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To access links, see Steven Clift's blog: http://dowire.org/notes/?p=354 Post: Fire. Rosenblatt. Transparency. Now that E-Democracy.Org is "all growed up" or at least getting there, much of my time is occupied with things like getting our 990 tax filing in shape, working on our strategic plan, or meeting with Tim Erickson as we plot our use of tools and support for new forums. Below are excerpts from three recent blog posts at E-Democracy.Org: * Fire. Rural Voices. Up in northern Minnesota along the Gunflint Trail a major forest fire is slowly coming under control. A community network and citizen media initiative called Boreal Access is keeping people up-to-date online and aggregating a number of the local blogs. How do we learn from this effort and small town projects like Northfield.Org and Locally Grown Northfield, mix it with broader Web 2.0 and social media trends and best share the story of citizen media and online citizen engagement across rural Minnesota? How do we extend E-Democracy.Org's own experience with Issues Forums in a small city like Winona to a rural towns and regions? We have some ideas that we will soon be proposing next week (likely) to the Blandin Foundation which specifically serves rural Minnesota. Here is our draft (PDF). What are your comments and suggestions? Post them here or e-mail them to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Alan Rosenblatt Joins E-Democracy Board ... this month, we'd like to welcome Alan Rosenblatt with the Internet Advocacy Center and Turner Strategies in Washington, DC. Alan brings us a solid connection into the world of e-advocacy, but is a strong small "d" democrat central to our non-partisan mission. He also has a serious leg in the Internet and politics research world with his political science PHD. Alan is keen to point out he taught the first course on e-politics starting back in 1995 at George Mason University (and since we launched with the world's first election website in 1994 we were part of it). Be sure to check out Alan's Dr. DigiPol blog, the amazing collection of podcasts from his Internet Advocacy roundtables, and his full bio. If you plan to be at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York this week, say hello to Alan. He will be our eyes and ears at the conference. * Transparency With the 2005 investments in Issues Forums by the UK government we made a big leap forward in both our reach and the demand for new forums (Oxford is next). With the start of my Ashoka Fellowship I've now shifted from an unpaid volunteer to a full-time leader (while being paid directly from October 2006 until October 2009 by Ashoka) to help meet some of the growing demand. Our 990 as submitted to the U.S. IRS for 2006 (we didn't receive or spend money in the UK or New Zealand directly as an organization last year), will be our last at this level. Our Board has decided now is the time to shift our sometime contractor and full-time volunteer Tim Erickson - our lead with Issues Forum development - toward a full-time contract. In 2006 our revenue was around $16,000 US and our expenses were about $14,500 US. With your help and support with fund raising efforts, grants, and project revenue we expect this to rise significantly in this and future years. For the full blog posts, see the E-Democracy.Org Project Blog. Steven Clift E-Democracy.Org DoWire.Org *** Democracies Online Newswire - http://DoWire.Org *** To comment/for links: http://dowire.org/notes/?p=354 To network: http://groups.dowire.org Submit posts: http://dowire.org/submit Member profile for Steven Clift: http://groups.dowire.org/main/contacts/stevenclift ----------------------------------------- Group home for Newswire - Steven Clift's blog posts by e-mail: http://groups.dowire.org/main/groups/newswire Replies go to members of Newswire - Steven Clift's blog posts by e-mail with all posts on this topic here: http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/ For digest version or to leave Newswire - Steven Clift's blog posts by e-mail, email [email protected] with "digest on" or "unsubscribe" in the *subject*. Newswire - Steven Clift's blog posts by e-mail is hosted by Democracies Online - http://dowire.org.
