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Hello from Lithuania ... related to the article below, there is a good power point presentation about an extensive online consultation that was held here <http://www.svarstome.lt/english.htm>. I mention the Listening to the City (see below) <http://dialogues.listeningtothecity.org/> online event in my new "Interactive Community" seminar. I presented this seminar for the first time in Warsaw, Poland on Friday. You can temporarily download it: http://www.publicus.net/present/misc/interactivecommunity.ppt (10MB) The first half of the presentation focuses on online consultation and the second on the "commons online." Congratulations to all those involved in the excellent NYC online event! It shows how important a compelling topic can be and how citizens (many) are motivated when they think their comments might make a difference. Steven Clift Democracies Online P.S. It is great to see so many DO-WIRE members quoted in this article. Vox Populi, Online and Downtown http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/technology/circuits/26DISC.html By AMY HARMON [A middle clip ...] A meeting at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in July at which 4,000 New Yorkers gathered to pass judgment on the original six plans for rebuilding the World Trade Center has been cited as an exercise in the very principles of participatory democracy, in which informed public discussion leads to the best decisions. Less chronicled is the experience of 800 people who could not make it to the Javits Center that day but instead convened over the Internet over a two-week period to discuss many of the same questions, at more length and perhaps with more nuance. The results of the online discussion were included with those of the Javits Center meeting in a report that the Civic Alliance submitted this week to the agencies responsible for the redevelopment, which have promised to study them closely. But the 10,000-odd messages produced by the online groups are also being scrutinized as a model for civic engagement on local and national issues. Some who have monitored the process suggest that online discussion may be a more promising way to promote democratic debate than a Javits-style town hall in part because it is more practical. "You don't have to buy people lunch on the Internet or get them a free pass on the ferry to get there," said Robert D. Yaro, the president of the Regional Plan Association, one of the organizers of the Javits Center event and a member of the Civic Alliance. "And people could do this at 3 in the morning if that's when they were free." The Javits Center meeting cost about $2 million to produce; the online discussions cost about $120,000. Although the online dialogue was skewed toward computer users and involved fewer participants from ethnic minorities, it attracted a significantly higher percentage of people under 34. More than half of the participants in online and offline groups said that their opinions had shifted over the course of the discussions. Some organizers who tracked both processes say that by prolonging its discussions for two weeks, the online group allowed diverse points of view to be more fully explored. Rapport often developed instantly in their virtual communication, seemingly from the sense of safety people feel as they type into the ether. ... See: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/technology/circuits/26DISC.html *** Past Messages, Discussion http://e-democracy.org/do *** *** 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. *** *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
