This past Sunday was the 2009 edition of the eDemocracy Camp unconference, at the particularly-apt location of the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet at George Washington University in DC.
I rolled in little after the introductory remarks but just before the sessions started (so I guess I missed the round-robin “three words” participant introductions that I’d first seen at Government 2.0 Camp). In typical unconference style, presentations were determined by the participants, with just a little bit of cat-herding by the organizers. Here’s the session schedule taking shape:
Attendance was good, though I didn’t count noses. A bunch of folks were also planning on attending the Politics Online Conference the following Monday and Tuesday (As much as I am interested in the subject, I’m not sure I could handle a three-fer of conference days on participatory democracy).
The space and amenities were fine — we basically had our run of the third-floor classroom space, and wifi, outlets, and food were abundant (the three main gripes of any conference). With the hash tag of #edemcamp chosen, we jumped into the sessions.
The first session I went to was led by Carolyn Lukensmeyer of America Speaks, on linking Public Will to Political Will, specifically on the topic of health care reform:
In the past, America Speaks has done nationwide town halls of demographically-representative groups, who get together for a day or two to hash out recommendations on particular policy issues. For the health care discussion, they’d like to incorporate online discussion tools in order to include more participants (including people on all sides of the aisle, and especially nonvoters).
(I promised Carolyn I would post my full session notes for this event to the eDemocracy Camp group blog. I haven’t yet, but I will.)
The second of the hour-long sessions was focused on the idea of enabling Congress.gov — developing the structures and handling some of the nuts-and-bolts issues on making documents and legislation permanently accessible, and giving interested parties (including Congressional staffers) the way to see all the related conversation:
Panelists Alan Rosenblatt, Rob Pierson, and Daniel Bennett
After lunch (including a fascinating hallway convo with Oliver Zeisberger, featuring us Americans trying to wrap our heads online campaigns, given the restrictions of German election law), the third session I attended was a lightning round of demos.
The last session on “How Not to Lie With Maps and Statistics” led by Kate Chapman was probably the most useful for me, since I was parasitically leeching expertise from those folks who actually do data visualization. Particularly helpful were suggested blogs, books, and other resources on data visualization, which you can find by going through the #edemcamp tagged items in the Twitterstream.
After a wrapup session (here you see Wayne Burke and his 8-bit tie) where participants ran through particular takeaways and followups, we broke off for some post-event networking:
I’ve mentioned before that it’s particularly interesting how government uses social media, especially since they face the standard challenges of large institutions, with the added wrinkle of policy, cultural, regulatory, and even legislative barriers to online participation.
Overall, I’d say eDemocracy Camp was a great event. Again, probably like to see more representation from the Republican side of the aisle, since Sean Hackbarth can’t carry all the water for the right (especially since so many of the challenges to participation, implementation, transparency, etc. are nonpartisan in nature). And once again, Twitter did dominate as both a topic, backchannel, and session info-sharing tool.
I’m looking forward to the ongoing discussion, continuing conversations, and next iterations.
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