Citizens League Executive Director and chief blogger Sean Kershaw (left) launched this morning’s Summer Policy series event titled The Future of the Web and Civic Engagement: What Happens When MySpace Meets Our Space? held at The Forum at Minnesota Public Radio. (Click photos to enlarge.)
I recorded the forum. Click play to listen. 1 hour, 5 minutes, 22 seconds.
I found myself a little disappointed with the event. I wanted to hear more stories… stories that would illustrate the what the future of the web could be for civic engagement, public problem-solving and policy-making. I don’t remember much about the discussion but I do remember two stories: Jean King’s story about Gov. Al Quie and Roger Moe; and Steve Borsch’s story about visiting the Eden Prairie public library.
I also was hoping to hear more about the forces — systemic or otherwise — that are both helping and impeding the constructive use of these Web 2.0 technologies in the public sphere. That would’ve generated more discussion about what steps could be taken by citizens, civic organizations, and yes, policy-makers to address these forces.
Left photo, L to R: moderator Jack Uldrich, panelists Jean LeVander King and Steve Borsch.
Right photo, L to R: panelists Garrick Van Buren,Tom Swain, and Jen Alstad.
During the post-event schmoozing, I had a chance to talk with (L to R) Steve Borsch, Steve Clift, and Garrick Van Buren. And then Mr. Clift and I retired to the MPR lobby to chat further in the way-cool audio-enhancing pod chairs. Amazingly easy to hear one another. And yes, that’s an apple core in my mouth.
Aug. 22 Update: Victoria Ford has a set on Flickr of 60 photos from the event.
Aug. 23 1 pm update: AAAARRRGGGGGHHHH!! I mistakenly deleted this blog entry earlier today and had to ask my beloved webhosting company, Tiger Technologies, to restore the site from a midnight backup. They’ve done it but two comments were lost so I’ve manually replaced them. Apologies to Steve and Mike.
Griff,
I agree with your comment about “wanting to hear more about the forces” … so, to that end, do you have any comments along those lines?
Jack Uldrich
Griff,
I agree with your comment about “wanting to hear more about the forces” … so, to that end, do you have any comments along those lines?
Jack Uldrich
Minnesota has many stories about innovative civic use of the Internet. In some ways we have so many that we take them for granted and look to the next big thing while missing what we know.
Here are some stories from E-Democracy.Org:
Issues Forums – http://e-democracy.org/if – lots of stuff on the right
With Videos – http://e-democracy.org/experience
Neighborhood Forum Planning – Our next big thing – http://e-democracy.org/nf – Be sure to look at “Example neighborhood forums” across the country
Another good collection of stories – case studies and “how to” briefs is at:
http://dowire.org/wiki/UK_highlights
It includes a case study on the great civic blogging in Northfield.
Finally, I gave a speech on this subject last year at the U of M:
http://dowire.org/wiki/Everyday_citizens
Steven Clift
Minnesota has many stories about innovative civic use of the Internet. In some ways we have so many that we take them for granted and look to the next big thing while missing what we know.
Here are some stories from E-Democracy.Org:
Issues Forums – http://e-democracy.org/if – lots of stuff on the right
With Videos – http://e-democracy.org/experience
Neighborhood Forum Planning – Our next big thing – http://e-democracy.org/nf – Be sure to look at “Example neighborhood forums” across the country
Another good collection of stories – case studies and “how to” briefs is at:
http://dowire.org/wiki/UK_highlights
It includes a case study on the great civic blogging in Northfield.
Finally, I gave a speech on this subject last year at the U of M:
http://dowire.org/wiki/Everyday_citizens
Steven Clift
I thought the forum ok — but, post-game quarterbacking here — I think what I missed was the “where next” conversation. Coming at this from the geek/system-builder perspective, I’d like to have gotten aswers to;
– What do people *do* when they’re being civic-engaged?
– How can new technology (and technologists) do to help improve that activity?
I thought the forum ok — but, post-game quarterbacking here — I think what I missed was the “where next” conversation. Coming at this from the geek/system-builder perspective, I’d like to have gotten aswers to;
– What do people *do* when they’re being civic-engaged?
– How can new technology (and technologists) do to help improve that activity?
Sean Kershaw has posted to his blog about the event and links here. Evidently his trackback feature isn’t flipped on.
http://citizensleague.net/blogs/sean/archives/2006/08/23/technology_and_the_future_of_c/
Sean Kershaw has posted to his blog about the event and links here. Evidently his trackback feature isn’t flipped on.
http://citizensleague.net/blogs/sean/archives/2006/08/23/technology_and_the_future_of_c/
I agree with Mike. I think we either don’t define “civic engagement”, or define it in such a way as to make it about volunteering or the government. Both of the latter definitions make most people tune-out, and don’t get to the core issues of the need to think about democracy and citizenship in every institution.
I think we have a challenge, and an opportunity, to define civic engagement in terms that relate to where people spend time right now (families, work, schools, community, congregations, volunteers).
* The opportunity here is that this shouldn’t involve “extra” time — but rather making how we spend our existing time in these places more civic.
* The challenge is rethinking how we can be civic in these places.
I’m not eloquent about this issue, but I think it has the potential of making these changes we need to make more managable.
If we expect government to get better at listening to citizens, I don’t know how we avoid the “firehose” problem of lots of citizens trying to interact with few elected officials and staff.
I agree with Mike. I think we either don’t define “civic engagement”, or define it in such a way as to make it about volunteering or the government. Both of the latter definitions make most people tune-out, and don’t get to the core issues of the need to think about democracy and citizenship in every institution.
I think we have a challenge, and an opportunity, to define civic engagement in terms that relate to where people spend time right now (families, work, schools, community, congregations, volunteers).
* The opportunity here is that this shouldn’t involve “extra” time — but rather making how we spend our existing time in these places more civic.
* The challenge is rethinking how we can be civic in these places.
I’m not eloquent about this issue, but I think it has the potential of making these changes we need to make more managable.
If we expect government to get better at listening to citizens, I don’t know how we avoid the “firehose” problem of lots of citizens trying to interact with few elected officials and staff.
Sean, it may be a “firehose” problem but I’m thinking it goes deeper… and this relates to my comment about systemic forces.
In my experience, the more engaged citizens are in local government matters, the more work and hassle it frequently is (not always, of course) for both elected officials and staff.
E-participation and having citizens “engaged” is all well and good but NOT THAT MUCH!
If you’re staff, there’s a natural tendency to see youself as informed expert and the citizenry just doesn’t understand like you do.
If you were elected to represent the will of the people, well they should just let you do it now and stay out of the way till the next election.
In either case, you start to believing that you know what’s best and citizen engagement can just get in the way of your getting stuff done.
So you tolerate and accommodate and hold public hearings if you must but there’s no real day-in-and-day-out incentive for you to stimulate more engagement. And there are plenty of disincentives to do so.
So my thinking is that stimulating more civic engagement (in this one area of local government matters) has to come from other institutions, not local government directly.
What might change things in this era of citizen journalism is the “attack of the blogs” or as Eden Prairie City Manager Scott Neal says, “blog or be blogged.”
Just like some corporations are discovering, one strategy for dealing with a customer blogosphere that sometimes attacks is to have your own blog where you’ve developed an authentic voice and have built trust with it; likewise, hosting your own message boards where you and your customers regularly interact with one another.
Local government might have to likewise learn this the hard way. So the more that the Citizens League and other institutions can get these tools in the hands of the citizenry, the more likely it will be that local gov’t will have to accommodate.
Or am I missing something here?
Sean, it may be a “firehose” problem but I’m thinking it goes deeper… and this relates to my comment about systemic forces.
In my experience, the more engaged citizens are in local government matters, the more work and hassle it frequently is (not always, of course) for both elected officials and staff.
E-participation and having citizens “engaged” is all well and good but NOT THAT MUCH!
If you’re staff, there’s a natural tendency to see youself as informed expert and the citizenry just doesn’t understand like you do.
If you were elected to represent the will of the people, well they should just let you do it now and stay out of the way till the next election.
In either case, you start to believing that you know what’s best and citizen engagement can just get in the way of your getting stuff done.
So you tolerate and accommodate and hold public hearings if you must but there’s no real day-in-and-day-out incentive for you to stimulate more engagement. And there are plenty of disincentives to do so.
So my thinking is that stimulating more civic engagement (in this one area of local government matters) has to come from other institutions, not local government directly.
What might change things in this era of citizen journalism is the “attack of the blogs” or as Eden Prairie City Manager Scott Neal says, “blog or be blogged.”
Just like some corporations are discovering, one strategy for dealing with a customer blogosphere that sometimes attacks is to have your own blog where you’ve developed an authentic voice and have built trust with it; likewise, hosting your own message boards where you and your customers regularly interact with one another.
Local government might have to likewise learn this the hard way. So the more that the Citizens League and other institutions can get these tools in the hands of the citizenry, the more likely it will be that local gov’t will have to accommodate.
Or am I missing something here?
Few thoughts after the event and after reading the above comments (OK, OK…maybe this is a Ted Kaczynski manifesto…but this is a huge topic). What strikes me is that there needs to be a high level, strategic level planning session in the Citizens League that includes ideation around what the future of civic engagement might look like. We know that broadband is increasing in speed and adoption; internet-connected devices are getting smaller, more powerful and more ubiquitous; access barriers have (arguably) fallen; and that use of technology is like breathing for anyone under, say, 35 years of age.
+ Good government sets regulation and makes laws, enforces both, and yet should do so (in a representative democracy) as a servant to the will of the people. Unfortunately, there are SO MANY CHANGES occurring on SO MANY FRONTS simultaneously, that people who’ve chosen to serve can’t possibly keep up. Net neutrality, bioscience, nanotechnology, patents and copyrights, geopolitics, privacy and security, energy consumption and carbon release, and a mind-boggling array of other issues are just a handful of the practical problems impossible for any elected official — or bureaucratic servant — to understand holistically let alone be in a position to guide good public policy.
This is a sweeping generalization, but the consequence of this is that the regulations and laws aren’t aligned with the accelerated awareness, information dissemination and learning that occurs in an increasingly connected world. Collections of like-minded people are considerably more knowledgeable and informed about any given issue than any elected representative person or body could ever hope to be.
Therefore, there has to be a better, more profound conversational and engagement method put into place that looks at the whole. Not red or blue. Left or right. Corporation vs. individual. Industry vs. environmentally aware. Gay or straight. Black or white. We’re all in this together and good public policy must have that perspective of the whole. It can’t simply be aligned with the incentives of the few, the powerful, the ones focused on their own competitive advantages.
So how the hell can THAT be pulled off!?!
+ I’ve been thinking alot about participatory models. There needs to be a place online, a virtual place, that is setup for the whole. Structured so that no one person, group, or mischievous collection of rogues can game the system to their own advantage (significant watchdoggedness would be required). It’s mission? To be an asynchronous place to speak on a pulpit, engage in conversation, link to supporting information, engage those willing to be active (and manage projects, for instance, assigning tasks to those so as to drive action) and mostly
Current civic engagement models are limited to the passionate few. It’s great to connect with thought leaders and listen to big thoughts. It’s fine to have ideals and build a vision. But without specific, measurable, definable action (with accountability) nothing happens.
What if the participatory model mentioned above was one where Governor “X”, Representative “Y” and his/her staff could go to almost immediately understand a 360 degree view of any given issue? Not who can shout the loudest. Or post alot. Or comment alot. But those who’ve led a group or small team to build and create the most cogent and articulate argument…
…or…
…that the participatory site has reporting and analytics that will provide leadership with conversation tracking (ala http://www.techmeme.com) or a dashboard on poll results and other metrics.
As one local example, what Northfield has built (on the Drupal powered CivicSpace) is one of the best public platforms I’ve seen. It would allow, say, a new resident of Northfield to get a handle on what’s happening civically pretty quickly.
What if every State, County, City and, perhaps, neighborhood/community/group leadership had their own blog/group/community/affinity spot within a site? The Somali community in Eden Prairie is visible physically but not in a participatory way that I can see civically. What if there was a platform where someone could just grab ahold of a virtual spot in the Eden Prairie section and emerge as a leader ’cause they cared? Pretty soon they’re a magnet of access for the people of Somalian heritage and white kids like me that grew up in Bloomington could, maybe, gain some insight into the reality of being a Somalian in Eden Prairie where it’s colder than hell for months at a time! (vs. where I grew up).
It’s that acting local that is at the heart of all civic engagement as we all know. But there’s no place to participate unless one is willing to invest ALOT of synchronous time in face-to-face meetings, figuring out how it all works, hopefully gaining traction with elected officials or governmental workers in order to get access for your voice to be heard and thus influence the future of where you live.
Whoa…way more than my usual $.02 in a comment but am interested in this very big problem/opportunity. I’d love to see a strategic planning session(s) pulled together with a diverse group for ideation and scenario planning to be done so as to figure out what a participatory platform might look like for our future. Yes, I’d participate….but only if that diverse group included multiple age groups and people of wide ranging backgrounds.
Few thoughts after the event and after reading the above comments (OK, OK…maybe this is a Ted Kaczynski manifesto…but this is a huge topic). What strikes me is that there needs to be a high level, strategic level planning session in the Citizens League that includes ideation around what the future of civic engagement might look like. We know that broadband is increasing in speed and adoption; internet-connected devices are getting smaller, more powerful and more ubiquitous; access barriers have (arguably) fallen; and that use of technology is like breathing for anyone under, say, 35 years of age.
+ Good government sets regulation and makes laws, enforces both, and yet should do so (in a representative democracy) as a servant to the will of the people. Unfortunately, there are SO MANY CHANGES occurring on SO MANY FRONTS simultaneously, that people who’ve chosen to serve can’t possibly keep up. Net neutrality, bioscience, nanotechnology, patents and copyrights, geopolitics, privacy and security, energy consumption and carbon release, and a mind-boggling array of other issues are just a handful of the practical problems impossible for any elected official — or bureaucratic servant — to understand holistically let alone be in a position to guide good public policy.
This is a sweeping generalization, but the consequence of this is that the regulations and laws aren’t aligned with the accelerated awareness, information dissemination and learning that occurs in an increasingly connected world. Collections of like-minded people are considerably more knowledgeable and informed about any given issue than any elected representative person or body could ever hope to be.
Therefore, there has to be a better, more profound conversational and engagement method put into place that looks at the whole. Not red or blue. Left or right. Corporation vs. individual. Industry vs. environmentally aware. Gay or straight. Black or white. We’re all in this together and good public policy must have that perspective of the whole. It can’t simply be aligned with the incentives of the few, the powerful, the ones focused on their own competitive advantages.
So how the hell can THAT be pulled off!?!
+ I’ve been thinking alot about participatory models. There needs to be a place online, a virtual place, that is setup for the whole. Structured so that no one person, group, or mischievous collection of rogues can game the system to their own advantage (significant watchdoggedness would be required). It’s mission? To be an asynchronous place to speak on a pulpit, engage in conversation, link to supporting information, engage those willing to be active (and manage projects, for instance, assigning tasks to those so as to drive action) and mostly
Current civic engagement models are limited to the passionate few. It’s great to connect with thought leaders and listen to big thoughts. It’s fine to have ideals and build a vision. But without specific, measurable, definable action (with accountability) nothing happens.
What if the participatory model mentioned above was one where Governor “X”, Representative “Y” and his/her staff could go to almost immediately understand a 360 degree view of any given issue? Not who can shout the loudest. Or post alot. Or comment alot. But those who’ve led a group or small team to build and create the most cogent and articulate argument…
…or…
…that the participatory site has reporting and analytics that will provide leadership with conversation tracking (ala http://www.techmeme.com) or a dashboard on poll results and other metrics.
As one local example, what Northfield has built (on the Drupal powered CivicSpace) is one of the best public platforms I’ve seen. It would allow, say, a new resident of Northfield to get a handle on what’s happening civically pretty quickly.
What if every State, County, City and, perhaps, neighborhood/community/group leadership had their own blog/group/community/affinity spot within a site? The Somali community in Eden Prairie is visible physically but not in a participatory way that I can see civically. What if there was a platform where someone could just grab ahold of a virtual spot in the Eden Prairie section and emerge as a leader ’cause they cared? Pretty soon they’re a magnet of access for the people of Somalian heritage and white kids like me that grew up in Bloomington could, maybe, gain some insight into the reality of being a Somalian in Eden Prairie where it’s colder than hell for months at a time! (vs. where I grew up).
It’s that acting local that is at the heart of all civic engagement as we all know. But there’s no place to participate unless one is willing to invest ALOT of synchronous time in face-to-face meetings, figuring out how it all works, hopefully gaining traction with elected officials or governmental workers in order to get access for your voice to be heard and thus influence the future of where you live.
Whoa…way more than my usual $.02 in a comment but am interested in this very big problem/opportunity. I’d love to see a strategic planning session(s) pulled together with a diverse group for ideation and scenario planning to be done so as to figure out what a participatory platform might look like for our future. Yes, I’d participate….but only if that diverse group included multiple age groups and people of wide ranging backgrounds.
The forum brought out a point something along the lines of “the Internet polarizes us, but how will it help us come to consensus?”
I humbly submit the open-source software community as a rebuttal — and offer this link, to a great blog entry where Guy Kawasaki interviews Marten Mickos (head of MySQL) as an example of how leaders could foster that kind of conversation.
Click here to read Guy’s interview
Steve Borsch wrote:
>What if every State, County, City and, perhaps, neighborhood/community/group leadership had their own blog/group/community/affinity spot within a site?
I like the idea of the latter, Steve, ie: a neighborhood/manageable-sized community like Northfield or maybe Mike O’Connor’s neighborhood of St. Anthony Park in St. Paul.
http://www.sap.org
Northfield has about 12,000 year-round residents and that has seemed to work for N.org.
http://northfield.org
It may be too early to create a Second Life version of Northfield or EP or St. Anthony that’s devoted to civic engagement.
But maybe we’re ready for a MySpace-type social networking site that’s geographic-based and civic-oriented.
I think there’s a lot of value in thinking about the structure of an online community like what Steve describes. It might be worth trying to identify what the barriers are to such a system. Here’s a first cut:
1. Public decisionmaking process at the local level is built pretty strongly around verbal participation at a meeting.
2. Differences in technology adoption are meaningful barriers to participation. On the council in Bloomington, for example, there’s one member who doesn’t use email at all.
3. Minnesota’s open meeting law has some ambiguities surrounding electronic communication that inhibit elected officials from participating.
4. Public meetings currently accept both written and verbal testimony, allowing people to use the communication mode that they are most comfortable with. Online fora are (currently) textual. While it’s possible that they could be extended to support voice, the group that’s most uncomfortable with writing is also likely to have problems with voice technology.
Hey, a 3rd “Steve” joins the conversation. Good to have your thoughts on this, Steve… long time no see!
I’m glad you itemized those barriers. They’re very real here in Northfield.
I think it’ll be long a while before any of the various technologies we’ve been referencing replace the FINAL stages of public policy-making, ie, A) written and verbal testimony; and B) verbal decision-making.
But I think there’s a huge amount that can be done PRIOR to those final stages that these technologies can help facilitiate… and that prior stuff is much of what civic engagement is all about.
A real problem I’ve found in blogging is when this level of conversation occurs: I don’t know if I can add value. But here goes.
I think Griff is right about all of the barriers, but:
1) I’m not sure if part of this ultimately boils down to the the need to rethink the fundamental role of government. I’m not sure where I’m going, other than I get the feeling over and over that we ask it to do things it might not be capable of doing (even with dramatic reforms).
2) Anyway — I think we have both a problem with roles and incentives, which Griff highlights, and pure mathematics: the numbers make it hard to accomplish. As long as there are so many more citizens than public staff, more “engagement” means an over-whelmed staff.
I don’t know my mathematics, but can more “nodes” help out — more institutions where citizens can get engaged, or which can mediate between governing and citizens? Can we expand the network’s “nodes”?
I like both Steve and Mike’s comments. Is there a model for a civic space where people can learn, meet each other, share solutions to public problems, etc. Mike and I joked about this being “civic Google” – or perhaps a new “Wikicivicus”.
I’m going to read the interview that Mike mentions. Open source must be a guide.
And I’d love to find a role for the Citizens League here. Our mission is building civic capacity, and we’ll have to expand the way we do business.
Steven Borsch said: “What if every State, County, City and, perhaps, neighborhood/community/group leadership had their own blog/group/community/affinity spot within a site?”
That is the goal of E-Democracy.Org, at least at the local level. Think 21st century Rotary where a group of citizens come together to host citizen-to-citizen engagement online that connects with city hall but isn’t subject to government control.
Each local “chapter” of E-Democracy.Org governs their local many-to-many “Issues Forum” (see http://e-democracy.org/if ) and with future donations/funding/volunteer capacity do things like:
* E-Democracy Audit – Do a yearly local e-democracy audit of their government/e-officials, local media, other groups with “check boxes” for the key informational/democracy service online elements required for anywhere, anytime civic participation.
* Town Hall – Host a yearly “Online Town Hall” with special topics/guests on the top issues in the community. This would complement the Issues Forum.
* Neighborhood Life – Host neighborhood “life” forums like we are planning in Minneapolis (or host additional forums in smaller towns that are city-wide that attract more citizens but are more like General Community/Craigslist/Freecyle like than political.
* Speakers Corner – Host a local blogging aggregator and create the common tagging terms for local “civic” posts. If you only aggregate local political bloggers in bulk, unless you have civic training like Northfield, it will be modelled after national/state partisan “government/the other party sucks” political blogging. (See my virtual civil war article: http://www.publicus.net/articles/democraticevolution.html
) So the aggregator would need to find local “diary” blogger post with the occassional community post. (IMHO, political blogging is democratized punditry than community conversation due to its individualistic nature and framework that create an elite of authors with a sub-set of “comment people” too whatever to have their own blog.)
* Etc.
State-wide
In terms of state-wide opportunities, I’d like us to explore ideas for how E-Democracy.Org might provide some of the open source infrastructure in GroupServer for structured online events/public hearing/collaborative process of the Citizen League. If funding was found to implement X open source feature or test Y facilitation/event format, then we’d be able to take those features/models local as well. So a win/win. Ideally, we’d have a cost effective e-participation infrastructure that could even be rented by governments and other groups looking to host online public hearing (online consultations – see the online community I host on the topic here: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/consult
Legislation?
Finally, on Steve Peterson’s note about open meeting laws, I’d really like to see an leader emerge that we can work with to put together draft “Democracy in the Information Age” legislation.
At the International E-Democracy symposium, that Griff and I attended, I offered up some draft “Citizen 2.0” comments – see second audio clip right under my picture:
http://icele.wordpress.com/2006/08/08/innovative-ideas-to-stir-citizens/
(Great work Griff.) I basically said, the most important “e-democracy” aspects in government must be mandated, part of the rule of law. This includes ideas like updating the open meeting laws to require all public meetings to be announced online not just in newspapers or on the office bulletin board. With the proper government “e-democracy” support in place, then the more interactive civic engagement stuff we are seeking encourage will have a more solid information and e-alert foundation upon which to make a difference.
Cheers,
Steven Clift
Sean wrote:
> can more “nodes†help out — more institutions where citizens can get engaged, or which can mediate between governing and citizens? Can we expand the network’s “nodes�
I think so, Sean… I’m not sure “nodes” is the right word, but it’s the right idea.
So has the Citizens League ever considered forming local/neighborhood chapters?
The e-version might look similar to what Steve Clift describes for local chapters of Edemocracy.org (above) but there might also be a face-to-face component.
We have thought about this Griff. And I think we’re (finally) in a position to act on “it” if there is an opportunity.
We’ve gone so far as to think about “franchaising” the League, either at the neighborhood or municipal level.
Open to any thoughts on this.
Sean
I love the idea and I think you should blog about it… with some kind of plan to pilot it with 3-5 geographic areas.
The forum brought out a point something along the lines of “the Internet polarizes us, but how will it help us come to consensus?”
I humbly submit the open-source software community as a rebuttal — and offer this link, to a great blog entry where Guy Kawasaki interviews Marten Mickos (head of MySQL) as an example of how leaders could foster that kind of conversation.
Click here to read Guy’s interview