*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** Enclosed is an insightful article on the creation of one of the world's leading "online public commons" - local online discussions that matter in the real world. Steve Kranz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, the article's author and Randy Schenkat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Co-Chair the Winona Online Democracy <http://onlinedemocracy.winona.org> effort which is affiliated with Minnesota E-Democracy. Along with our Minneapolis Issues Forum, these two forums represent a model I encourage other to use if you want online public engagement to work at the local level. Please read this article and pass it on to anyone you think is interested in building a forum with their community. If you do it right and follow through with the work required, geography, citizen participation, and the Internet can combine in important and meaningful ways. If you are ready for the challenge anywhere in the world, drop E-Democracy a note <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and we will put on a list for our future outreach and potential training efforts. Steven Clift Minnesota E-Democracy http://www.e-democracy.org P.S. Steve Kranz and Randy Schenkat will attend the Wired for Change <http://www.ncl.org> conference later this week. Drop them a note directly if you'd like to meet with them. E-Democracy Thrives in Winona Minnesota ------------------------------------------------- by Steve Kranz, Co-Chair Winona Online Democracy Nestled in a scenic river valley aside the meandering Mississippi River and surrounded by tree-covered blufftops, the idyllic town of Winona Minnesota (pop.25,000) seems an unlikely place for cutting edge online citizen involvement. But despite Winona's smaller size, E-Democracy has quickly taken hold and continues to grow. The techniques used to implement it demonstrate approaches to starting online civic participation in smaller communities by making specific efforts to build credibility, network within existing organizations, and allow the project to become an outgrowth of the community itself. Winona Online Democracy is an ongoing, community-wide discussion via email about issues that affect life in Winona. It began in mid-August of 2000 and includes a cross-section of community members, members of the media and local leaders such as elected officials, school board members, and state representatives. The goal of Winona Online Democracy is to give everyone a greater voice in decisions that affect the community, increase civic participation, and help to encourage more input into solutions to local problems. Prior to launching the email discussion, 106 members were recruited to participate. This included a broad cross-section of the community as well as a good representation of elected officials, city administrators and community leaders. Two months after the launch date, the list has 170 members and has generated interesting and valuable discussions. The impetus for WOD began when a local organization, Winona A Community of Learners, invited Steve Clift of Minnesota E- Democracy to give a presentation about online civic discussion and the impact it can have on a community. The organizers of this event sought endorsement/sponsorship by local community and government organizations and it attracted about forty people. At the speaking event, organizers collected contact information (including email addresses) from each attendee. They were then invited to a follow-up meeting to discuss implementation in Winona. Eight people attended and the agenda dealt with both the technical aspects of how an email list is operates and the practical aspects of what types of jobs need to be done in order to get the list up and running. Most attending agreed to participate on a steering committee to help get things started. It was decided that an email list would be set up for the steering committee. This would allow them to exchange ideas and continue to maintain a dialogue as they planned the project. In addition, it would serve as a learning vehicle to work out the bugs and make sure the list operated properly before we recruited others to participate. One important aspect of starting the project in a small town is that we felt people would be more comfortable if they perceived it as homegrown. We thought this would increase credibility and make people more open to participation. To that end, we decided to call our group Winona Online Democracy and use the "winona.org" domain name. This "local branding" of our efforts helped make the project feel more integrated into the community and not just another dot-com project from the "big-city". We also decided to develop a website. Our plan was to invite people to participate and direct them to the website so they could get more detailed information. E-Democracy can be difficult to explain concisely, so this allowed people to learn about it at their own pace and then make a decision. Next we focused attention on recruiting. The core of our effort to recruit list participants was the use of the "virtual door knocking" method (see Steve Clift's article at http://www.publicus.net). This involves having people send personal email invitations to people they know asking them to join. To make this as easy as possible, we drafted a sample invitation and encouraged people to modify it to meet their needs (see http://onlinedemocracy.winona.org/invitation.html). Virtual door knocking is an important concept because it increases credibility and the likelihood of a positive response. One virtual door knocking method that was extremely successful was to work within organizations to gain access to their membership. We invited local nonpartisan groups to become "endorsing members" of WOD. This included the League of Women Voters, the local teachers union, city government and local universities. This gave us access to about 850 email addresses in the community. These organizations invited their members to become part of WOD. They also agreed to allow us to list them on our website as "Endorsing Organizations. We made a particular effort to encourage elected officials and other community leaders to join the list. Having these people involved not only provides credibility and access to additional resources (such as email lists), but provides value to other participants in that their ideas and opinions will be heard by those that make the decisions. In a small community, it is important to get support from those who are prominently involved in the community. In order to leverage support that we received, we asked everyone who joined the list if we could list them as a "Founding Member". The list of Founding Members was then placed on our website. People could then see the names of their friends, neighbors and people they respected and know that they were supporters of Online Democracy. In addition to our online recruitment efforts, we decided to reach out in offline media as well. We developed a paper brochure to be distributed to clubs and organizations. We also appeared on a local cable-access television program and invited the local newspapers to cover the "launch" our project. This resulted in a front-page article in one of the local newspapers. In the months after the list was launched it has sustained a varied and interesting discussion. A "snapshot" shows that in the first eight weeks there were 238 emails posted by 53 different authors covering 12 different topics. We have had good participation by a broad range of participants including elected officials and government administrators. Examples of topics included the following: -- A discussion that identified dangerous traffic intersections in the community (which was prompted by the Mayor asking for feedback on a proposal to rebuild city streets). -- A discussion about improving the "digital divide" situation in our community. This discussion played a role in our local County government petitioning the state for authorization to donate its used computer equipment to local charities. Our local state legislators also participated in the discussion and are looking at the issue on the State level. -- Several thoughtful exchanges about local issues such as shortfalls in education funding, rebuilding our historic courthouse and plans to increase railroad traffic through town. The success and broad participation is due, in part, to approaching Winona Online Democracy as an outgrowth of the community and building support for it within existing organizations prior to actually launching it. By working to have community leaders take some ownership (or at least endorse the concept) and using these relationships to network within the community, Winona Online Democracy has gained acceptance and continues to become a strong force for positive civic engagement. -------------------------------- For more information visit http://onlinedemocracy.winona.org or email Steve Kranz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or Randy Schenkat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. 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