*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** How often does an in-person meeting of an online community discussion forum make the paper? See the clip below or visit: http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/2online.php Congrats Winona. Here is their account on their humble beginnings a year ago: http://onlinedemocracy.winona.org/startup.html Speaking of online community interaction, I am starting to discover in other local forums (be they ever so rare) in other U.S. communities. E-Democracy is exploring options for some sort of intensive training and support program (if we can find the funding) to help other communities get their own forums off of the ground. Some good examples to check out (shouldn't you have one of these in your town/neighborhood?): * Arlington, Massachusetts: http://www.town.arlington.ma.us/elists.htm City directory on citizen-sponsored e-lists. * Santa Rosa, California http://ci.santa-rosa.ca.us/webbbs/config.pl Active web board on government site. * Northfield, MN - Citizens Online - Web Cafe (link top left) http://www.northfield.org New community-wide portal run by long-established citizen group with some government funding. * Washington, DC - Neighborhoods list at bottom http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/Regional/U.S._States/Washington,_D.C. * Fort Collins, CO - City Chat http://fcgov.com/chat.php Government hosted chat with Mayor most recently * Long-Branch Sligo Neighborhood, Takoma Park, MD http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lbstakoma Very active, very local e-mail list. * Santa Monica, CA - PEN - Remember them? http://pen.ci.santa-monica.ca.us/communication/conferences/index.htm Residents only - boo! - No idea whether this is alive or dead. Lots of history and hype back over ten years: http://www.mckeown.net/PENaddress.html http://sap.mit.edu/anneb/cn-thesis/html/pen.html Not to knock them, but isn't time for people to cite and research new examples? * San Diego, CA - SDCommunity E-Lists http://www.mediamanage.net/listserves.html * More Minnesota St. Paul, Minneapolis - http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html South Washington County - http://db.sowashco.com/chat/ Bloomington Web Cafe - http://bloomington-mn.org/webcafe/ * Other - I am always on the look out for online forums tied to specific geographic jurisdiction that have some local public agenda setting influence - know of others? E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] More Local E-Government Links I found Fort Collins and Santa Rosa from the PTI site <http://pti.nw.dc.us/links/e_government.html> where I also ran into link to their, "Is Your Local Government Plugged In?" survey report. More numbers! Below their table of contents is an excellent set of links to some of best local e-government examples: Table of Contents to PTI's E-Government Page: - Powerpoint Presentations and Documents - Full-text news and journal articles - Local Links: Transactions - Local Links: Citizen Input and Interactive Forms - Local Links: Audio and Video - Local Links: Citizen Forums and Bulletin Boards - E-Government Companies Additional Organizations and Resources Caffeine-inspired on a beautiful spring day at the moment. Steven Clift Democracies Online From: http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/2online.php Online Democracy group puts faces to e-mail sources By Käri Knutson/Winona Daily News Winona Online Democracy participants left the comfort of their computer keyboards and met the faces behind the e-mails Tuesday at the Acoustic Café. The online discussion group started last August with about 100 members. Now, there are more than 200. What makes the discussion group different from Web-based forums is that participants receive e-mails rather than visiting a Web site. "Our basic mission is to empower people and give them a voice that will ultimately improve life in Winona," said Steve Kranz, one of the group's moderators. "We want to have an impact on the real world, or what's the point?" -- clip -- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
