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At some point last year in my e-democracy presentations around the world I stopped suggesting that the Minneapolis Issues Forum was only a complement to others forms of public participation like letter to the editor sections, talk radio and public meetings. My sense was that this forum was becoming one of the primary places for local public agenda-setting and not just a complement. As a representative of the host organization, Minnesota E-Democracy, this presents the next challenge that must be met. We must build effective outreach activities that increase the diversity of voices in our forums - both geographically across the city as well as the many socio-economic and ethnic groups that make our city so vibrant. Why, for example, do we not hear directly from the large Somali or Latino populations on this forum? They would have the most to gain by raising their voice and sharing local news from their communities. I don't think that access to the Internet from a technical perspective is as big a challenge as cultural and relevancy barriers. People who are new to this forum might feel lost with all the insider talk and decide that it not worth their time to participate? What are we going to do about this? For the last year E-Democracy has been gathering ideas for a New Voices Outreach Campaign. This will be an in-person outreach effort at civic and cultural events around Minneapolis and St. Paul <http://e-democracy.org/stpaul> as well as an e-mail list development training program for non-profits and neighborhood groups. We actually have two students at the U working on a small grant proposal ($5 - 10K) as part of their grant writing class. If you'd like to help review the grant proposal, have ideas for funding sources, or would like to join a volunteer outreach team (we want to hire a coordinator and pay table costs at events with the grant money), drop E-Democracy and e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. Also, for those journalists who do mention this list, please follow our organizational policy that the URL must be presented with any mention in print <http://e-democracy.org/mpls>. This would go a long way in making this forum accessible to others and not some mystery list to which reporters and those in the know have access. Thanks, Steven Clift Board Chair, Minnesota E-Democracy P.S. I talked about the Mpls forum at the SXSW conference yesterday <http://www.sxsw.com/interactive/> and had a number people come up to me with an interest in starting similar forums in their community. As you may have picked up, I get around - there is no local forum on the Internet any where in world with as much influence on local public affairs as this list period. In late April we will actually have a television crew from NHK in Japan coming to town to shoot video and do interviews about E-Democracy including the Mpls forum. Time for another E-Democracy happy hour that week! Stay tuned. _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
