User talk:Dkcyeo

Digital democracy project
Hello Dkcyeo. I wanted to drop you a note, firstly to thank you for all of your input to the attempt to community source the submission to the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy. Even though the work hasn't been overwhelmed by large numbers of contributors I think it has led to something valuable. We are going to look at encouraging submission to the next theme - representation - and the final theme, when it is announced. Each theme will have a separate submission (to include the talk page) but at the time of the final one we'll be compiling some kind of report as an accompaniment. The second point is I definitely agree we need to encourage more people to participate directly on the call for the second theme (and those subsequent). I would love to get some suggestions from you on this. I have deliberately been quite reticent about promoting the project through Wikipedia channels as I don't want to do anything that could upset the community. Do you have any views on how we could get more people involved? Thank you for all of your help so far, it is appreciated. Stevie Benton (WMUK) (talk) 15:15, 1 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks Stevie and apologies for the delay in responding - a combination of not checking back and organising our wedding from another country (getting married in august). I agree with your sentiments about the value of this experiment and reporting on it in itself is extremely useful - both for our evolution of the project and for the committee. Promoting engagement with democracy is hard in any form!! I think the key would be to build on existing open democracy communities such as engagers with Demsoc or the institute for government. Secondly through existing digital crowd sourcing communities who are familiar with the medium and approach - I can see how it would upset Wikipedia channels, but I'm sure there are others that would be willing to engage. Finally, bringing in the offline world - some real world deliberative fora to explore and discuss ideas. Demsoc have some experience in this. The ideas can then either be added live in front of the group or afterwards by the convenor. We could consider having other events if time and resources allow. Perhaps using some existing democratic processes - e.g. local council meetings. I know that Lambeth (my UK council) have tried crowd sourcing engagement on various urban masterplans so might be willing to collaborate? Councillor lib peck might be a useful contact. A major challenge will be ensuring broad representation. I suspect that those inclined towards digital media and crowd sourcing methodologies may come from a particular political/philosophical angle. But that in itself is a meta challenge!!! I'd be keen to help in whatever way I can within the constraints of an incredibly busy job and being based in Ethiopia, where connectivity is a little limited at times! Dkcyeo (talk) 12:15, 21 July 2014 (UTC)