Please pass this on to those political bloggers covering the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota (the home base of E-Democracy.Org). For a highly interactive locals' view check out the following local online Issues Forums: St. Paul - http://e-democracy.org/stpaul Minneapolis - http://e-democracy.org/mpls Minnesota Politics - http://e-democracy.org/mn-politics Lots of discussion and reaction to yesterday's police raids on the anarchist "RNC Welcoming Committee" and more. Also, if you know of any journalists interested in the ramifications of the "e-campaign" after the election and increased public expectations for "e-governance," send them my way: http://stevenclift.com - 612-203-5181 - and in particular - http://publicus.net/articles.html Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org
Fyi - Steve
From: http://groups.nten.org/vb/showthread.php?p=677#post677 Make History! Seeking a Developer to Build the E-Democracy Time Capsule #1 Old Yesterday, 08:04 AM Do you believe in the power of the Web to give ordinary people better access to the political process? Can you develop a smart-looking blog using WordPress? Would you like to make some history? If so, please read on... The DC OneWebDay Planning Committee is seeking a savvy developer to build and launch a new initiative -- the E-Democracy Time Capsule. OneWebDay OWD) is a global event held September 22 celebrating the Web and highlighting key issues about the future of the Internet. The theme for this year’s event is online political participation with a focus on what we have called a new “town square.” In line with this theme, the DC OWD Planning Committee is creating an E-Democracy Time Capsule that will go live online on August 22, one month before OWD. We envision a site where anyone, from all corners of the United States and the world, can make history by contributing text, images, sound, and video to a WordPress blog describing their favorite E-Democracy tools, letters to the future about their hopes for Web-powered politics, and profiles of E-Democracy Heroes. On One Web Day, we will "close" the virtual Time Capsule. We are working to find a partner, such as the National Archives, who will receive and archive the Capsule until it is opened again on OWD 2020. If all goes according to plan, thousands of people will visit the site while it is open, hundreds will make deposits, and the closing ceremony will draw wide local and national press and blog coverage. We stand at a crossroad in the history of online political participation. The future is uncertain. Policy decisions concerning digital inclusion, net neutrality, and online privacy and security will be made in the coming months and years. We would like to ensure that when the virtual Time Capsule is reopened on OWD in 2020, the new town square delivers on its promise to become a thriving marketplace of ideas where anyone can participate unhindered by a lack of access to the tools and skills they need to add their voice to the political dialog. What we need to make this happen: 1-2 WordPress developers to build the Time Capsule by August 22. We believe this will take less than 20 hours. Currently, we have a modest but growing budget to compensate our developers, who will enjoy wide exposure as we promote the initiative, including a full page on the Time Capsule site to showcase their work. What we have: a domain and server space; a fully developed marketing and outreach plan, requirements list, and wireframe; and a dedicated planning committee of 14 individuals representing organizations including BroadbanCensus.com, Center for Democracy and Technology, COmmon Cause, Media and Democracy Coalition, New America Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Sunlight Foundation, dedicated to making OWD a big event, supporting and promoting our developer. To learn more, contact Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein at 301 404-8570 or <email obscured>.
More cross-posting. Steven Clift Subject: oGosh! IRC Meeting Aug 16 4pm EDT Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:55:15 -0400 From: Josh Tauberer <<email obscured>> Reply-To: <email obscured> To: <email obscured>, <email obscured>, <email obscured>, "Open(Data).Open[Govt]" <<email obscured>> (Apologies for four-way cross-posting!) Hi all, A current interest of mine is now how to build a larger, coherent developer community around U.S. civic-technology projects of the types we all work on. Something like channeling the developer power that is out there that probably would want to work on these projects, in an open-source project style, if only they knew about what interesting things there are to do. There are a bunch of people thinking about a developer community, each of us perhaps taking a stab at this in different ways, so here's a stab from me. I'm holding a meeting on IRC to talk about civic-technology projects, on Saturday, August 16 at 4pm Eastern time. The agenda will be a mix between seeing what various civic technology projects are up to (GovTrack, OpenCongress, and any others run by people who show up), and getting new people involved in ongoing projects. So, for instance, even if no newcomers show up, the meeting will be useful for the old-timers like us just to catch up with each other's recent work. But if we get some newcomers, we can talk about how to get them on-board helping an existing project. As for the name "oGosh!"-- A couple of months ago I created the Facebook group oGosh: Open Government Open Source Hacking. (For the ODOG list members, it's a hat tip to that conference and a joke Micah made at the beginning if the acronym had been OGOD.) The theme of the group is to be a wide net for any technology project aimed at civics, in the U.S., like the usual legislative transparency to, if I can eventually contact the people, things like election transparency. Despite the name, I don't mean to specifically exclude closed source projects. Especially for this IRC meeting. It's just a name. It was tricky finding something catchy aimed at the developer side of things. Also as for the time- I'm doing this on a Saturday in the hopes of making it more accessible to newcomers. We'll see how that works out. The chat will be in the #transparency channel on Freenode. For more information on the meeting (and on how to get to the chat), see: http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OGosh http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=45606565313 Suggestions for agenda topics are most welcome either to me directly (off-list) or by revising the wiki page above. Hope to see you there.
For those in DC, definitely someone to meet who is doing some great work ... Steve Subject: [openhouseproject] In DC? Want to see Politicus? Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 06:54:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Sarah Schacht <<email obscured>> Reply-To: <email obscured> To: <email obscured> Hi All, I'm Sarah Schacht, executive director of Knowledge As Power. I'm in DC today and tomorrow and have some time between meetings to show folks Knowledge As Power's new email management system for legislators called Politicus. It's a piece of technology that was funded by the Sunlight Foundation and has been getting a really good response from legislators. The system integrates into KAP's existing legislation tracking system for citizens. If you're interested in meeting up, I've got time this afternoon between 3 and 4:30 and tomorrow before noon. Send me an email at sarahschacht at mac.com or give me a call on my cell at 206.909.2684. Thanks, Sarah Schacht "Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it." -Norman Mailer, 2003
See: http://www.americanpublicmedia.org/engage08/electionstories/ Subject: Idea Generator: Election Stories Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:02:23 -0500 From: Robideau, Brad <<email obscured>> Greetings from American Public Media, producer and distributor of public radio programs, including */Marketplace/*. I thought you might be interested to learn about the Idea Generator: Election Stories produced by American Public Media. The Idea Generator: Election Stories is an online activity that allows the public to help shape election coverage. There is no shortage of election coverage this year. But is the media pursuing the stories that matter to voters? Using the Idea Generator forum, users can identify the stories or issues they would like to see covered. They can weigh in with the issues most important to them and let the news media know what angles on the election are missing. In addition to informing the public radio election coverage, users can also discuss and expand the ideas of others. Ideas can be sorted in a variety of ways—by keyword, geography, or list—to provide a range of entry points into the discussion. The Idea Generator: Election Stories can be accessed at http://www.americanpublicmedia.org/engage08/electionstories/. You’ll also find instructions on how you can embed the widget on your Web site. The Idea Generator: Election Stories is part of Engage 08, American Public Media's collection of 2008 election coverage resources. These resources include interactive tools that provide unique ways in which to educate, inform and entertain a motivated electorate. Please feel free to share the Idea Generator: Election Stories with your friends, colleagues and other interested individuals and organizations. If you have any questions, please let me know. I hope you and your readers find the Idea Generator: Election Stories a useful and informative tool. Thanks for your time and consideration. Warm regards, Brad Robideau National Public Relations Manager American Public Media 651-290-1113 <email obscured> <mailto:<email obscured>> American Public Media is the largest owner and operator of public radio stations, producing and distributing premier programming, including A Prairie Home Companion^® and Marketplace,^® and reaching more than 15 million listeners weekly. <mailto:<email obscured>>
The Shame of being an American This is a compilation of articles written by right thinking Americans against American invasion of Iraq. They tell us why they are ashamed of being American in the "wake of plunder and flames" and also for "racist imagery and humiliation and the color of Abu Ghraib". Name of author :M.A.Hussain ISBN : 978-81-905861- 1-5 Download it here in pdf format: http://avantgardepu blications. com/shame_ on_america.pdf http://apostatesofislamagainstameri ca.com/shame_ on_america.pdf
If you'd like to join a small gathering of "e-democracy" interested folks and
E-Democracy.Org volunteers in Chicago over lunch on Monday, July 21, RSVP at:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Chicago
In addition to local projects, I'll be sure to mention the Open House Project
as
a model for similar state-level activities and the open-government Google
Group.
Steven Clift
http://e-democracy.org
P.S. The local-state-national online group for those interested in non-partisan
democracy online projects is growing. Join us: http://dowire.org/us
Anyone here have contacts with the Joyce or MacArthur foundations? I'll be in Chicago on July 21 and hope to connect with foundations interested in civic engagement. Thanks, Steven Clift <email obscured> E-Democracy.Org
Just a quick reminder that a small group will be meeting to discuss approaches to Connecting Americans Online in NYC Wednesday morning. Details from: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Uniting_Americans_Online_discussion_in_New_York_City Uniting Americans Online discussion in New York City I'd like to invite those interested in discussing the topic "Uniting Americans Online - Building Community Engagement from the Net-Election" on June 25, 2008 from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. to RSVP via the wiki (or text me 6122035181). (Gotham Cafe, Holiday Inn Midtown 440 W 57th St.) Join our discussion "local up" ideas for leveraging public involvement from this amazing yet highly partisan e-campaign for the White House into sustained online civic engagement that brings Americans of all political stripes together. People are getting fired up by the e-campaign, but what will they do when the election is over? With the right and left political blogospheres in a pitched battle to influence the mass media and Congress nationally, is there really an opportunity for Politics 2.0 or Governance 2.0? How can we leverage the millions of people signed up with national campaigns online into local opportunities where people work together across political lines? How might the tools and huge networks created to win the Presidency be turned over to those working to make their streets safe, improve their local school, or involve people in local issues? If this sounds like an interesting topic, join us. The rough agenda will include a quick update from E-Democracy.Org about the expansion of Issues Forums (online town halls) with a chance to offer feedback as well as some highlights from the recent neighbors online discussion in DC. The selected location is the Gotham Cafe, Holiday Inn Midtown 440 W 57th St.
I've written one of my most important articles in years: http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/52 Sidewalks for Democracy Online Steven L. Clift Government websites don’t have sidewalks, newspaper racks, public hearing rooms, hallways or grand assemblies. There are no public forums or meeting places in the heart of representative democracy online. The question that this essay will ask and answer is not what can we do to redesign democracy for the Internet Age, but, rather, why have we decided to delete democracy from the most visited interface citizens have with “their” government? And what are we going to do about it? Read the full article or download in PDF from: http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/52 Other articles: http://publicus.net/articles.html ... Along these lines, I invite people in the United States interested in doing something about this to join my non-partisan online community of practice for those in non-profits, government, media, and e-politics called the US Democracy Online Exchange: http://dowire.org/us (It is modeled after a similar space for e-minded democracy builders from the UK: http://dowire.org/uk ) ... The full Rebooting Democracy Series looks to be an interesting read: http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/ It's Time to Reboot America. The Personal Democracy Forum presents an anthology of forty-four essays brimming with the hopes of reenergizing, reorganizing, and reorienting our government for the Internet Age. How would completely reorganizing our system of representation work? Is it possible to redesign our government with open doors and see-through walls? How can we leverage the exponential power of many-to-many deliberation for the common good? Click on an individual author's essay, download the entire anthology, or buy the book. However you dive in, join our conversation about these ideas here and at http://www.personaldemocracy.com ! Esther Dyson wrote the forward: http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/29
While I disagree with the premise that government agencies have an either or choice - a great, usable website OR providing access to the underlying data so third parties can make better use of it and ultimately deliver it to more people, it highlights a ground swell of interest among a new generation of digital democracy builders knocking on the doors of power. In short, I expect that we will see public database after database open its back doors by choice to secure competitive relevancy in the eyes of the public and legislative funders or by force through the rule of law. - Steven Clift See: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1138083 Subject: Paper: "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:53:48 -0400 From: Josh Tauberer <<email obscured>> To: <email obscured>, <email obscured> Open House and Open Gov Data friends, The guys over at Princeton's new Center for Information Technology Policy wrote a really great paper for the Yale Journal of Law & Technology on the role data should have, compared to websites, in government. It articulates a point that I think many of us subconsciously have had in mind: "The new administration should specify that the federal government’s primary objective as an online publisher is to provide data that is easy for others to reuse, rather than to help citizens use the data in one particular way or another." And they suggest an interesting way to push that forward: "The policy route to realizing this principle is to require that federal government websites retrieve the underlying data using the same infrastructure that they have made available to the public. Such a rule incentivizes government bodies to keep this infrastructure in good working order, and ensures that private parties will have no less an opportunity to use public data than the government itself does. The rule prevents the situation, sadly typical of government websites today, in which governmental interest in presenting data in a particular fashion distracts from, and thereby impedes, the provision of data to users for their own purposes." I think this is a worthwhile addition to the opengovdata and publicmarkup.org policy documents --- if not as a direct recommendation (because I think it may be too much to ask for in a grand form) then noted as a long-term goal or (in terms of the second paragraph I quoted) as a benchmark, a concrete way to tell whether data is open. The full citation is: Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P and Felten, Edward W, "Government Data and the Invisible Hand" (2008). Yale Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1138083 I've gotten David, the first author (ehm, and long-time friend), to join both of these lists, and he's interested in helping hash out good policy recommendations with us.
Let's give Lee and the Pew Internet project some hearty global feedback via their open survey! Go here: ***http://www.psra.com/polcom.html* and us the Login ID: 1001 Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org DoWire.Org *From:* Lee Rainie ** *Subject:* a Pew Internet survey about politics and the internet Dear Steve: I’m writing to see if you’d be interested in having your email list / listserv folks participate in an online survey about political information and communication. This is a convenience survey -- the people who are interested in it will take it and the people who aren’t won’t take it – so it is not a representative sampling and we will not report the results as statistically-significant findings. Our main purpose is to gather up qualitative details about how politically-engaged citizens get news and information, how they assess the information they find, and how they act on the information. If the stories we get are great and revealing we will be including them in some upcoming reports we’re doing on politics and the internet and I’ll try to find ways to cite them in the book I’m doing with sociologist Barry Wellman about the new networked era. The survey should take about 10-15 minutes to complete and it can be found here: *http://www.psra.com/polcom.html* If for some reason that url doesn’t work, respondents can also try here: *http://vovici.com/wsb.dll/11719/polcom.htm * * * People on your list should use the PIN: 1001 If you or people on your list have any questions about this survey please feel free to contact me: <email obscured> <mailto:<email obscured>>. As always, I am very grateful for your interest in our work and I’m impressed with what you do. Thanks, Lee Director Pew Internet & American Life Project 1615 L Street NW Suite 700 Washington, DC 20036
From: http://www.igotf.org Attending? Please <email obscured>. CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Independent Government Observers Task Force IGOtf.org Gleacher Conference Center University of Chicago August 4-5 I A NON-CONFERENCE I ORGANIZER Public.Resource.Org LOCALHOST EveryBlock PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS EFF CALI Creative Commons SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS Omidyar Network Sunlight Foundation Google Yahoo! Independent Government Observers The Internet has created a new generation of individuals and institutes that practice the time-honored tradition of observing and reporting on the activities of government. These are reporters in the sense of court reporters, not journalists, auditors as in independent investigators rather than CPAs. The classic independent observer is the court reporter, such as Henry Wheaton and Richard Peters, two businessmen in the early days of the Republic who took it upon themselves to collect, print, and sell the decisions of courts. Indeed, it was a business spat between those two that led to the classic pronouncement by the Supreme Court on works of government: The Court is unanimously of opinion that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions, and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right. Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834) The new breed of government observers span all walks of life. In addition to a vibrant commercial sector, there are increasingly a number of nonprofit, academic, and individual citizen efforts. * In Oregon, student reporters at Willamette University provide same-day summaries of all the opinions of U.S. and Oregon Supreme Courts decisions, and weekly summaries of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decisions. * At the University of Arkansas, students have created a National Agriculture Law Reporter. * Marcia Oddi, a sole practitioner and independent recorder of Indiana Law, won the Excellence in Public Information and Education Award from the Indiana Judges Association for her work. The movement to observe the working of government extend to the legislative and executive branches as well and operate at all levels of government from municipal and special purpose local districts to the state capitols and Washington, D.C. At the local level, small businesses such as EveryBlock have taken it upon themselves to report crime, restaurant inspection, and other vital statistics. One might argue that providing a comprehensive, archival, easy-to-use interface to the decisions and publications of government is in fact the job of government. But, transparency and sunlight not only keep our government accountable, they make it better. Independently run observers of government can make government more effective by providing: * Better Presentation. Access to crime statistics, one of the most important feeds from local government, is being provided using far more innovative and intuitive fashion by independent observers, such as Stamen Design for the City of Oakland and EveryBlock for Chicago and other cities. * A More Comprehensive Archive. The Internet Archive has been scanning millions of pages of Government Printing Office documents, digital data that the government does not possess. Likewise, the U.S. judiciary does not possess a digital archive of their own opinions, a function being provided on the Internet by a coalition of nonprofit and academic organizations with the active cooperation of several small businesses. * A More Timely Archive. Same-day summaries and timely news feeds announcing new opinions are not being provided by the courts. In the Legislative branch, far more timely information is provided by GovTrack.us, a service operated by a graduate student, than is being provided by the U.S. Congress. * More Rigorous Formatting. All too often, government publishes data in proprietary formats instead of using open industry standards that can be used with many different kinds of software. In some cases, copyright is mistakenly asserted or the public domain nature of the data is unclear. Independent observers ]can reformat data into standards such as XML allowing far more sophisticated applications to be built. * Bulk Access to Data. Government often provides data at a retail level, creating web sites meant to be used by end users. For example, the Government Printing Office has a site that allows a keyword search of documents such as the Federal Register and the Congressional Record, but does not provide a convenient mechanism for others to download the series in bulk to create alternative sites. Independent observers are able to repackage this information and make it available to developers for reuse without restriction. Organization and Purpose of the IGOtf Non-Conference In 2007, Public.Resource.Org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, organized two meetings of people involved in placing government information on-line. The first meeting took place October 12, 2007 and brought together CEOs, professors, and nonprofit executives involved in placing case law on the Internet for free access. That meeting was extremely productive in introducing players to each other in a series of cooperative efforts. On December 7 and 8, a 30-person meeting was called with a broader audience of people working across local, state, and federal levels and with all 3 branches of branches of government. The meeting resulted in additional cooperative efforts among numerous players and the group was able to reach a consensus on 8 fundamental principles of open government. These initial meetings received sponsorship support from the Omidyar Network, the Sunlight Foundation, Yahoo!, and Google. It was clear to the organizers that any subsequent meetings would need an open procedure for attendance, would need to scale up to larger number of participants, and would require additional organizational efforts. The results of the post-meeting assessment and interviews with participants and potential sponsors has led us create a more formal structure for a meeting that can accommodate 100 delegates. We have set out several goals for the Task Force in general and the first meeting in particular: * Encourage technical coordination. * Encourage training and outreach efforts. * Raise visibility of efforts by citizens to increase transparency of government. * Determine the need for and arrive a plan for the creation of support services, such as scanning of archives or hosting of content. * Determine the governance mechanism and the model for financing of future IGOTF meetings. We call this meeting on August 4-5 a "non-conference." Unlike a conference, please do not count on sitting in an audience and listening to speakers read slides. The two rooms will be allocated to a series of working groups per the draft agenda below. Draft Agenda of the IGOTF Meeting The non-conference is structured around 3 sets of working group activities: * Case Law (Working Group Chair: Carl Malamud, carl at media dot org). This working group brings together individuals groups involved in the day-to-day work of putting the courts on-line. Topics that will be considered include markup of citations in cases, "universal resolvers" for mapping citations to URLs, recycling of PACER and other documents, and other subjects as appropriate. * Municipal Governments (Working Group Chair: Daniel X. O'Neil, danx at everyblock dot com). This group will focus on issues involved in citizens attempting to build interfaces around municipal government data. Technical issues such as harvesting techniques and presentation techniques will be covered, as will social issues such as negotiating for the release of public data. * Government and Copyright Issues (Working Group Chair: Fred Von Lohmann, fred at eff dot org). This working group will focus on assertion of copyright by government groups. If you would like to organize a working group, please contact carl at media dot org. If you would like to participate in a working group, please contact the working group chairs. If you put word "IGOTF" in your subject line, that will help us filter mail. Accommodations There is no official conference accomodation, but some people are staying at the Embassy Suites Chicago - Downtown/Lakefront at 511 North Columbus Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. The phone number is 1-312-836-5900. The rooms are $250-$300, but many of these are 2-bedroom "suites." Please let us know if you discover alternative hotels. Attending? Please <email obscured>.
would love to know the details of the something when you know all best,
:-) Subject: Margaret Anderson Kelliher added you as a friend on Facebook Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 23:30:08 -0700 From: Facebook <<email obscured>> Reply-To: noreply <<email obscured>> To: Steven Clift <<email obscured>> Margaret added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to confirm that you know Margaret in order for you to be friends on Facebook. To confirm this friend request, follow the link below: http://www.facebook.com/n/?reqs.php Thanks, The Facebook Team
Time for a quick roll call. I'll be there. Perhaps that might be a good opportunity to connect on how to use this space to grow connections in the field. Also, I am planning something the after the final session or the day after to connect people interested in local up online engagement and neighborhood forums. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org Steve
Looks interesting! - Steve Subject: Social Citizens Paper Released Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:32:41 -0400 From: Allison Fine <<email obscured>> Hi, I thought you'd be interested in a paper that I wrote for the Case Foundation that was released this week. Late last year, Kari Dunn and Ben Binswanger of The Case Foundation asked me to write a paper for the Foundation about the emergence of Millennials, 15-29 year olds, as activists. They wanted to know more about how these young people are using all of their widgets and gadgets for causes. We decided to go beyond a simply litany of the ways that young people are using blogs, social networks, and videos to share information about their favorite causes. We wanted to go a step further and ask harder “so what” questions. What does it mean to Millennials to have the ability to become an advocate for their cause instantly, broadly, inexpensively, and what does their ability to do so mean for the rest of us? I found young people to be very idealistic, marinating in causes, alienated from government and public policy -- in short, Social Citizens. So, here's <http://blog.socialcitizens.org/paper/> the paper, and here's <http://blog.socialcitizens.org/> the accompanying blog we've set up to host the conversation about Millennials as activists. I think you'll enjoy the paper and discussion, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. And feel free to share it with others, and/or blog about it! Best wishes, Allison Senior Fellow Demos: A Network of Ideas and Action 914.674.9568 To read more about my work and my book, Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, visit my website at http://www.allisonfine.com
Welcome to the new US Democracy Online Exchange. http://groups.dowire.org/groups/us This is the place for those directly involved with non-partisan efforts to inform and engage the public in government, elections, politics, and media at the local, state, and national level through the Internet and new technologies. It is designed for us to exchange expertise, best practices, and potentially plot collaborative activities that move the field of democracy online in the United States forward. Whether you are developing a voter education site on the 2008 elections, host the politics section on major media or portal site, work on the website for a state legislature or host an online forum for a small neighborhood, this is a place for those working to help the public make a difference online or at least make governance more accessible. It is decidedly non-partisan and welcoming of folks across the political spectrum as well as those deploying diverse business models. As we open now (or as you join in the future), you are asked to introduce yourself by pressing "Reply to All" via e-mail or by posting via the website. Please cut and paste this simple form and post back to the group - us (at) groups.dowire.org - with the subject "Introductions" (no quotes) or login to the website and post at the end of the topic. Name: Title: Organization: Organization Website: Organization Mission/Description: Brief Personal Intro/Bio: Optional I Blog At: Facebook Profile: LinkedIn Profile: Who else should be here?: (Scan the member list - http://groups.dowire.org/groups/us/members - and share their name and organization.)
With the Pdf conference in late June and growing interest in using the Internet to open up government and improve citizen participation in the U.S. now seems like a good time to open this space for practitioner exchange. I asked a number of you to serve as co-hosts, but haven't had the time to work up a promotional campaign. However, we can start now and see where this goes. The key niche this space is designed to fill is for those local, state, and national democratic "interventionists" working from a non-partisan perspective to not just advocate online based on the "as is" e-politics, but instead for those who are changing the rules and tools. We are working to build a better democratic infrastructure online for all based on the belief that it will help us build stronger communities and a more effective democracy. We do this even if it raises the voices of those we may disagree with or if our political opponents might use the tools or "liberated" information to their benefit or even against us. I'll turn off the moderation shortly and start an Introductions topic so we can get to know each other. If some seems to be missing, drop them and invite to join the US Democracy Online Exchange from: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/us Welcome. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org DoWire.Org P.S. If you want a sense of the need this forum might fill, see: http://groups.Dowire.Org/groups/ukie