« Figuring out Finances | Main | eDemocracyCamp 2 »
eDemocracyCamp
During the first weekend of March an SI colleague and I attended an eDemocracy BarCamp in Washington, DC. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about the area of e-democracy, including current practices, trends, technical tools, and best practices. E-democracy is a broad and variously-defined area and includes topics such as: online participation, organizing, campaigning, digital government, e-voting, as well as online deliberation and dialogue. Sessions represented this diversity and ranged from how to facilitate large-scale online deliberation to using gaming to enhance political engagement. A few of the other sessions included: Local Issues Forums; Communicating with Congress; Alternative Voting Systems; Podcasting and Political Activism; and Wiki Debate and Deliberation.
A quite interesting mix of people and organizations were represented – from local DC residents to nationally and internationally-based organizations such as eDemocracy.org, America Speaks, Democracy Begins at Home, My Society, The Policy Commons, LinkTank.org, and the Sunlight Foundation -- to name a few. Though SI was the only higher education sponsor of the meeting, there were a number of undergrad and grad students from Maryland, George Mason, Swarthmore, Georgetown and George Washington.
What is a BarCamp?
BarCamps are self-organized, highly participatory workshops. Session topics are proposed, led, facilitated, recorded, and scheduled by attendees. This particular BarCamp was initiated and organized by a group of volunteers using the BarCamp wiki. But once on-site, all attendees played a part in the workshop either by facilitating or participating in sessions.
Why did I attend the eDemocracyCamp?
My dissertation work is exploring the nature and content of public dialogue in a large urban online forum, the Philadelphia-based Phillyblog.com, an arena in which I believe issues are introduced, politicized, generalized and legitimated as issues of public concern. And though my research tries to extend some of our traditional definitions and conceptions of political deliberation, for me, the workshop was quite useful because of the focus (and belief in the potential of) online public discourse.
Dana Walker, PhD Candidate
School of Information
Posted by walkerdm at March 9, 2008 12:40 PM
