[sociate] Deliberations on democracy

I've spent the last two days on the University of Minnesota campus with a
neat group, sponsored by the  <http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/>
Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and talking about whether and how online
deliberations work.

One of the most interesting aspects of this meeting was that yesterday about
a third of the participants were from Minnesota, all involved in civic
engagement or democratic discourse in some way. The number of initiatives
and interest groups online in this state is impressive; the details we
learned about some of these added great texture to our conversations. For
example, Steve Clift has helped Minneapolis create and run
<http://www.e-democracy.org/mpls/> issues forums online (this and other
local initiatives  <http://dowire.org/wiki/Minnesota_Examples> here).

This is a young domain. I don't mean that there are no grey-hairs here, but
rather that our collective understanding of the field is still in its
formative stages. Each of us has different preferences and pet peeves. Each
knows different initiatives that worked and is deriving different lessons
and principles from them. There are many overlaps, but it's hard to drive to
a unified theory or commonly held beliefs in even this group of 40-or-so
practitioners, theorists and curious parties (like me). It's exciting and a
bit frustrating.

We're going to try a  <http://dowire.org/wiki/Oddc_irc> monthly IRC chat to
talk about online discourse and deliberation. The first one we've scheduled
for 9am PDT on July 5. We'll continue on the first Tuesdays of the month and
see how it goes.


posted by Jerry at
<http://www.sociate.com/blog/archives/2005_06_01_archive.html#11197347465086
8751> 4:12 PM

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