E-Democracy.Org is at a crossroads. We need to grow now or implode based a rapid string of successes over the last 18 months. In our first decade, we’ve focused on low cost sustainability. Now that we’ve achieved that, we need to work on scalability.

I’ll have some open time in Washington, DC on March 6 and 7th before flying to Bristol in the UK for an online advocacy conference.

So on Monday, March 6, at 5 p.m. for about an hour supplemented with pizza, I invite you to the first informal E-Democracy.Org Advisory Council meeting. We will adjourn to a local establishment after the meeting.

For the secret location coordinates just blocks from the White House, please RSVP by Thursday, March 2nd to:

clift@publicus.net

After a 30 minute presentation, we will open for discussion. We need practical advice on how to essentially move from an all volunteer-based organization with local forums mostly in one state to a staff-led, volunteer-rich chapter-based organization with local forums in many countries.

The presentation will highlight:

1. The very successful Local Issues Forum expansion in the UK funded by the UK Local E-Democracy National Project of the Office of Deputy Prime Minister. Outputs included a 60 page guidebook, multimedia presentation, a new online groups software platform, and various articles. Our current forums in Brighton & Hove and Newham are humming along and were evaluated by Prof. Stephen Coleman then with the Oxford Internet Institute. Last year Issues Forums were given an honorable mention by the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica and named as a top 20 finalist for the Top 10 Who are Changing the World of Internet and Politics 2005.

2. Use and future development of the new GPL open source “killer ap” for integrated e-mail lists/web forums called GroupServer. This included moving the Minneapolis and St. Paul Issues Forums to the new platform in the second part of 2005. We also want to explore using MySociety’s Gaze service with GroupServer for a meetup-like “I want a local issues forum in my town” recruitment and forum development application.

3. Ideas for use of the new E-Democracy.Org wiki for our U.S. election 2008 directory efforts and a campaign to “tag p2008” across the blogosphere.

4. Creation of the first official E-Democracy.Org “chapter” in St. Paul and extension of the local concept with a planning grant received to explore Neighborhood Forums in Minneapolis. We humbly believe we can be the Rotary or Lions clubs of the 21st Century where thousands of citizen groups build Issues Forums for their communities. Some will be part of our official chapter network and hopefully many more will take our model and adapt for their own independent activities.

5. Our pending Board reconfiguration, possible staff requirements, grant writing needs, member donation possibilities, and requests for help starting more local issues forums in the U.S., Canada, the UK and from places as far flung as New Zealand.

In short, we’d like to tell you what we’ve been up to and invite you to offer you advice, contacts, and energy. We’ve become too popular for our own good and need your help to keep us moving forward without tripping up.

So join us on Monday, March 6. If you can’t make it, consider joining our new E-Democracy.Org Advisory Council online group. We only ask that you agree to donate something tangible to our efforts as a condition of membership.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2006 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Citizens and Participation, Conferences, Democracy, Newswire, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.