for online consultations. Zilino allows organizations (private, non-profit, government etc.) to engage their people (members, citizens, residents, other constituents etc.) in problem solving and decision making.
The prototype went live earlier in April and [...]

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