South by Southwest (“South by” if you’ve ever attended or SXSW when you type it) began in 1987 in Austin as a Music Conference and Festival attended by 700 people. Since then, it has grown to over 12,000 registrants and now includes a film and interactive component that draws 17,000 participants. (History of SXSW)
For the last two years, I have been one of those who jumped into the fray of the interactive sessions and this year I’m working on the front end to encourage and promote sessions that look at online deliberation, community engagement, technology and democracy, and open government. Fortunately, Tim Bonnemann, Founder and CEO of Intellitics is making that job easier for me by identifying the sessions that look appropriate for the Texas Forums network.
Since SXSW is a very democratic experience, 30% of the decision about what sessions are offered is influenced by the votes and comments using the SXSW panel picker. You can check out the Interactive Sessions and vote here, or just follow Tim’s advice below!
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From Tim–
The SXSW 2010 “panel picker” launched yesterday. You can vote for my panel proposal here (requires login):
14 Ways to Make Online Citizen Participation Work
Using the web to engage citizens in public decision making is becoming increasingly
popular. However, most online tools are not equipped to support the right processes.
This panel of public participation experts will share 14 tips how you can get results
despite these shortcomings and still make your citizens happy!
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4735
And while you’re at it, here are a few potentially related sessions that caught my eye so far:
Community Consensus (Not!) and Online Democracy’s Loose Ends
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4306
Get Naked: Online Citizen Deliberative Dialogue
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4417
Crowdsourcing Urban Renewal: Designing for Technologically Mediated Change
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/4097
Taking the Friction out of Civic Engagement With Open Government & API’s
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/2532
Opening Doors: Finding the Keys to Open Government
Posted in Commentary, Dialogue and Deliberation Models, NCDD, Technology, Virtual Workshops on March 20, 2009| 5 Comments »
I just watched the webcast of Open the Door hosted by Openthegovernment.org. The panelists were:
This was the Sunshine Week 2009 National Dialogue sponsore by the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Center for American Progress, League of Women Voters,National Freedom of Information Coalition, OpenTheGovernment.org, Public Citizen, Special Libraries Association, Sunshine Week, and the Sunlight Foundation.
As far as I know, there were no hashtags and I didn’t know if anyone else was twittering, but I posted my share and now I’ve been asked to re-post them for my non-twittering friends, so here they are along with additional notes I took. No offense to host Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org who did a fabulous job moderating, but I posted a tiny tweetplaint (OMG, now I’m making up tweet words) about her chewing gum.
More important than ever to get data into hands because of huge expenses going out the door for recovery and stimulus.
Have to look at this as an ecosystem. When data is democratized, we can hold officials and ourselves accountable.
Vivek (Obama CIO) pointed to two examples of how transparency and open source have been effective tools for the federal government:
1) The NIH Human Genome project. They opened up the data to anyone, led to massive explosion in the number of people working on the Genome project. For a quick history and to see some of the amazing results of this open source research, check out this two-page fact sheet from the NIH: www.nih.gov/about/researchresultsforthepublic/HumanGenomeProject.pdf
2) DOD and satellites when they released coordinates, led to geospatial data.
But we have to remember that it is not just technology for technology’s sake. We have to be focused on what the technology will enable us to do.
Connect people to services rather than to government agencies. Each agency has a separate web site. The services are organized according to the bureaucracy not according to the services that people need and not in a way that can be easily accessed.
Technology is just one element of transparency. It’s not the solution. It has to be embedded in the C.I.O.’s DNA. They have to come to favor solutions that make it easier for citizens to access and understand how their government works.
Driven by three values outlined in Obama’s memorandum
When people understand the basis for a decision and are able to participate in the decision-making process they are more ready to live with the decision even if they don’t agree.
Accountable Recovery Resources:
What can you do to monitor the Recovery money? Do it at your state level.
Look at what states and localities are doing. Do they have web sites? What is on them? Is it helpful? If they aren’t good, tell them, write op-eds. Check out resources at http://accountablerecovery.net/ and tell accountable Recovery if you find good things that are working!
This is a special moment to reshape the way democracy works. We have a president committed to hearing what people have to say.
This is our moment to change the structures so that everyone can be engaged. This is about reinvigorating democracy.
Models from other countries: Singapore has a very open electronic gov’t platform. UK has a government gateway that they run transactions through. There is a huge e-government movement internationally.
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