[wos] CFP: Democracy Technology Online Conference (Nov. 26)

[Erik Moeller]

Please forward --

Danke,

Erik

Call for Participation
Democracy Technology Online Conference 2005 (DTECHCON)
http://intelligentdesigns.net/Democracy
Bringing together innovators who create participatory technology in a
neutral forum.

There is no doubt that participatory technology (blogs, wikis, online
voting, forums, social networking, and so forth) is changing the world.
Can it be used to bring about fundamental changes in democratic
societies and to enable regular citizens to participate in the
democratic process? Is direct democracy becoming a realistic option?

This first online conference seeks to bring together developers and
visionaries who believe in that possibility. It is held on the IRC
channel #worlddemocracy on irc.freenode.net and currently scheduled for
Saturday, November 26, at 20:00 UTC. You can use
http://worldtimeserver.com/ to convert this into your local time.

== Goal ==

Our primary goal is to bring together people who may not be aware of
each other's work in the field of participatory technology. Thus, the
conference provides participants with a forum to shamelessly advertise
their projects, to answer questions and criticisms, and to simply
network with others who are interested.

== "Speakers" ==

Participants can simply edit this wiki page:

	http://intelligentdesigns.net/Democracy

to register in one of the available presentation slots. Those not
interested in presenting a specific project are welcome to attend.
Presenters should have personal experience with participatory
technologies, preferably as developers. 

== How to conduct an online presentation ==

How do you present a project on IRC? Why not just let people read up on
it online? There are two immediate benefits to an online presentation:
interaction and reaching a known group of people simultaneously.

Hence, any IRC "presentation" should be more of a conversation, with
you, the presenter, giving background, providing links where
appropriate, and answering questions. For this reason, there are no
separate "discussion" slots as would be typical in a conference
presentation -- the presentations are the discussions. Be ready to take
questions at any time, and as a "listener", be ready to interrupt the
speaker freely to ask questions. 

Have a set of URLs handy, preferably not requiring user accounts. A URL
should be immediately understandable. Taking some screenshots of a
working system may be better than asking attendees to explore it on
their own.

== Neutral ground ==

The website through which this online conference is organized,
<http://intelligentdesigns.net/>, is an open wiki for sharing ideas. It
is not associated with any organization or leading personality. The IRC
network, freenode, also has no such association. Presenters need not
worry that this is an attempt to co-opt them for a particular
organization, effort, strategy, or website -- it is simply an open
forum.

== Questions? ==

If you have questions, please leave them on the wiki talk page:

http://intelligentdesigns.net/index.php?title=Talk:Democracy&action=edit&section=new

This conference is deliberately a largely nameless process. It was
conceived by journalist and author Erik Möller (moeller AT scireview DOT
de). If you have technical questions, you can contact Erik directly.

== Spread the word! ==

Please spread this document to anyone who you feel may be interested in
participating in this venue. This announcement is in the public domain.