[rohrpost] Participation Camp Webcasts - Live this Sat and Sun

[Steven Clift]

It is great to see a barcamp/unconference event make a real attempt at
virtual participation.  Now all they need are virtual participants -
it is free, so you should join us and pass this along to others.

Go here and register as a virtual participant:
http://pcamp.eventbrite.com   (this will get you into their Skype network
too)

Watch the "virtual room" session video webcasts (folks will be able to
use the Net to chat questions/comment in real-time) from here:
http://www.livestream.com/pcamp

Here is the schedule of webcast sessions and their leaders:

    http://mudball.net/pcamp09/schedule
Times are Eastern US. To convert use: http://tinyurl.com/pcamptimes

My Saturday session exploring ideas related to online participation in
neighborhoods is at 5 p.m. Eastern/10 p.m. UK/7 a.m. Sydney (Sun). We
will talk about these projects -
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Social_media_in_local_public_life - and
I'll disclose publicly for the first time some of my local
"Participation 3.0" ideas.


Most of the spontaneous session will be "open space style" and likely
generate lots of tweets you can watch here:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23pcamp09

Here are some of virtual presenters to check out:

MARK ELLIOTT, COLLABFORGE


At CollabForge, Dr. Elliott has led several successful public
engagement projects for government agencies and NGOs in Australia.
These include 2008’s Future Melbourne project, the world’s first city
plan to be developed in a wiki.  His methods are based on his
pathbreaking doctoral research, in which he developed a comprehensive
framework for understanding mass collaboration.  More about Mark
Elliott.

Mark will lead a presentation on engaging citizens in collaborative
planning and policy-making using participatory tools and methods.

STEVEN CLIFT, e-DEMOCRACY.ORG – {virtual presenter}

Steven Clift, founder of e-democracy.org, is a pioneer of online
participation in democracy.  Starting with the world’s first election
information website in 1994 in Minnesota, today e-democracy hosts
local issues forums in 15 communities across three countries.

Steven will host two virtual sessions at PCamp.  The first is an open
brainstorm on building online participation at the neighborhood level.
 The second is an extended Q&A e-democracy’s 15 years of experience,
tailored to participants who are new to the field.


MARY JOYCE, DIGIACTIVE


Mary Joyce is the co-founder of DigiActive, an all-volunteer
organization facilitating grassroots digital activism, and was the
Manager of New Media Operations for Obama’s 2008 presidential
campaign.  Her session, entitled “Citizen Participation in a Networked
World”, will explore the ways that citizens can influence policy based
on the collaborative powers of social media, working from
international examples.  She will also join Gaurav Mishra in a session
discussing the efficacy of social media activism.


GAURAV MISHRA, VOTEREPORT.IN – {virtual presenter}

Gaurav Mishra is the founder of 20:20 Web Tech, Votereport.in, and a
leader in India’s Gov2.0 scene.  Joining us all the way from India, he
and his partner Selvam Velmurugam (joining from Seattle), will give an
in-depth look at both the votereport.in project and the gov2.0
ecosystem in India.  She will also join Mary Joyce in a session
discussing the efficacy of social media activism.

TIM HWANG, THE COOPERATION PROJECT


>From 4Chan to Facebook, Tim is an expert on the intricate mechanics of
online participation.  He now works as a researcher at the Cooperation
Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  Tim is
also hilarious.  He organizes ROFLcon.

He plans to speak about the potential for gaming open government data.


DEVENDRA KUMAR PUNIA, FORE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT – {virtual presenter}

Dr. Punia is an associate professor at the Fore School of Management
in New Delhi, India.  He has been involved with e-government research
and practice for the last ten years.  Recently, he led an e-governance
project in the revenue sector for the district administration. The
question of using open source versus proprietary software was dealt
with in a peculiar manner. Similar efforts in other states have
yielded varying results, and the feasibility and use of open source is
a big question mark for the citizen-oriented projects. Dr. Punia will
share his experience of leading an e-governance project using open
source software.

STEF VAN GRIEKEN, NEW VOTING FOUNDATION – {virtual presenter}

Picture 86Stef will give a presentation about the use of electoral
compasses to identify key candidates for parliament in the
Netherlands. The application matches candidates to voters based on the
party program’s and individual political views. The success of these
tools have been enormous in the Netherlands. Currently, for the
parliament elections about 65% of the Dutch used a tool to find their
favorite political party/candidate.

.
ED PASTORE, METAGOVERNMENT – {virtual presenter}
Picture 88Ed will deliver a talk entitled “Making Direct Democracy
Practical”.  This presentation outlines the drawbacks of
representative democracy in various contexts; and explores the
historical criticisms of direct democracy, which has proven incapable
of supplanting representative systems. It then details several
emerging projects which are actively working to overcome the
limitations of direct (or otherwise more inclusive) democracy by
applying sophisticated web technologies. The finding is that
massively-participatory democracy is not only practical but most
likely inevitable.

JOHN DUMBRILLE, GREENSANDBOX – {virtual presenter}

Picture 89A former Greenpeace activist, John Dumbrille writes
technical documentation and presentation materials for MonkeyMedia
Software. This spring he co-founded bowegover.ning, a project for
transparent governance in his local community. In his talk,
“Unbundling Governance”, he will discuss the concept of
self-governance, and why an independent, grassroots approach is
important.

--
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Donate today: http://e-democracy.org/donate



-- 
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Donate today: http://e-democracy.org/donate