This is a wiki documenting ideas and format for the event. It’s a work in progress. Log in and edit it as you please…
The idea goes back to this summer and was prompted by several encounters between community members, mainly by Ruxandra and Ana Maria Toni. This informal meeting is an opportunity for different groups in the city working in civic platform development to come together and share their projects, discuss challenges and work out more effective ways for engaging citizens to participate in democracy and decision making.
When is it happening?
4th November at Lente Sotron (bdul Pache Prototopescu, Bucharest).
TBA
Assumptions
From early research, we found a lot of inactive platforms and close to none functional online participation setups (not counting facebook groups which are quite active, especially activist groups e.g. Save Rosia Montana).
Some of these are documented in this google doc (ask for permission if needed).
It seems single issue platforms are more effective than general participation platforms. Two examples: http://www.i74.ro/ , a legislative initiative currently being driven by citizen groups; http://www.euvotez.com/despre-noi/ a web app for live monitoring of election centers by Romanian voters abroad.
Newest platforms rising with the mass protests in early November (colectiv tragedy when people took the streets): http://schimbaromania.com/guvern - for Gov and Parliament nominees and crowdsourced demands; https://cevremcolectiv.yrpri.org/ - for crowdsourced demands; modeled on the Icelandic platform Your Priorities
It seems that:
- We need to be more effective in engaging citizens to actually use platforms.
- We need to look at what's been done already before creating ever new platforms.
- We need to see if there is scope for sustainability before starting any platform development.
- add yours
Questions we would like to answer
Funnel platforms vs Direct participation platforms. Currently most platform content is generated by admins, and not citizens. How to go from platforms raising awareness (plenty of those!) to platforms fostering (inter)action and interactivity?
What’s missing for massive number of citizens to use the existing platforms? Most projects we found while researching are inactive - those developed under grants because the money was over, those developed by volunteers because the costs of maintenance and comms is too big, I assume. I would really like to see a discussion on social protocols and design and how that needs to complement good technology.
Do we need a common project and not dissipate efforts? Would it be more effective if more of us worked together? How can we do that, concretely?
What will happen at the event?
- Case study collection: introducing three promising local platforms in Romania or from abroad.
- Informal discussion around existing projects: we would like to ask a number of invited guests to introduce their vision, platforms and challenges.
- Collectively draft a list of shared practices and tools currently being tested in the Romanian landscape.
- Explore collaboration at a bigger scale (eg the 2% project cross promoted and implemented on various platforms)
Add your ideas here
A date suggested for this is Monday, 26th of October. Would this work? Paging @Ana-Maria_Țoni, @Ruxandra, @Raluca_Iacob_Pop, @Catalina, @MANU_BABELE, @Alex_Stef
Who does the work calls the shots…
Pacat, platforma pare grozava.