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…!)

Goodgym Wins @ Social Innovation Camp

What is Social Innovation Camp?

Well, the sicamp website explains far better than I could here and here so in their own cut n’ pasted words, the idea is basically that:

The web has already had a huge impact on the way we live our lives: it has changed how we communicate, how we entertain ourselves, our friendships and the way we work. Now it is going to change how we access our health care, how we educate our children and how we provide for the most vulnerable in our communities….

Social Innovation Camp is an experiment in creating social innovations for the digital age.

It  is a competition to find the best ideas for web tools to create social change, a participant-driven event aimed at bringing together software developers and designers with those at the sharp end of social need: social innovators, entrepreneurs and those with direct experience of need themselves.

Got that?

So I spent the last weekend holed up in the basement of The Young Foundation working with a bunch of talented people with a whole range of different skills in order to build a prototype webtool, business model, social case and funding pitch for a project called The Good Gym. Which then won!

The idea of GoodGym is to provide isolated or immobile older people with regular human contact and to provide motivation for people to run and get fit.   The Good Gym aims to make it easy for people to channel the energy used up as part of their exercise routine  toward a wider social good.  The project will set up a matching and vetting service for joggers/cyclists to integrate brief visits to isolated older people into their regular exercise routines.

Here’s the final presentation which should explain a bit more of the detail. Check out the other finalists here.(The sheer amount of work done on AccessCity is worth a look!)

So, just goes to show – lock people with different skills together in a room, feed them, give them a deadline and an incentive – result = a bunch of amazing online projects for social good!

Now to sustain the momentum…will keep you posted.

Us Now: Ebbsfleet and Ed Miliband

I went to see Us Now at the RSA last night… a documentary by Ivo Gormley and Banyak film that looks at web collaboration type stuff through some real stories about online/offline communities, and a few interviews. It got me thinking:

People right across the world are connecting in all kinds of ways on the web right now without any great institution or medium to support this in a traditional top-down sense. What is more, they are then getting things done – whether that’s about big online projects that use collective wisdom like Wikipedia or Linux, or whether its facilitating personal meetings and connections like mumsnet coffee mornings or couchsurfing.

This is useful, and interaction with a larger whole means something to individuals who take part. Big-little, global-local, public-personal. This is an important landscape feature of online collaboration.

Wikipedia is now my first point of reference when I want to know something, its part of my personal web toolkit, and through it I’m tapping into the  thoughts and knowledge of people from across the world who feel confident enough and who have time to contribute to building that vast resource for free. A wise collective.

The couchsurfer’s story in UsNow illustrated a more personal side of connectedness – for the surfer, the experience served to put a friendly face onto a blank and unknown cityscape, a way of providing a connection through shared affirmation and a sense of trust induced in part through online reputational systems. Basically, a guy he’d never met cooked him dinner and let him sleep on the couch – and this was all OK.

We know this right? But then, the film takes us to the story of Ebbsfleet football club, and into the world of Ed Miliband and this is where it gets interesting. At Ebbsfleet we see the story of players being picked online by fans, photos are dropped into position online by various enthusiastic supporters. The manager, the expert, then has to pick the team that the fans choose for him. In the film – Ebbsfleet wins the match – they’re all going to Wembley – and fans speak of being part of that victory – ‘we’ did it, ‘we’re going to Wembley etc. But Ebbsfleet don’t do this anymore – they’ve gone back to being expert-controlled with the manager, the expert, taking the decisions for the good of the team and the fans.

Then we see an image of Ed Miliband’s head being gently dropped onto a ‘pick your cabinet’ webpage…hmmmm. Not a great way to construct a cabinet I think… This is followed by a wicked moment of confusion captured on the film that shows a much more human side of an MP – for once, the ‘answers’ aren’t all there… but of course, this was then followed up with an official statement of ’solution’. I’d much rather it wasn’t.*

When those with traditional expertise don’t know what to do, when a public mandate for change is required, when decisions are at stake that can be based on the real, lived experience of people who know the area, service, attitudes best – those kind of situations are crying out for a more participatory approach. This is going to happen with or without government going along with it – but it would be so much better to have radical system change happen willingly and with optimism rather than reluctantly, through backlash and disenchantment, cynicism, loss of trust in decision makers etc.

Ed’s head in hands moment of bewilderment illustrates the institutional tensions and personal, inner conflict that go to work when we start transposing user generated participatory ideas onto existing, top down ‘representative’ (failing) democratic systems. Yes, there will be leading participatory disruptors that impact on the way government takes decisions, but the question is whether it would be better to transform and decentralise current systems of governance to enable a more equitable distribution of power. I reckon that more votes were made on disgruntled feelings, hairstyle and humour in the London mayoral elections than on policy issues. There’s potential to make a bad system worse…

In Us Now Paul Miller points that there is a misconception that decision makers and those with power make – that people are thick, therefore they shouldn’t be involved in making decision on important things. This problem of perception works at a number levels – decision makers don’t give enough credit to public wisdom and intelligence, the press consistently portray the public as being respondent, passive and powerless rather than active and influential, and people themselves do not feel able to influence decisions in their communities. These three have worked together to ensure that many citizens remain as passive consumers. Now, take the mass media image out of the picture, and instead put in place a new kind of reflection of a citizen - that seen through web 2.0 collaboration and connectedness – a far more attractive and empowering form of citizenship emerges, and its one that does not fit with current outmoded democratic systems.

It is clear that there is a place for two broad based kinds of expertise in this participatory future and for Ebbsfleet as much as Parliament. One form of which taps into public wisdom, one which uses the skills of learned specialist individuals. We need to work out how the two interconnect – where the system needs to change, (pretty much everywhere, especially in terms of repersentative politics), where power ought to lie, and what people everywhere will do for themselves next.

Now, I’m not sure how that’ll all pan out – so might go and ask someone else what they think…

 *see comment below

**Update: Check out what someone else thought at confusedofcalcutta where JP Rangaswami, who chaired the event writes it up.

2gether08 Festival and AWOL Casey

Apologies for the sporadic nature of posting recently -all to do with going awol on a few summer roadtrips(which you should never apologise for, but since becoming a blogger, you feel strangely accountable to the blank ‘write post’ box, and legions of fans … ahem ) and of course being busy working on a number of exciting new projects at Involve - aka. the mothership.

One of the things keeping me diverted at the moment – and which you should check out if you haven’t already done so – is the 2gether08 Festival.

Being a rather lazy blogger – here’s a summary of highlights of this upcoming treat in someone else’s words:

“- Introduction by Martha Lane Fox and Jon Gisby, Director of New Media and Technology at Channel 4

- With opening thoughts on the biggest challenges we face in the 21st century from Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA, Umair Haque, Director of Havas Media Lab and Professor Kathy Sykes from Bristol University.

- Interviews with JP Rangaswami, Managing Director of BT Data, Blake Chandlee, UK Director of Facebook, Charlie Leadbetter, author of We-Think and Philosopher Julian Baggini, amongst many others.”

Sounds good? Hopefully see you there!

…. its taking place on 2 – 3 July 2008 at Rochelle School Shoreditch London E2 7ES.

Roll up roll up! Get your tickets here.

Avaaz : The new politics?

I like Avaaz. 

Avaaz is:

A community of global citizens who take action on the major issues facing the world today. The aim of Avaaz.org is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decisions. Avaaz.org members act for a more just and peaceful world and a globalisation with a human face.

…that’s how Avaaz put it.

What I would venture to add to that is that for me Avaaz is representative of a form of ‘new politics’ - a movement with a global outlook that justly enjoys its success because it has tapped into the zeitgeist of modern popular politics  – the single issue campaign.

But its success is down to more than just that, it also uses new technology combined with traditional offline campaigning methods, clear and appealing branding, speedy responses and updates and a clear demonstration of ’what happened’  and what did not happen as a result of the individual’s involvement.

I believe that this type of ‘political engagement’ has much to offer party politics in terms of its relevance, style and responsiveness. My main issue would be how to shift the energy of the campaigning process away from being oppositional to supportive and positive. That’s when a more rounded picture could emerge from such activities.

However, the next challenge presented by such success on the campaigning and mobilisation front is how to actively involve citizens in meaningful deliberation that goes deeper into the causes behind issues and policy on a similar scale.

Want to blog local government stuff?

ICELE (international centre for local edemocracy) have just launched their bloginabox - aims to support people to get blogging on local government stuff. I haven’t tried it myself but seems worth a look!

 

Best of a bad bunch ;)

Unsure which London Mayoral genius to vote for?

Check out what the folks over at Unlock Democracy have come up with… a rather nifty interactive tool to help you uncover which mayoral candidate’s policies best match your own priorities. Excellent stuff….clear interface and tangible, useful outputs. Just how I like my eDemocracy in the mornings… mmmmhm.

PS. This is what they have to say about it:

What is Vote Match?

Unlock Democracy has teamed up with the Netherlands-based Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek (IPP) to launch Vote Match UK (http://www.votematch.co.uk/). Our first project will be based around the 2008 London Mayoral and Assembly election

Vote Match is a short quiz that voters can fill in to match their views with the views of the election candidates. In the interests of minimising any unintended biases, the tool is intended to be as transparent as possible:

• Candidates and parties will be asked to provide their own answers based on their own published policy.
• Users can include and/or exclude parties and candidates from the survey as they see fit and add extra weight to those issues which they consider to be important.
• The website does not simply give you an answer – it shows you how the results are calculated.

Vote Match is not about telling people how to vote and we do not support any political party. Rather, it is about encouraging voters to consider which issues are important and informing them about where the parties and candidates stand.It ha sbeen shown that in every country Vote Match has become an important part of the political landscape (Such as the Netherlandsand Germany) turn out has increased after people used Vote Match. In fact in the Netherlands over 35% of the Electorate use the tool during general elections witha 15% higher turnout amongst those who used the tool then those who didnt.  

Vote Match 08 website: http://www.votematch.co.uk/about/.

Audit of Political Engagement

Read this year’s Audit of Political Engagement

The Hansard Society have produced an Audit of Political Engagement every year since 2003. This body of work has developed into a valuable analysis of citizen engagement over this period. This year’s edition has a special focus on the constitution in light of current reform proposals.

Juicy bits include:

Efficacy of participation

Less than a third of the public believe that ‘when people like me get involved in

politics, they really can change the way that the country is run’ (31%), while 42%

disagree with this statement.

Around half of the public have never heard of or know hardly anything at all about the

constitutional arrangements governing Britain. In fact, more people claim to know

about the European Union than the constitutional arrangements in Britain.

Out of 11 key constitutional issues facing the country, there are none which more

than half of the public feel they understand.

Factoid: I actually feature in a prior edition of the Audit looking very very short.