From:
Steven Clift
Date:
Oct 09 18:16 UTC
Short link
The other day I put this out on the main Newswire and on the e-democracy
Facebook group I run. To take this forward threshold interest we need is 100
members by the end of the week and we are now at 91.
If you know of one or two people who would like to take part, pass this along.
Thanks,
Steven Clift
Subject: [DW] Are you in Europe? Join an online exchange on e-democracy
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:27:56 -0500
At the EDem2008 conference in Austria last week the possibility of leveraging
the strong base of European DoWire.Org members to connect with the many
pan-European e-democracy networks arose. Next week I'll be in Madrid to speak
to the Council of Europe's Forum for the Future of Democracy -
http://www.coe.int/T/E/Integrated_Projects/Democracy/ - so I thought I'd let
you decide if there is an opportunity for us all.
Like the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange - http://dowire.org/uk - there
seems to be a space for a simple e-mail list for informal exchange among
practitioners (from gov/civil soc/media/politics) and researchers. Tom
Steinberg (MySociety.Org) and I quietly seeded a space months ago, but we
haven't had time to build it deliberatively. So instead, after consulting with
Tom, I've decided to open it up widely based on the extremely successful and
highly interactive UK and Ireland forum experience.
...
If you are not a registered http://groups.dowire.org member (or if your e-mail
address is different than the one you joined under), then visit here to join:
http://groups.dowire.org/groups/europe
If we jump up to 100 members this week (as a vote of interest) then we can take
it the next step and promote the e-list in Madrid to the 47 nations gathered.
It is only worth doing this (as an unfunded, independent space) if it is
designed to leverage the more formal networking efforts of Pep-Net (mostly
practitioners, blog-based) http://www.pep-net.eu , DemoNet (mostly researchers)
http://www.demo-net.org , Momentum (EU-funded efforts)
http://www.ep-momentum.eu , and the eParticipation (social network) at
http://www.epractice.eu/community/eParticipation . I've spoken with people
involved in these networks and they are already generating huge amounts of
useful information, but the missing link seems to be active and informal online
discussion.
I'd love to see folks in those projects use the e-list to bring people onto
their growing sites by forwarding "what's new" as well as give anyone "doing"
e-democracy across Europe a place to ask questions of their peers. Because
DoWire.Org is a global network dating back to 1998, this will also promote the
transfer of good ideas beyond Europe.
The honest truth is that "bridging" online communities require the invasiveness
of e-mail (as a default that can be turned off) where people in transit can
catch up on their mobile and zip off a thought or two simply by pressing reply.
My guess is that if 200 people join the network, there will be a critical mass
where rarely will there be a week without at least one topic of discussion
keeping our interest.
Steven Clift
DoWire.Org