Together with Sean Howard, I co-presented a workshop at Mesh08, “Government 2.0: From Community Participation to Co-creation”. I have uploaded the presentation at Slideshare. This workshop was built around the still in progress Metronauts case study, an innovation in participatory research and engagement for Metrolinx as it develops a Regional Transportation Plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).
We had a standing room only crowd at the end of Day 1, with many government folks in the crowd from all levels of government. The reviews were great, with several people coming up at the end to say it was the best session they’d see in the day, so I’m happy with how it went.
We were caught short on time for discussion, so I hope some of the participants in the workshop find this post and leave questions here in the comments. Nice to meet you all!
CaseCamp along with its sponsors transform CiRCA into ground zero for Toronto’s creative communities: art, design, communications, technology, media, social change and entrepreneurship. DJs, interactive art, and the closest friends you haven’t met celebrating their passion for participatory culture, creative practice and society.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 9:00 PM - Close
CiRCA
126 John Street
Toronto, Ontario M4V 2E3 RSVP on the Facebook event.
Trust me, you won’t want to miss this. Book off the next morning and celebrate with Toronto’s emerging creative leaders who are remaking the city. A glance at the Facebook guest list shows one of the most exciting gatherings of creative change-makers and rabble-rowsers in town. Just some of the groups and communities represented:
CaseCamp, StartupCamp, CopyCamp, DemoCamp, PodCamp, FacebookCamp, SciBarCamp, Third Tuesday, Emerging Arts Professionals, ArtsScene, Mercer Union, The Movement, FlashInTO, CFC Medialab, Metronauts/TransitCamp, Centre for Social Innovation, The Overlap, The Beal Institute, VizThink, OpenCities/OpenEverything, Newmindspace, Trampoline Hall, Mobile Jam Fest, Spacing, BlogTO, Talk20 Toronto, WirelessToronto, Mesh, nextMedia, CIX, and many many more. (sorry, my linking finger got tired: Ed.)
I am proud to announce the launch of a new online community and a series of Transit Camp style events across the Greater Toronto region. The stewards are really excited to launch this new project, which builds upon the success of 2007’s Toronto Transit Camp and takes it to new places and new audiences. Join the community.
What is a Metronaut?
Metronauts.ca is an open community of people from across the sprawling greater Toronto region who care about the future of their cities. Metronauts are explorers of the future form of our cities and the role transportation has in our lives.
I missed this from my earlier post about Pedro’s wonderful workshop at LIFT, but thought I would share it now.
Pedro talks about the possibilities of social software tools and online communities and the possibilities of technology enabling social change. We are working on this all the time, and my practice is more and more focused on the use of both online communities and events linked to social innovation goals. I hope that we can get Pedro to come to Toronto for Mesh, I think he’d be a great addition to MeshU and a panel conversation.
I love digital ethnographers and anthropologists! LIFT08 had a strong program of anthropological and ethnographic research and practice. Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist at Intel (which sounds like a great gig!). She gave an insightful presentation about digital deception based upon a solid understanding of human behaviour around secrets and lies. She argues that understanding secrets and lies provides better insight into issues of privacy and security.
The goal of the Metagovernment project is to make the governance of any community as accessible as a free software project. No one is required to participate, but everyone is allowed to participate, just as software developers can contribute to open source projects and editors can contribute to Wikipedia.
This form of democracy, called open source governance, does not entail traditional voting or majority-rule. Instead, people may help govern any community as much or as little as they wish by creating, discussing, and supporting proposals. User input is weighed by other users through a scoring system and brought to the attention of other participants interested in that input. Please explore this site for a deeper understanding of the mechanics of this system.
The Metagovernment project governs and develops Metascore, the software to aid and manage community-based open source governance systems. It is a global project in the startup phase, and we encourage you to participate.
The Personal Democracy Forum is your place to meet the people who are making that change happen, discover the tools powering the new civic conversation, spot the early trends, and share in understanding and embracing this dynamic new force.
They’ve assigned someone the role of “Chief of Emerging Technology”, whose job is to develop strategy, policy and plans for the Air Force’s “communicators” and whose mission is to use or build web applications as a means of engaging Airmen and the general public in conversation. The goal is to make every single Airman a communicator.
“Transformation” captures the key changes already underway and can help guide us into the future. It implies that our lives will increasingly be organized around digital platforms and networks that will replace edifices and big organizations.
A series of happy coincidences conspired to give Toronto a great new event that’s taking off like a rocket! 