The other week Jake Brewer of the Sunlight Foundation answered a question about state e-transparency efforts at the National Civic Summit. He rattled off a number of fledgling state-level websites ... many I had never heard about. The problem - vertical awareness with limited capacity, horizontal obliviousness.
The Sunlight Foundation, MySociety, and other national projects are sparking a movement around technology and democracy that is firing up "local" people who unfortunately have now way to "meet-up" in a critical mass way. While I suppose you could all use MeetUp in a coordinated way ( http://edemocracy.meetup.com ), at Participation Camp I sketched out a simple idea to essentially foster organic Twitter connections and awareness of national/local online e-lists/projects with a geographic element among those ready to join the e-democracy (e-participation + e-transparency) movement. Here it is for someone interested in putting together some code: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Participation_squared Participation squared Here is a rough idea shared at Participation Camp. * Context: Democracy is based on geography. * Problem: It is difficult to quickly identify and connect with other people interested in the "e-participation" movement particularly at a sub-national level. * Goal: Accelerate the movement of those who want to use the Internet/social media/mobile technology to improve civic participation/government transparency/community building in their neighborhood, city, state and/or country. * Solution: Encourage people to simply list themselves on a map and list (placing those providing links to their Twitter/Facebook/Blog/etc. at the top) to enable organic city by city, state by state, and country by country (will work well in small countries) "who's who" lists and related e-participation links by geography. This will encourage organic peer to peer connections across the movement. Solution? Participation Squared - A simple pledge with results displayed. 1. Home * (Google) Map of People So Far * Link to public listing of people having pledged sorted by geographic hierarchy/placename - number of pledges displayed next to "folder" to show areas with result more easily. * Within public listing, a link to a #p-XX (country code) twitter search will promote organic connections among those signing up. * Multi-lingual options 2. Pledge: I believe in participation(1) online. From my local community to my country, let's build a movement. (Or something sexier.) * Name: * City: (required) * State/Province: * Country: (required) * E-mail: (required) (will not be displayed)** * Postal/Zipcode: (will not be displayed) Add links to your listing: * Twitter handle: * Facebook profile: * Your blog/website: * Friend Feed: (1) By participation online we mean those who want to use the Internet, social media, or mobile technology to increase citizen participation, improve public engagement, and promote government transparency and accountability. 3. Use MySociety Gaze's tool to verify the geographic placename. Based on the place name, place a peg on the city (not someone's address) for the world map of who has signed up. 4. Tell A Friend - Tweet a Friend * Invite up to five people to sign the pledge. (Would be nice in later version to give people points for those who they have recruited as display a list of recruiters by positive results.) * Invite more people by pasting this message into your e-mail with a unique URL to track your results. * Tweet #participation that you signed up and #p-US too with unique link to recruit others, link to potential Twitter conversation 5. Relevant Links - Allow people to add links to place-based connecting points - online groups, Twitter hash tags, barcamps, local/national efforts or organizations promoting these goals. 6. Connect Organically Based on Place - Encourage people to browse fellow pledges by place and join various linked to projects Draft E-mail Use Text * o E-Democracy.Org will not publicly post nor share your e-mail address publicly. Once 25 people in your local city sign the pledge, you will be notified via e-mail and given the opportunity to use various online tools to further connect. Announcements about upcoming participation/transparency/e-democracy "unconferences" and other online groups hosted by partnering organizations will be shared by state or country when possible. -- Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org Donate today: http://e-democracy.org/donate _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
