Blogging Ideas : Pakistani Spectator

A -kind of- festive post for you before the holiday season kicks off for real… I read a few international blogs through the excellent global voices and one of the active ones is the Pakistani Spectator. Ghazala Khan does a regular series of interviews with bloggers from all over the place and it was my turn last week: 

Would you please tell us something about you and your site?

I write about public involvement in decision making. This is actually takes in quite a wide range of different issues, from the tension between different modes of governance and electoral systems to how individuals collaborate on decision making in their own communities, both locally and online. I blog here.

    Do you feel that you continue to grow in your writing the longer you write? Why is that important to you?

I think everyone learns as they write more frequently – it forces you to order your thoughts in a structured format and to try and imagine how others might understand your meaning. Having said that, I feel that the most important thing is to get out from behind the keyboard and monitor and to speak with a whole range of different people to gain inspiration whenever possible. That’s where you find opportunities to grow as an individual and as a member of several wider communities.

    I’m wondering what some of your memorable experiences are with blogging?

My favourite recent post was an interview with an Obama supporter on London bridge – I took a quick photo of him with my camera phone and it came out so well – really capturing the enthusiasm and spirit of the moment. I was affected by the belief of an individual that genuine change can come from those at the top rather than the cynicism that is often expressed towards decision makers in the UK.

    What do you do in order to keep up your communication with other bloggers?

I use RSS feeds to keep up to date – attempt to keep my netvibes page which pulls all of those feeds together in good order. Then of course, I read and comment when I have some spare time.

    What do you think is the most exciting or most innovative use of technology in politics right now?

In politics, it has to be the Obama campaign in terms of excitement and the interplay between online connection and offline action. This was a very powerful mix and am very glad to see this strong emphasis on online tools continuing. See obamacto for an interesting take on what should happen next!

    Do you think that these new technologies are effective in making people more responsive?

I do think that new technology can make people feel more personally connected than ever before, and more able to respond quickly and easily to causes or issues that they are interested in. Not only this, I think that it can supplement our existing networks in new ways which are only just beginning to be realised.

    What do you think sets Your site apart from others?

It focuses on public participation and involvement from a personal perspective. I work for an organistion called www.involve.org.uk which is based in the UK – this enables me to look at public engagement and participation from a more analytical viewpoint during the day – then my blog covers the aspect I feel is often not covered so well – what do these ideas and projects mean for real people in their working and home lives?

    If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

Critical optimism!

What was the happiest and gloomiest moment of your life?

I’m not sure on this one – life is a journey and I’m usually looking forwards not back!

    If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for – what would your top 3 choices be?

I like this question – I’d go to Tierra del Fuego to see lava pouring into the sea, then drop by Venezuela to see the Angel Falls, and then maybe to Dongtan to see the eco city… in a year or two.

   What is your favorite book and why?

I don’t have a favourite – I love reading and lots of books have strong meaning for me – one would be ….read the rest here

Enjoy the holidays! 

(Yes, I know the life is a journey line is a bit Forest Gump –  is tough not to be able to edit your words after you write them…!)

Time for a change : US Election, unprecedented turnouts

The US Presidential race is making history – and its not just about Obama believe it or not! Across the US we’re seeing unprecedented turnouts at the polling stations, which buck the historic trends across Western democracy of declining turnout at the ballot box.

CNN have reported  that the early voting figures suggest overall turnout across the US could surpass 64 percent attained in 1960’s Kennedy vs. Nixon election. In fact, experts estimate that a record 213 million voters are eligible to vote this year- voter registration drives by both parties, particularly the democrats, have played a significant role in boosting this figure. No matter which candidate they’re all voting for [though the Obama effect does seem to be boosting the turnout ;) ] this has to be good for reviving democracy.

Gallup estimates a 60% turnout – check out the graph below from OpenLeft to see what a strong trend that would actually be. (I’m hoping for something higher than this!):

But of course, unprecedented turnout equals unprecedented queues. Interesting to see how the system copes (or doesn’t) with significant numbers of people actually showing up to exercise their democratic right to vote… and that’s happening on an astonishing scale right now.

Whether in Long Island, Missouri, or Washington DC. people are turning up to be part of history – to play their own role in this grand occasion. They are standing in the winding queues, waiting there in good faith that their personal participation will count for something far bigger and more significant than any one individual’s action. That very fact is in itself a real change already being delivered by the candidates’ campaigns. Somehow, this contest has made voting suddenly seem attractive again.

Let’s see if Cameron or Brown can make me want to queue in the rain for six hours or so … hm, or maybe I’ll just do postal next year.

Obama McCain : The world is watching… and participating!

Ahmad Foroughi : Iranian Obama Campaigner

 

I love this picture of Ahmad Foroughi standing on Waterloo bridge. I met him a few weeks ago when I stopped to talk as I was curious to know what was motivating him to stand there, giving up his time on a windy Saturday afternoon.  He was wearing a cool T-shirt and carrying a sign that said ”We’re searching for Americans! Can you help? Are YOU American?”

I assumed that he himself was a US citizen – enthused by Obama’s message of change – trying to spread the zeal and get others to vote Democrat too on November 4th. I was off the mark – he is in fact Iranian by birth- and unhappy with the US’s current foreign policy around terrorism and extremism. He himself is unable to cast a vote in the US election, so gave up his Saturday afternoon to stand on Waterloo bridge trying to find any American who hadn’t registered in the hope that it’ll help Obama win tomorrow.

I asked him why he was so passionate in wanting Obama to win – he went on to discuss his family and roots in Iran and the impact of US foreign policy in previous years and what it might be the future. He then went on to tell me in a matter of fact way: ”Its time for a real change and I believe Obama can do this.”

The world is not only watching this election – they want to be part of it in whatever way they are able to, and its not just happening online, there are people like Ahmad willing to give up more than a mouseclick moment to the campaign. Inspired by politics, inspired by a politician, belief in the possibility of real change… write it off as  Obamamania if you like – but the passion and interest in participating has to be good for people’s rights and for generating the demand for real democratic process and real opportunities for people to influence power across the world.

I’d like to see this level of enthusiasm in the UK election next time around…

CauseWired : A Web 2.0 Book Review

Review In Brief: Causewired is a new book by Tom Watson which chronicles next generation social activism, or the ’causewired’ phenomenon – people connecting directly on social issues using the web to make a difference in real life. Its pretty interesting, has some good real life examples of the power of web 2.0 so you should probably go & check it out!

Review in Full: Its true that I don’t habitually get my news through the broadsheets anymore – and that when I do get the chance to spread out the newspapers and browse through them it feels like a luxury. Maybe its something to do with the amount of time and concentration it takes to rifle through and unfold the various supplements, find what I’m looking for without a search engine, and then read something with a wordcount longer than 500 in its entirety without any links to source material or comments from other readers to distract me…. ;)

Despite my lack of dexterity and slight attention dysfunction – I do still persevere with getting information in this way, albeit less often than I used to. Of course, this move away from the printed press doesn’t mean that I read any less information, or that I’m accessing it less often. In fact my information sources are far greater in number, infinitely more diverse and (too) frequently accessed by me than ever thanks to RSS, e-newsletters, blogs, Twitter, online journals, and regular Amazon deliveries of the latest books to take my fancy.

So… I’ve increased my digestion of online, interactive, peer to peer, user generated news and info alongside a scaled down consumption of the of printed stuff; but whatever printed articles and books I do choose to take the time out to read from this deluge of information - I’m reading them quite differently now.

The way I access and absorb information has become far more interactive. As I read, I am more actively re-evaluating the text than before, wondering what other people I know think of the material and (much to the irritation of certain print fanatics!) am constantly writing notes in the margin of printed articles/books and intermittently googling references as I go…wondering more than ever before ‘what does this actually mean in practice for me, for my work, friends family?’ etc.

So, bearing in mind all of the above, I hope you’ll better understand what I did when I received a copy of Tom Watson’s new book CauseWired last week and why it matters.

What I did when I received Tom Watson’s CauseWired last week … and was it worth it?

Unsurprisingly perhaps, I started reading from the beginning, marking the interesting sections in the margin (of which there were many) and then googling my favourite references and quotes in what proved to be a fascinating chronicle of the way in which social media and connectedness is changing the face of philanthropy and activism.

Tom W writes clear and interesting accounts of how regular people have used social media tools to highlight the ongoing issues they face in their community or that they care about across the globe. He disscusses the citizen-led coverage of New Orleans post Katrina, of how Darfur and cancer research centres came to be so well supported on Facebook, of how the face of political campaigning is being changed forever, and many other fascinating practical examples of social web tools in action. I googled all of this stuff, and proceeded to skip around a few chapters back and forth and skimmed some bits, went on to discuss the references with colleagues and IM’d a couple of friends about what I’d read. Then I joined the Facebook group and contacted the author on Twitter to let him know I’d be writing something up about his book on my blog.

Then I lent the book to someone else interested in online stuff – and I hope to get it back to read the bits where I left off to go googling… :) Then I watched some Obama videos on YouTube, joined a Darfur campaign group on Facebook and sent an awareness raising video to a few friends, and finally, I clicked online to donate some money to a small charity in Africa that I only heard of and keep in touch with through email/blogposts.

The book is a great resource for anybody who wants to better understand what all this web 2.0 stuff actually does, and what it means for ordinary people right across the globe when it comes to social change.

So, yes, it was worth reading; and what is more, it was worth passing on, so I wrote it up here on my blog.

Web 2.0 is changing everything we do in a whole variety of ways both online and crucially in our everyday lives -some of these shifts are more subtle than others and they even apply to a bog standard book review like this one.

So below, please find the rest of my web 2.0 book review, or in other words – check out these links for more info. What you choose to do with that info will be the interesting part… :)

Max Gladwell

Steve MacLaughlin

The Mongoose

David Bailey

Designing Climate Change Deliberation – Canadian style

I told you I’d get round to writing this up… here it is!

Just over a week ago I took part in a series of workshops, discussions and deliberations at the University of Edmonton in the province of Alberta, Canada. I was one of a handful of ‘deliberation/participation people’ who were there to have input into how the diverse group of Albertans present might best set up a successful, province-wide deliberative process on climate change issues.

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

The event was participated in by an impressively varied group of individuals – representing a significant range of viewpoints including;  energy industry representatives, radical environmentalists, political activists and government officials. The thing that all parties had in common was a genuine, and strong desire to move forward on the issue of climate change in Alberta. (They even gave up their weekend and worked 12hour days for free to be part of the deliberation – so I can testify to their commitment!)

So, what were we actually doing?

We wanted to put together a basis for how a public discussion on climate change in Alberta might best work – and help to move forward from polarised debate on climate change into more useful dialogue and action across the province.

Alberta is a focal point for climate change discussion as the Canadian economy has greatly benefited from the energy industry located there, including the booming Athabascan oil sands near Fort McMurray. This industry has been strongly criticised by environmental campaigners and scientists for its impact on the environment. Alberta embodies many of the environmental and economic debates taking place globally.

A key part of how myself and others present felt that progress could be made on these tough issues was through using deliberative techniques to bring people together in a more constructive and positive way than through debate and conflict.

How did you go about it?

Two main groups were involved in the design process over about four days:

One was a smaller group of around 15 and consisted  both of Albertans and of visitors interested in assisting with the deliberation and public participation aspects. This group was present throughout the entirety of the process every day.

The second group was a larger group of around 50 Albertans who were present at key points in the design process to act as a ’sounding board’ for the ideas that the smaller group had been discussing and formulating together during the day.

This format worked well in that ownership of the process and its aims began to be built from the outset amongst a very varied group of individuals, and the rapid response and interaction between the smaller and larger group helped to refine ideas very quickly over a short period of time.

By the end of the five days we worked together to uncover the bare bones of a process that could work for Albertans, wandered across a suprising amount of common ground and found several leverage points for instigating action. As we walked out of the room on the final day, an interim steering group had been set in place and action points had been established for moving forward… so watch this space.

The experience made me feel very positive about what can be acheived through using more deliberative approach to difficult issues like action on climate change - not a form of consensus building, but rather a way of better understanding one another and identifying areas for beneficial progress.

Citizenship: Passive, and devoid of erotic promise?

In between drinking tea, browsing Which? for camcorders, and packing for my holidays  I’ve been thinking about how we perceive ourselves in relation to society… or more specifically – how uninspiring and lacking in appeal the notion of ‘citizenship’ is…. As Barbara Ehrenreich put it when talking of the public sector:

“Everything enticing and appealing is located in the (thoroughly private) consumer spectacle. In contrast, the public sector looms as a realm devoid of erotic promise.”

This made me go back to the ”Citizens or Consumers” study (Lewis, Inthorn, Wahl-Jorgensen, 2005) which looked into portrayals of the public by US and UK news media over a set period of time in 2001-2002. Two insights that were supported by this report and study of over 8000 news media portrayals of members of the public were that:

1) “Instead of beginning with public opinion or the action of citizens and using this to address the politicians,the news media begin with the politician’s agenda and then invoke the actions, thoughts or feelings of citizens in response to this agenda.” (ie. the public is cast in a role of respondent, rather than activist - news is generally produced in a top-down, expert-led way.)

2) “The great majority of references to citizens or public opinion in the news- over 95% – are not based on any identifieable sources of evidence.” (ie. there are alot of ‘the public believe this, most people think that’ type of claims being made in the press which are largely unfounded… again, the public is pushed into the backseat, with no active role.)

If the public is consistently portrayed as being passive and responsive rather than active and agenda-setting, and if centrally controlled news media still has a profound influence on our self-perception as a society (whether accessed online or off); then what does this mean for individuals’ attitudes to the worth of individual behaviour change and the future of consumerism in an environmental context?

‘Consumer’ or ‘citizen’ – each are likely to have quite different personal responses to the challenge of climate change. So how far does the media impact on our self-perception in taking up either one of these roles, and therefore our willingness to act altruistically for the good of society?

Rather than think about this myself any further (as I do have quite alot of packing left to do) I’ll leave you with another couple of quotes on this relationship between how we perceive ourselves as being active or passive and the relatively short term thinking that underpins our value system. 

First quote is from Victor Lebow, a retail analyst working post WW2 (1955):

“Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and selling of good into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in commodoties… We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing rate.”

This seems more relevant than ever to me, but I still want to buy that camcorder.

The second  quote is from the environmentalist Donella Meadows (2001):

“The Earth says: money measures nothing more than the relative power of some humans over other humans, and that power is puny compared with the powers of the climate, the oceans, the uncounted multitudes of one-celled organisms that created the atmosphere, that recycle the waste, that have lasted for three billion years. The fact that the economy, which has lasted for maybe 200 years, puts zero value on these things means only that the economy knows nothing about value – or about lasting.”

This seems to put things into context, though not sure about the ’Earth says’ bit…

Anyway, the authors of “Citizens or Consumers” make some interesting suggestions as to how the portrayal of publics by news media could be altered in order to encourage a more lively and active citizenship. They say for example, that by using polling data in a more bottom-up and active way; “we might begin with what people want and then ask the politicians to respond to those demands.” I  think this has great potential for a more meaningful and useful interaction between media, publics and politicians and seems particularly relevant to the climate change debate in terms of releasing deadlock on tough policy decisions.

Also, trends towards a more networked journalism have been on the increase (possibly) since the publication of the ’citizens or consumers?’ study … so when might we start to see more user-generated policies where citizens are enabled to play an active role rather than to respond by ‘buying’ or ‘not buying’ through the ballot box?

Howver, in the spirit of a long term planning approach I’m going to spend a bit more time mulling over what a sexy/cool/remotely appealing ’citizenship’ might look like while I roam around  the lowlands of Scotland. Must go and finish that packing….!

Isn’t that what political parties are for….?

When trying to explain the recent rise of the social innovation/unconference by saying something to the effect that ‘its about getting a group of people together to create shared solutions to social problems’ – I was met with the response:

“Isn’t that what political parties are for…?”

This is a bloody good question. Yes, of course that is what political parties are supposed to be for, but has our common perception of what a party is/does now lost sight of that focus on fellowship in problem solving and collective action for the greater social good? Surely parties are for arguing, combat and infighting – not problem solving…?

It seems that people  now increasingly think of political parties as not being applicable to their own lives. Is this a question of party political structure that needs revitalising from the inside out, or a far wider reaching issue connected to social trends at work in society at large, such as the relentless rise of the single issue politics and individualism?

Whatever the preceise nature of the problem, it is clear that parties cannot carry on the way they are as membership dwindles ever further. So what would the parties of the future look like and what can they learn from social innovation style problem-solving models and ways of working?

(I can’t resist saying it) – What would PartyPolitics 2.0 actually look like, and would an innovative social approach be any better than a traditional route to renewal?