Digital Engagement Cookbook launches today 17. April 2012 – 09:08 by Fraser Henderson - ICELE

A new digital engagement database is launched today by ParticiTech and Kind of Digital  in association with Consumer Focus (UK).

Digitalengagement.org is different from other digital engagement databases in that it is a methods repository, not case study database.  The website also doubles as a search engine, allowing methods to be matched based on a set of simple input criteria relating to the participation characteristics.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

Read the full press release here

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Nexthamburg: Crowd-sourcing and participation in urban development 21. March 2012 – 12:46 by cynthiawagner

The growth of movements like the Right to the City Movement and protests like Stuttgart21, Gängeviertel, or NO BNQ show the continuously increasing demand for more public participation in urban development. The pilot project Nexthamburg experiments with new ways of public participation in the urban development of Hamburg. The concept of the open and independent crowd-sourcing project will be presented at the PEP-NET Summit on 14th May.

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Hamburg to hold Germany’s first Social Media Surgery 5. March 2012 – 17:28 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Photo of Kultwerk West

The social media surgery format, which was introduced by Nick Booth and others in 2008, has already spread beyond Birmingham to other parts of the UK and indeed abroad. Nick and his social enterprise Podnosh even won an award from the UK Prime Minister for their work.  Now social media surgeries are coming to Germany and I’m really pleased to announce that Hamburg will be hosting the first one!

On 14th May 2012, the evening of the PEP-NET Summit, Kultwerk West (a voluntary organisation that I’ve been getting involved with in my spare time and whose website I rebuilt) will be organising an informal meeting between politically engaged citizens and people who know a thing or two about social media.

I think Kultwerk West is the perfect place to start, because the events we organise twice per week attract plenty of people who are interested in current affairs and are in many cases active citizens, but who are not necessarily comfortable using social media. In many cases, they are sceptical of them due to fear-factors like Datenschutz, data protection.

To make the occasion even more special, Nick Booth, who is in town to speak at the PEP-NET Summit, will be Hamburg’s first social media surgeon.

You can find out more about the social media surgery model at socialmediasurgery.com. If you are coming to the PEP-NET Summit and are interested in helping out at the first social media surgery in the evening, please get in touch via summit@pep-net.eu or leave a comment on this thread.

UPDATE: The Kultwerk West Social Media Surgery is now registered on socialmediasurgery.com, Podnosh’s online tool for managing social media surgeries.

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Frankfurt Social Media Newsroom: Interview with Nikolaus Münster, Head of Press & PR, Frankfurt am Main 6. September 2011 – 15:15 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Nikolaus Münster is Head of Press and Public Relations at the City Council in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. I spoke to him about the city’s “Social Media Newsroom“, which gathers content from all of its social media channels and presents it on one website.

Nikolaus gained inspiration for the idea when he took part in a European exchange programme in 2009, completing a secondment at Birmingham City Council. That is where I met him and where he learned about Birmingham News Room. Apart from anything, I think this is a nice bit of European best practice exchange, which can often be hard to quantify. It’s also nice to see Frankfurt getting something in return for the Christmas Market that they send to Birmingham ever winter!

John Heaven (JH): What is a Social Media Newsroom?

Nikolaus Münster (NM): Our Social Media Newsroom brings together all of our social media channels on one website. The user can view this site to see news about the city on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube and other media at a glance.

We have been using these means of communication for a while now. Since 2009 we have been on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. When we started we wanted to gain experience before actively publicising our social media presences. Now, social media are central to our communication strategy.

JH: What is the main aim of the Newsroom?

Read the rest of this entry »

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Extension of deadlines: Sustainable eParticipation, Call for chapter proposals 3. August 2011 – 14:58 by Rolf Luehrs

We have extended the deadlines for the call for chapter proposals for our book Sustainable eParticipation:

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before August 31, 2011, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the scope and contents of their proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by September 15, 2011 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by October 30, 2011. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

For more information see our previous post:  http://pep-net.eu/blog/2011/06/26/call-for-chapter-proposals-sustainable-eparticipation/

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“Scratching where it doesn’t itch?” Time to talk about eParticipation and elephants 28. July 2011 – 16:49 by Asociacion Ciudades Kyosei / Pedro Prieto-Martin

“The e-(R)evolution will not be funded. An interdisciplinary and critical analysis of the developments and troubles of EU-funded eParticipation” is the title of a paper that our association recently wrote as part of our research and knowledge dissemination efforts. The article is meant to be properly published soon, but some bureaucratic issues have delayed its release more than we can wait.

Because this paper needs to be read and, more important, discussed while its analyses are still current.

Thus, we have decided to make it provisionally available through PeP-NET. To start such a conversation, what better place than PeP-NET, the Pan European eParticipation network?
We have spent many hundreds of hours researching and writing the paper, as we struggled to make sense of the developments and “under-developments” of eParticipation in the last ten years.
Our appraisal is based on an extensive and interdisciplinary analysis of distinct relevant sources, which included the most recent reports, articles and literature reviews dealing with eParticipation research, practice and theory, as well as projects’ deliverables and evaluations, related databases, and our direct examination of eParticipation systems.
We had to resort to a very varied bunch of disciplines (from history and medicine to Mayan performing arts; seriously!! ) to be able to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the field’s challenges… and to make a compelling exposition of them.

The paper ended up being “quite controversial”, as our assessment of eParticipation came to suggest that some of the problems that have hampered its progress have a systemic, overarching character: that kind of ‘elephant in the living room’-issues whose very existence tends to be denied because of their complexity or the embarrassment they cause and, as a result, cannot normally be acknowledged or discussed, let alone get properly sorted out.

Examples of the “embarrassing questions” the paper poses are:

• How can it be that after 10 years… all relevant ‘agendas’ of eParticipation research are still reported as underdeveloped?
• And how can it be that even the most basic questions –for example: the relation of Participation and eParticipation, or the understanding of the dual nature of eParticipaton as something that can be driven by authorities or by citizens themselves– remain unsolved?
• More than 187 millions of Euros were invested in the last ten years to promote experimentation in the field, so… where are the results? Where are the breakthroughs and the research milestones? Can we feel satisfied with just some “vague confirmations” of ideas that 10 years ago could already have been easily guessed?

Through the paper, we have done our best to constructively diagnose eParticipation and to propose some treatments for the field’s maladies. But our perspective and understanding are necessarily limited: the real “treatment” for those problems would require a reflection process that involves the whole eParticipation community.

We see this paper as an urgent “call for self-reflection” and consider it a “MUST READ” for anyone involved in European eParticipation: from the officials working at EC’s Directorate for Information society and Media, to the researchers, practitioners, NGOs, public workers, citizen associations… and even any interested European citizen.

Therefore, we would like to encourage all our PeP-NET friends and in general all people with interest in eParticipation… to have a look at the paper during this nice summer weekend.
Anyone who feels “touched” by any of the paper’s claims and argumentations… should speak up and comment to this post. It doesn’t matter if it is to support, extend or complement our asseverations, or to oppose, challenge or further qualify them… please, share your views.
PeP-NET was meant to be a HUB for the conversations around eParticipation. So… let’s discuss. It is important that the issues we showed –be them real or imagined– are talked about, and possibly acted upon.

The environment where we operate is moving. Moving faster and faster. And in the context of the ‘Europe 2020 Strategy’ and its flagship initiative “Innovation Union”, which aims to renew EU’s “Research and Innovation Funding Programmes”, the most important question we need to answer is: “What do we do now??”
For sure, we could keep pretending that there is NO elephant in the living room. Stay in our “academic” Ivory Tower, and just continue doing as we did so far… while we wait for the “barbarians of eParticipation” to arrive, change the democratic landscape by really integrating ICT in governance… and make fools of all us. PeP-NET subscribers included.

But in our association we want to believe that we, the European eParticipation Community, could do much better than that.

So… no more to say!! Thank you very much for your attention. We hope some of you enjoy reading of our paper and some exchange of ideas can happen afterwards.

—–   ADDITION: A  CONCEPTUAL  MAP  SUMMARISING  PAPER’S  KEY  FINDINGS   —–

Several people asked for a “summary” version of the paper. Here you have a JPG image (2,5 Mbytes) displaying a Conceptual Map that summarises the paper’s key findings.
I recommend you to save the file first, and then open it with an image editor (like Office Picture Manager) to watch it. It’ll be more easy for you to zoom in and out in the different parts of the image.

Posted in ICT, Projects, Tools, Trends, Visions | 22 Comments »

The Virtual Library of Birmingham 21. July 2011 – 17:45 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Me, posing in Second Life

This morning I went for a walk in a place on the other side of the channel which doesn’t exist yet. All without leaving my desk. Thanks to Birmingham’s Second Life model of the Library of Birmingham, the real life version of which is due to be opened in 2013, I was able to have a look at what they’re planning.

A couple of months back I blogged about Birmingham’s virtual model of the Library of Birmingham, then in the later stages of development. Earlier this month the Virtual Library went live, meaning that people from Birmingham (and beyond) can see a virtual model of the library that is scheduled to open in 2013 and let the developers know what they think.

As a Brummie, I recognised Centenary Square, and it was clear where the new library will be located and easy enough to get in (although Second Life can take a bit of getting used to before you start walking like you’re sober). Almost all areas of the library are accessible, and you can even choose whether to take the escalators or teleport to the different floors. It gives a good feel of how the library will eventually look and I noticed that some people had already commented on the building: one visitor was  “concerned about the floor — it might do your head in!” and someone advised “Make sure the tables are able to be used by disabled people and children.”

As I mentioned in my previous article, the Virtual Library launch is being accompanied by a range of activities to ensure that it doesn’t go unnoticed in Second Life. Regular workshops are being held at the current library for the public, who are then able to use the computers at the library to access Second Life or go home and try it themselves. Those who don’t fancy signing up for Second Life can either view fly-through videos of the library or submit their comments using questionnaires.

For more information about the launch of the Virtual Library, you see the press releases from Birmingham City Council and from Daden, the company that created the model. I’m going to get an update from library staff after their current phase of outreach work, so watch this space!

Can you spot me?

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Citizens Involved in Redevelopment of Ulm Central Station, Germany 5. July 2011 – 11:48 by John Heaven (TuTech Innovation GmbH)

Photo by xaibex on Flickr

Starting today (5th July 2011), citizens in the German city of Ulm are invited to take part in a discussion on the redevelopment of the central station. The online discussion platform, developed by DEMOS Gesellschaft für E-Partizipation mbH, will be online until 29th July.

The first building block of the Citybahnhof concept will be the development of a new concept for the central station itself, which will involve the participants in discussing which aspects they feel are important in terms of design and transport connections to the city centre. As well as the more detailed subject matter, there are more wide-ranging issues which citizens can discuss and make suggestions about; for example the organisation of the new central station, the public transport hub at the station, getting to and from the station as well as spatial planning aspects.

The basis of the disussion will be nine draft designs. The redevelopment of the central station is possible in the medium term and the rest of the area will follow in subsequent years and will be the subject of further consultation exercises.

How’s your German? You can take a look at the site at: www.ulm-citybahnhof.de

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Call for chapter proposals: Sustainable eParticipation 26. June 2011 – 09:50 by Francesco Molinari

In the past 5-10 years, eParticipation emerged as a novel theoretical and practical domain, and it will further characterize the policy agendas of most industrialized and developing countries in the near future. Its state of the art is now profiled by a number of achievements worldwide. In Europe, the eParticipation Preparatory Action 2007-2010 has funded 20 demonstration projects including 30 pilot sites, 100,000 citizens, 50 public sector entities and 70 MEPs from 18 EU Member States. Recently, the Bertelsmann Foundation recognized 150 Government-led initiatives worldwide (see www.vitalizing-democracy.org), demonstrating that excellence in eParticipation is a growing and international endeavor.

However, documented practice shows mixed results from eParticipation initiatives, and concerns about sustainability-related matters (the likelihood that an expensive trial program will become “embedded” as a stable practice in the institutional setup of the concerned public sector organization) have started to emerge.

This is why Rolf Luehrs and I are launching the initiative of this collective book to be published in 2012 by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.). The book should provide relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the area of eParticipation. It is aimed to promote awareness and further debate on the scope and limitations of citizen engagement supported by ICT in modern democracies. It will also offer operational guidelines and lessons learned from past experiences to the benefit of government executives wanting to engage on eParticipation trials.

Specifically, the book is designed to deliver:
• a collection of European and international best practice of sustainable eParticipation
• a set of evaluation exercises to be used as guidelines for political understanding and future action
• an overview of existing methods, tools and ICT solutions available as a result of prior experiments
• an initial assessment of the “market potential” of the above.

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before July 30, 2011, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the scope and contents of their proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by August 15, 2011 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by October 30, 2011. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

For more information regarding this call, please contact http://supart.org

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The construction of our “Kyopol System” has officially started 9. June 2011 – 12:11 by Asociacion Ciudades Kyosei / Pedro Prieto-Martin

News from the Asociación and our main project (english version at the bottom ).

—

Como resultado del nuevo escenario creado en España por movimiento cívico “15M”, que ha inundado las plazas de las principales ciudades españolas (y algunas del extranjero) con sus demandas de una “Democracia Real YA”, en la Asociación Ciudades Kyosei hemos decidido “ponernos las pilas”, para producir cuanto antes una versión alpha del sistema “Kyopol” (aka. “Ciudad Simbiótica”), que podamos poner al servicio de todos los procesos de activación cívica y movilización social que deberían ahora darse, barrio a barrio, en todas las ciudades de España.

Ello nos ha demandado un un cambio de actitud: se hace necesario establecer un equipo más amplio, repartir responsabilidades… y así crear algo útil cuanto antes.

Pues bien, tras un par de reuniones muy productivas ayer martes y el pasado domingo… ¡¡el proceso de creación del Sistema Kyopol se considera “oficialmente iniciado”!!

El Sistema Kyopol (aka. “Ciudad Simbiótica”) fomentará la Implicación Cívica y la “Activación Ciudadana” en los ámbitos municipal y regional. Permitirá a los ciudadanos informarse, formarse y colaborar unos con otros en la mejora de su entorno vital, trabajando en aquellas temáticas que cada uno considere importantes.

No sólo eso: buscaremos que usando el Sistema Kyopol… ¡¡podamos pasarlo “de miedo”!! Que sea una experiencia tremendamente placentera, incluso divertida, eso de unirte a otras personas para implicarte en el “cuidado de lo publico”.

Para la Asociación Ciudades Kyosei… ¡¡haber logrado alcanzar este hito es algo sensacional!! Queremos agradeceros a todos los simpatizantes de la asociación el apoyo que nos habéis brindado hasta ahora y advertiros… ¡¡que ahora es cuando empieza el trabajo de verdad!!

Nuestro trabajo se desarrollará a partir de ahora mediante la estrecha colaboración de dos equipos:

• Primeramente, el “Grupo impulsor” -compuesto por informáticos, investigadores y personas vinculadas con la participación- construirá prototipos del sistema y establecerá las metodologías, los recursos participativos y los arreglos institucionales que formarán parte del sistema.
• En segundo lugar, el  “Colectivo de pioneros”, integrado por representantes de todos los colectivos que usarán el sistema (desde ciudadanos y asociaciones de vecinos a políticos y técnicos municipales, pasando por medios de comunicación, ONGs, sindicatos y partidos políticos y, por supuesto, ahora también movimientos sociales del estilo 15M, DRY y demás bichos que éstos engendrarán en los próximos meses), que nos ayudarán probando los sucesivos prototipos del sistema, y proporcionandonos feedback en relación a las funcionalidades y procedimientos que propongamos.

En base a ello, podremos disponer de una versión Beta del sistema, lo suficientemente madura para iniciar proyectos piloto. Primeramente en el entorno de Madrid -que es de donde provienen la mayoría de nuestros Pioneros”-, y posteriormente en todas las regiones de España, y finalmente en el ámbito Latino-Americano y Europeo.

Si tenéis interés en formar parte del “Colectivo de Pioneros”, por favor contáctanos cuanto antes.

Planeamos realizar un acto de presentación del proyecto a todos sus potenciales interesados, en las instalaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá. ¡¡Os invitamos a tod@s a que nos acompañéis en el evento!!

Os mantendremos informados (podéis seguirnos en la web de la asociación, facebook o twitter).

—–

Urged, and inspired, by the emergence of the #SpanishRevolution, which  has crowded the main squares of many spanish cities (and several foreign ones too!) to demand a “Real Democracy NOW!”… we have tried to accelerate our association’s projects.

And… after a couple of very productive meetings on Tuesday and on last Sunday … the construction of the “Kyopol System” has been “officially started”!

Kyopol (aka. “Symbiotic City”) will promote “citizen activation” and civic involvement in the municipal and regional levels. It will allow citizens to inform themselves about civic issues, “educate” themselves on how to “participate”, and collaborate with each other to improve their shared living environment, by collaboratively working on those issues that each one considers important.

Actually, our aim is that by  using Kyopol we citizens will  be able to experience a great deal of fun (and proudness!). Isn’t that the way that “meeting fellow citizens to jointly care and work for the common good” should taste?!

For the Asociación Ciudades Kyosei… having reached this milestone is something sensational! We want to thank all supporters of the association for the help we have received so far, but also warn them… that the real work is about to start!!

Our work will be developed through the collaboration of two teams:

• First, the “Core Team”, which is mainly composed of developers and citizen participation’s researchers, practitioners and stake-holders, who will work together to construct prototypes and establish the participatory methodologie,s the formative resources and the institutional arrangements that will surround Kyopol.

• Second, a “Pioneers Team”, that integrates representatives of all groups that will use the system (citizens, neighbourhood associations, governments oficials, politicians, NGOs, media, social movements, etc…). They will act as “Alpha testers”, and will help us testing our prototypes and providing feedback in relation to the functionalities and the participatory methodologies and resources we propose.

Based on this work, we will construct a Beta version of the system, mature enough to initiate pilot projects. These will first first in the surroundings of Madrid, where most of our Pioneers are located, and will afterwards get extended to several regions in Spain, and finally to the wide Latin American (and European) environments.

The next milestone we are planning is a meeting at the University of Alcalá, where the project will be presented to all potential stakeholders. Collaborative work will start immediately afterwards.

We’ll keep you informed (and you can follow us on our website, facebook or twitter).

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