Networked Citizens

New Practices of the Citizens - on the edge of tomorrow

Madarász Csaba – CEE Citizens Network//Option Labs 2009 11.18. - Malmö

e-Government Research and Innovation: Empowering Citizens through Government Services across Sectors and Borders

We are in transition - sensing a new trend all around us.

This is not only political or financial.

It is not about their crisis.

It is not only about the possibilities of new technologies.

It is more a community trend that interfere with all mentioned above.

using emergent technologies as tools to repair, bugfix, improve, and co-develop governance systems at all level ď Ź

when open technologies meet with the social vision - open society gets a new layer of meaning. ď Ź

where networked citizens gaining turbulence from technological openness and fostering open culture in governmental systems: a new space is opening for socio-technological innovations. ď Ź

etworking citizens – Who are they we?

Just like you and me.

The same persons with high community interest in change.

Public drive and enthusiasm

Profiles Specialized skills Local Knowledge Professional Amateurs

Approach..

When you see a bug, do not just let the others know about it.

First try to fix it yourself.

If you do not succeed, the community will help.

(From the Plone developer community verbal guidelines)

It is a long held and false assumption that ordinary citizens don't care about public policy.

The statement isn't, in of itself, false.

Many, many, many people truly don't care that much.

They want to live their lives focusing on other things pursuing other hobbies or interests - but there are many of us who do care.

Public policy geeks, fans, followers, advocates, etc... we are everywhere, we've just been hidden in a long tail that saw the market place and capacity for developing and delivering public policy restricted to a few large institutions.

The single most important lesson I learnt from my time with Canada25 is that it doesn't have to be that way.

David Eaves:http://eaves.ca/

Collaboration in three network types 

Coordinating networks

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Cooperative networks

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Collaborative networks

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Our focus is on collaborative

Networks that Work: A Practitioner’s Guide to Managing Networked Action

by Paul Vandeventer, President & CEO, Community Partners and Myrna Mandell, Ph.D.

networks...

What is new in this?

//common directions// practice of sharing (everyday behaviour - code, expertise, culture)

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open culture (social awareness, open society values, open softwareaccess-standards, transparency, accountability, participation) 

innovation spirit (based on mashup/remix culture, web2.0, s)

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Exploring the new forms hibrid, mashed, remixed, civic engeneered, open and active

The media in our hands

Places for sharing and collaboration: Mailing lists IRC Wikis Blogs Social media tools websites...

What else?

Unconferences 

Foo/Barcamps

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TransparencyCamps

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EdemocracyCamps

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Social Innovation Camps

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Open Spaces

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BlogCamps

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Other camps

FooCamp - Wikipedia

..Tim O'Reilly describes the goal of his company as "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators." Foo Camp has evolved into an important mechanism for finding those innovators. O'Reilly asks attendees to nominate new and interesting people to be invited to future camps. The invite list is calculated to create cross-disciplinary "aha moments" -- new synapses in the global brain, with a focus on emerging technology...

In the world of computing Birds of a Feather can refer to: An informal discussion group. Unlike Special Interest Groups or Working groups, BoFs are informal and often formed in an ad-hoc manner. The acronym is used by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to denote initial meetings of members interested in a particular issue.

A BoF session, an informal meet-up at conferences, where the attendees group together based on a shared interest and carry out discussions without any preplanned agenda.

The first use of this term among computer specialists is uncertain, but it was employed during DECUS conferences and may have been used at SHARE user group meetings in the 1960s.

BoFs can facilitate networking and partnership formation among subgroups, including functionally-oriented groups such as CEOs or geographically-oriented groups.[2] BoFs generally allow for more audience interaction than the panel discussions typically seen at conventions; the discussions are not completely unguided, though, as there is still a discussion leader.

The term is derived from the proverb "Birds of a feather flock together". (In old poetic English, "birds of a feather" means birds which have the same kind of feathers, so the proverb refers to the fact that birds congregate with birds of their own species.)

Barcamp BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences (or unconferences) - open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing.

BarCampBank is an ongoing series of unconferences about innovation in the financial world.

This subset of the software-oriented BarCamp grew out of BarCampParis4, on September 16, 2006 in Paris at Mandriva.

The first BarCampBank in North America was held at the office of Evri.com in Seattle in July 2007 and was spearheaded by Jesse Robbins at the request of Frederic Baud, who was instrumental in the creation of the first BarCampBank in Paris.

What is PodCamp Europe? It's an UnConference of podcasters, seo packages, bloggers, and new media professionals & amateurs for two days to share, explore, challenge, and grow our abilities in new media. Learn about audio and video podcasting, blogging, photography, Second Life, Twitter, and all kinds of other new and social media tools. Whether you're a veteran or interested in getting started, PodCamp is for YOU. Why's it called PodCamp Europe instead of PodCamp Stockholm?

Our venue sponsor, VON, is giving us a gigantic huge room to do with as we please. We figure it's big enough to allow anyone who wants to attend to be there, so no matter where you are in Europe or beyond, come on by!

Created by YOU! The beauty of PodCamps is that YOU are the experts. Bring what you know about the above topics and share your knowledge. Learn, grow, make new relationships, and discover the fun of an unconference.

Cost: FREE! Did we mention this is free? No money.

No Euros. No pounds. No dollars. Free.

Music Hack Day is a Hack Day

specifically for the music industry.

The first ever Music Hack Day was organised by Dave Haynes and held at the London offices of The Guardian over the weekend of the 11/12 July 2009.

The event was attended by around 200 developers who had 24 hours to build new hacks or web applications using the API's or tools of 10 participating companies.

These companies were 7digital, BBC Music, Echonest, Gigulate, Last.fm, PeoplesMusicStore, Songkick, SoundCloud.

The weekend also included workshops from companies like RjDj and Tinker.it and anyone else who wished to arrange one. Many developers stayed overnight at the venue and over 35 hacks were built, submitted and demo'ed by the end of the weekend. Future Music Hack Day's are currently being planned in the US, UK and Germany.

Sprint style events 

Hackathons

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DevSprints

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Hackfests

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Week long events (Citizen Participation Week, Mozila Service Week)

Hackatons and sprints – codefests and installfest hackathon, a hacker neologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming. These events are typically between several days and a week in length.

A hackathon refers not simply to one time hacks, but to a specific time when many people come together to hack on what they want to, how they want to - with little to no restrictions on direction or goal of the programming. the term sprint is used to describe shorter events of a similar nature, which typically only last a few days. Another name for events of this type, used primarily among Linux users, is codefest, a combination of the words code and festival, drawing its name from installfest, an event at Linux user Groups.

Apps, contests 4 engagement 

Apps for America/Democracy

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Transparency Corps

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MashupAustralia

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GovHack

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ShowusAbetterWay

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CEE.Mysociety

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NYCApps

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Apps4NSW

Something is wrong?

Not all of them are citizen based initiatives?

Yes, You are right.

Many of them has been picked up by governments

“Apps for Democracy produced more savings for the D.C. government than any other initiative.” − Vivek Kundra, former CTO of Washington, DC and current Federal CIO In the fall of 2008, DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer asked iStrategyLabs how it could make DC.gov’s revolutionary Data Catalog useful for the citizens, visitors, businesses and government agencies of Washington, DC. The Data Catalog contains all manner of open public data featuring real-time crime feeds, school test scores, and poverty indicators, and is the most comprehensive of its kind in the world.

Our solution was to create Apps for Democracy – a contest that cost Washington, DC $50,000 and returned 47 iPhone, Facebook and web applications with an estimated value in excess of $2,600,000 to the city.

Now, DC wants to hear citizens’ ideas about problems that could be solved through technology, as well as their ideas about the perfect system to receive feedback and service requests.

Through blog posts, email surveys, video testimonials, voice call-in captures, twitter update submissions, and in-person town halls, iStrategyLabs will seek to engage the populace of Washington, DC to ask for their input into what they’d like to see in the form of a DC Community Platform.

Digit@l Activism 

Foi based applications, campaigns

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Survaillance focused activites

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Tracking services

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eCampaigning

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Anonymizer tools-services

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Collaboration tools

for freedom of expression 

Humanitarian causes

Findings to move forward Citizens groups are many times performing better, than internal, or outsourced departments Repolishing participatory policies in the light of web2.0 and collaborational citizen trends is a must!

Where citizens groups can be extremely good at:

Brainstorming ( innovative ideas to see and solve problems ) Designing (Code, visuals, information web 2.0 shortens learning curve) Development – (codes, applications, apis,)

How to grab the innovative elements?

We have to realize, that the problem is more cultural, than technological. This is a cultural transformation – creating and adopting standards? Yes. Organizational culture change is happening - governmental institutions are facing and will face more tasks, that new culture workers are creating.

The questions are on the policy level: Technological policy of standards.

Business policy of reuse datas.

Governance policy on citizen participation and P.A. education

Adoption EU-s role is find managing citizens knowledge in a better way.

No doubt, that this will pay back – both in trust, efficiency and cost savings.

This has to be realized in a high policy level and standardized for better country level adoption.

Citizens involvment is one key..

Open data and access to it is essential.

Open standards are the core.

Open processes are giving the creditibility.

Use the follownig links and keywords to search: Open society http://eaves.ca/2009/10/08/open-data-us-vs-canada/ http://www.communitypartners.org/networks/ Science foo camp: http://www.nature.com/natureconferences/scifoo/index.html edemocracy camp: http://www.barcamp.org/eDemocracyCamp transparency camp: http://transparencycamp.org/ social innovation camp http://www.sicamp.org http://cee.mysociety.org/ http://sicamp-cee.net/ Openspacemap http://www.ploneconf2009.org/openspace/openspace/?searchterm=openspace Blogcamp_ http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/abidjan-blog-camps/ Birdsofafeather http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_of_a_Feather_%28computing%29 http://sangrea.net/free-cartoons/ Barcamp http://www.barcamp.org/ PodcampEUrope http://podcampeurope.pbworks.com/ Thatcamp http://thatcamp.org/ Healthcamp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCamp Participation http://participationcamp.pbworks.com/ Localgovcamp http://localgovcamp.com/ govcamp bruxelles http://www.govcamp.org/index.php/GovCamp_Brussels Changecamp http://wiki.changecamp.ca/Change_Projects/Visible_Government Hackathon http://www.sunlightlabs.com/hackathon09/

Zeapartners http://www.zeapartners.org/articles/snowsprint Purecaffein.com http://www.purecaffeine.com/2009/09/melbournes-firstopenaustralia-hackfest/ Mozilla service week http://mozillaservice.org/ apps of america http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/appsforamerica2/ Transparency corps http://transparencycorps.org/ Mashupaustralia http://mashupaustralia.org/ Govhack http://govhack.org/ Showusabetter way http://govhack.org/ NyCapps http://govhack.org/ Apps4NSW http://www.information.nsw.gov.au/apps4nsw Government 2.0 taskforce http://gov2.net.au/ Power of information taskforce http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com Cabinet Office – Digital engagement blog http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com Open Digital rights group http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ Cloudcamp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CloudCamp Rewired state http://rewiredstate.org/young Dgigital activism http://www.digiactive.org/ Ushahidi http://www.ushahidi.com/ rising voices http://rising.voices.org/ awaaz.org http://avaaz.org/

Thanks for the attention!

Contact:madarasz.csaba@gmail.com Twitter: kiazami Facebook: facebook.com/csabam