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- Local Issues Forums - E-Democracy.Org's Online Townhalls in US, UK, and now NZ
Local Issues Forums - E-Democracy.Org's Online Townhalls in US, UK, and now NZ
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
The online townhall made real where citizens have a say and make a difference locally.
Supporting organization:
E-Democracy.Org
URL:
http://e-democracy.org
City:
Minneapolis, St. Paul, Winona, Roseville - Brighton & Hove, Newham, Bristol - Christchurch
State/Region:
Minnesota - England - Canterbury
Country:
U.S. - U.K. - N.Z.
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Can you imagine your community without a public park? No. What about the lack of "any time, anywhere" community participation through an active, civil, agenda-setting online forum dedicated to local public issues? Where citizens using their real names raise issues, elected officials read and sometimes respond and topics are picked up by the local media all the time.
While it is hard to imagine something that doesn't exist, we want the answer to also become "no - of course we have a local public space online." This is our goal for all communities and our reality in 8 local communities across Minnesota, England, and as of April 1st in the Canterbury region of New Zealand.
E-Democracy.Org created the world's first election oriented website in 1994. People kept talking on our e-mail forum when the election was over. In 1998, we went local with the Minneapolis Issues Forum. As an all volunteer intiative we spread slowly. Then we were "discovered" by the UK government and imported to England. With a 60 page guidebook, open source GroupServer technology (the "equitable" e-mail list/web forum "holy grail"), informational videos, and new pilot forums interest is growing in our model: http://e-democracy.org/if
Sustainability (financial) model:
By focusing on an extremely low cost volunteer-based model - that requires real local determination - we' ve been sustainable. Each forum requires a local steering committee, a volunteer forum manager, and 100 initial participants to launch - so we only open forums with the critical mass required to sustain original conversation.
Our challenge with increased demand for new forums is to scale and stay sustainable. With Steven Clift - http://publicus.net - recently selected as an Ashoka Fellow, our focus is on introducing the "pledge drive" model to meet the increased shared costs of forum development and support. This will allow us to transition core 24 x 7 volunteers to paid support. We also generate revenue through hosting sponsored online events - like online candidate debates - see http://e-democracy.org/e-debates .
Potential obstacles:
Broadband Blinders - Folks who are always online are perhaps most likely to be interested in launching new Issues Forums, but they are often anti-e-mail and blog centric.
We believe in technology choice - where participants may equitably participate via e-mail or the web. Without the invasiveness of e-mail and option for those who hate e-mail to turn it off - it is extremely difficult to keep a "common interest" geographically-based online community together. When folks think Internet, they think global and special interest. We are the exact opposite.
Blogs - To Technorati our forums look like a massive multi-editor blog. The style of national political blogs is more speakers corner or democratized punditry and part of a partisan "virtual civil war." Our model promotes two-way conversation which is far more democratic at the local level than expecting everyone to have their own blog (blog commentors are second class citizens) to be highly visable. This is not the usual perspective among "web 2.0" folks, but from our decade+ experience the "forum" model is to be built upon and made technically more blog like for aggregators.
Resource Needs:
Technology for New Forums - We've focused on solid technology for operational forums - now we need tools that assist our start-up process. This includes a tool that allows people to say, "My name is X, I live here, and I want to participate in my community" that allows us to determine where there is growing interest. As people cluster locally, additional technology would guide the -group- through the steering committee, charter drafting (forum scope), forum manager selection, and the intensive recruitment process we require.
We also want to encourage more investment and developer contributions to the GPL GroupServer tool- http://groupserver.org .
Key Milestones:
* Finalize 2007-2009 strategic plan. See project blog: http://e-democracy.org/if
* Gather input from local steering committees and finalize revenue model.
* Execute first round of pledge drive in our largest forums (Minneapolis has ~800 registered members).
* Integrate current GroupServer feature enhancements and educate local forum managers on new file sharing, tagging, and other features.
* Develop technology that supports rapid expansion of new forums which ensuring quality and group cohension around our non-profit, non-partisan, strictly issue-neutral convening mission.
* Build foundatoin so we can spread organically to 20 communities before we seek the investment required to scale to 100 of more places.
Project Summary:
Imagine the online townhall that actually works in a local community.
For local democracy to survive and thrive, we must create viable "any time, anywhere" participation options that complement time and place restricted forms of public involvement. A quiet model, the Issues Forum, has evolved over the last decade and is now making a splash.
For more: http://e-democracy.org/if
Comments
Downing St Petition: UK Local Authority Councillors must reply
E-Democracy is on the right track
I have been keeping an eye on this website because I believe the raw power of the internet has yet to make its full presence known within our present political structures. E-Democracy isn't there yet, of course, none are, but it is on the right track. All it needs is some hardcore political application and our representative democracy will never be the same.
ex animo
davidfarrar