From the OneWebDay website: 

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

The idea behind OneWebDay is to:

• focus attention on a key internet value (this year, online participation in democracy)

• focus attention on local internet concerns (connectivity, censorship, individual skills)

• create a global constituency that cares about protecting and defending the internet

We’re building towards September 22, a Monday this year.

Curious to see what activities around online participation in democracy will be offered.  

Mobile Participation (mParticipation) seems to be the next step in ePartizipation. With the rising of the iPhone and other smart phones and combined with other features like GPS and Location Based Services the expectations for new applications for are high. Consequently mobile applications amplify eParticipation in an spatial and temporal dimension. Not only at home, but also e.g. traveling in the metro, participants are enabled to read, write and follow the discussions.

"even if SMS only offer limited possibilities (because of the restriction to 160 signs) in comparison to mobile internet devices, there are arguments for integration in participation processes. They are an easy to use feature, they are cheap, they can be integrated to web (and vice versa). Looking at demoscopic data, they even offer more advantages."

My colleague Hans Hagedorn just came back from the PEP-Net Kick-Off:

PEP-NET will be a European network of all stakeholders active in the field of eParticipation. PEP-NET therefore already includes public bodies, solution providers and citizen organizations as well as researchers and scientists. The network is open to all organizations willing and actively trying to advance the idea and use of eParticipation in Europe.

The project aims to help overcome fragmentation and promote best practice by connecting established and experienced eParticipation players and networks throughout Europe as a critical first step. The objective of this project is to achieve critical mass for the establishment of a Pan European eParticipation Network (PEP-NET). Such a network will act as a repository and disseminator of good practice and exchange of experience, and be a visible resource for all interested parties across the European Union.

PEP-NET will ensure wider access to European eParticipation projects and permit more effective dialogue between eParticipation experts, researchers, practitioners, public administrations, civil society organisations and the interested public with the ultimate goal of facilitating knowledge transfer, encouraging further eParticipation trials and establishing European leadership in this field.

Recently I stumbled across Traci Fenton's article 7 Trends Making Businesses More Democratic and finally discovered a term to better describe a major influence on our work that I've been thinking about a lot: Lifestyle Democracy.

We vote for the next American Idol, buy goods after reading the pros and cons that others discussed, rate our top movies, pictures, podcasts and get recommendations on what to watch, read, listen to next.

It’s the rise of what I call “lifestyle democracy,” where everything from media to music, education to fashion is being democratized. The effect of this trend: With life becoming democratized employees will expect the same at work.

... and citizens from their governments.

Over the last weeks I finally found the time to put together a video outlining our eMeetings using  the video footage we collected during our community workshops for the Routt County 2030 project. 

Today I was invited to host a webinar for the EBM Tools Network  talking about our civic engagement work. I boiled down the longer presentation I usually give to leave room for a very interesting Q&A session afterwards.

Play audio file to listen to a recording of the presentation >>
 

March 1-2, 2008
Washington DC
http://barcamp.org/eDemocracyCamp
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/297865/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=6660332063
http://twitter.com/edemocracycamp

This is the weekend immediately prior to Politics Online Conference 2008, March 4-5, 2008 (http://polc.ipdi.org).

What is a barcamp?  A barcamp is a free, open, and highly participatory conference/workshop, at which both the agenda and the content are completely attendee-driven (oftentimes in an ad hoc fashion the day of the event).  The barcamp movement started in 2005 in Palo Alto, CA, and barcamps are now being held all across the world.  Read this description on Wikipedia for more details and the history of this format: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

Also check Tim's blog for updates

My colleagues at Zebralog in Berlin have recently released a great video clip showcasing the online dialogue they hosted about the reuse of Flughafen Tempelhof, formerly Berlin's biggest inner city airport. It shows the on-site workshops they organized which accompanied the online discussion to inform and educate participants. The end of the clip demonstrates the importance of public kiosks to reach a less tech-savvy crowd and include their opinions into online processes. 

A while back I started using Jott.com, a voice to email service to update my personal todo list from m­y phone. I was amazed about how accurate most of the calls are transcribed and kept watching future development closely.

Just recently, they introduced Jott the Vote™, a free and politically nonpartisanservice that allows anyone with a phone to send a jott email messagedirectly to a presidential campaign.

"We have used Jott technology toallow voters all over our great country to easily and readilycommunicate with those running for President.

When asked, “Who do you want to Jott?” say a candidate’s name andleave a message that will be emailed to their campaign. Unlike yournormal jotts, these messages will also be made part of a publicconversation on www.jottthevote.com.

The website features:

• Individual presidential candidate pages.
• Candidate Jott polls.
• A campaign question of the week."

The result can be found at www.jottthevote.com. I must say, I really like the voice to text part of it, which would be useful for any online dialogue to include people without internet access, whether that's in general or just because they are sitting at the bus station. Nonetheless, it also shows the shortcomings of phone integration, since an exchange of opinions is basically non-existent - if users reply to posts, barely ever does the author get back to them (could be a sign on lack of interest or significance of the discussion too).

Bringing comments submitted via phone or snail mail into an online deliberation with two way feedback/true exchange of opinions stays a challenging task and I haven't seen any case study successfully address that yet.

A summarizing article of my research on cross-media public participation has been published in the most recent Limehouse publication. It outlines the key findings from the evaluation of two cutting-edge public participation projects in Berlin, Germany and ends with a list of recommendations for successful citizen engagement in an age of rapid technological changes and convergence of communication media. 

You can download a pdf version of the article or go to PlaceMatters' publication section to provide your input and feedback.