E-Democracy.org – Project Blog

The Federal Communication Commission with the Knight Foundation have put up a very interesting challenge called Apps for Communities.

• Download GroupServer - We’ve put up GroupServer.org as the “app” for this competition. It is designed for technology hosts. End-users engage the app via the web and e-mail.
• With certain customizations that we use and most importantly a “human” outreach wrapper we call our Inclusive Social Media project, we hope to have a decent chance at recognition.

Below is the text of our submission:

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As our summer of Inclusive Social Media outreach gets underway across St. Paul and Minneapolis, we’ve put together a presentation introducing “Neighbors Forums.”

The slides are detailed so you can skim or go in-depth. Additional download options are at the bottom of this post.

Invite us to present in-person in your neighborhood. Our Outreach Coordinator Corrine Bruning is also available for small group overviews in our target inclusion neighborhoods in particular. So far we have an on-demand video version with audio that goes in-depth (play it below).

In addition to the presentation, we have a new flyer available in our print materials section.

If you would like the start a new forum in your area anywhere please contact us. With renewed grant funding, we are focused on growing and launching as many diverse community forums (see our outreach summer job posting) as possible in St. Paul and Minneapolis. tcneighbors.org is our new promotional web address where folks can quickly find their local forum or request a new one.

How can you help?

If you don’t see yourself starting a new forum in your neighborhood, you can still get involved! Please join our Projects online volunteer group here or monitor it via Facebook or Twitter. We put out calls for assistance there. If you are covered by a forum, contact your local Forum Manager and offer to assist with outreach.

Also, if you are software developer, please join the GroupServer Development group and help us develop new features or join our proposed next generation BeNeighbors.org effort.

New communities?

Are you from outside Minnesota, Oxford and Bristol in the UK, or Christchurch, New Zealand? We are open to hosting forums both at the neighborhood-level but also city-wide “online town halls” based on our classic Issues Forum model everywhere. Eau Claire, Wisconsin is next. If you have the will and the dedication to do real outreach, we have the technology and lessons that plain and simple – work!

This isn’t an auto-pilot, set it and forget model (nothing is), but wouldn’t you rather build your local online community supported by a network providing mutual benefit and support? If not, if you prefer your own technology or think Facebook Pages really work over the long-run (you need 20x the “Likers” for comparable activity so we use rather than rely on Facebook at our core), that’s awesome. Take our lessons and run with it because millions remain unserved. Also join the Locals Online community of practice that we host with hundreds of people doing local good online.

Additional Slide Options

Download options: PowerPoint – Full Version, PowerPoint – Short VersionPDF Online Viewing, PDF Print Full Page, PDF Handout 6 to Page

Watch/listen with extended audio:

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Check out some of the images across our community and neighborhood Issues Forums courtesy of ShapeCollage.com. Can you tell that pet adoptions are hot in our Las Vegas, New Mexico forum as well as lost and found pets in our Twin Cities Neighbors Forums? Interesting, lost pets result in a number of new members. People join to find their pet and stay for the community and civic engagement. This is one reason why our multi-topic “community information stream” approach really works and meets our mission.

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Update: As of July 1, 2011 we are still considering additional candidates to assist with Latino and Native American outreach. Send us your resume per the contact information below.

Are you excited? We are.

With the support of four foundations, including year two funding from the Ford Foundation, our important Inclusive Social Media effort is going into full recruitment mode. Numbers. Numbers. Numbers … with real diversity in voices and members.

Update: The resumes are coming in. Keep them coming. Here is a new presentation with project background. Thank you.

We’ve brought on Corrine Bruning as our Outreach Coordinator first focused on Phillips and Powderhorn and then on St. Paul. Executive Director, Steven Clift is leading efforts to launch as many new forums as possible (volunteer to start a new forum in your neighborhood today!) as noted on tcneighbors.org which will also assist Minneapolis-wide outreach.

Next up, we are seeking candidates for our five part-time ~100 hours outreach contracts to recruit deeply among our neighborhood Latino, Native American, East African, Hmong, and African-American communities. As far as we can tell from experience, we need our Diverse Community Outreach Leaders to recruit people one at a time to be effectively inclusive.

Please pass this contract job posting on far and wide to we can match a talented person up with our inclusive community building initiative: http://pages.e-democracy.org/Diverse_Community_Outreach_Leaders

Here is the text of the official job posting copied on to the blog:

Diverse Community Outreach Leader Contract Job Description – Resumes/letters being accepted now through Monday, June 6, 2011 to: – Use the subject line: Community Outreach Leader Application

E-Democracy.org is hiring a number of focused part-time one to two month contract outreach positions over the summer in 2011 to specifically recruit diverse community participation across our Neighbors Issues Forums across St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Do you care passionately about building community? Do you believe in inclusion and raising diverse voices? If yes, then join our digital ground breaking Inclusive Social Media effort and team.

We seek resumes and/or letters of interest from those who can help us lead very grass roots outreach to the:

• Latino community – Focused on Powderhorn and Phillips in Minneapolis as well as potentially the West Side in St. Paul
• Somali and East African communities – Focused on Phillips, Seward, and Cedar Riverside (Cedar Riverside is a model where the forum is successfully ~half East African today)
• Native American community – Focused on Phillips (we also be posting a Community Outreach and Information Leader position for Leech Lake later as well)
• Hmong and SE Asian communities across St. Paul with special emphasis on the North End, East Side, and Frogtown
• African American communities – Minneapolis and St. Paul generally, special work in Summit-U, the East Side and Frogtown in St. Paul

Duties:

• Recruit diverse communities in-person – community events, festivals, door-to-door in target areas, libraries, parks, computer access centers, ethnic shopping malls, etc. – Our primary and most effective “technology” is the paper sign-up sheet where we gather the first name, last name, e-mail address, and neighborhood forum(s) of interest. There will be minimum recruitment goals (at least one person per hour contract required with good faith targeting of diverse or lower income communities) with a bonus for every additional 50 people recruited to join a forum on paper.
• Recruit diverse community leaders and cultural organizations – whether recruiting in-person, via e-mail, or telephone – if you have deep connections to the communities above securing new members is the goal
• Post (multi-lingual) signs and fliers in cafes and other public locations
• Promote participation in the forum via locations that provide public Internet access such as the local library and community centers that cater to diverse communities

Skills Desired:

• Good communication and organizing skills
• Outgoing personality and a willingness to engage and involve others
• If your outreach focus includes a more recent immigrant community, bi-lingual applicants in English and languages such as Spanish, Somali, Oromo, Hmong, etc. are desired
• Self-directed – As part of the contract process we will ask invited candidates to outline a simple work plan

Duration: One to two months within June, 2011 to the end of September, 2011. As a contractor, you are responsible for your self-employment tax (1099) and any insurance.

Rate: Depending upon experience, the contract rate is up to $15/hour with approximately 100 hours in each contract and at least 100 new forum members recruited. Bonuses will be based on results.

To Apply: Send a short letter to Steven Clift, Executive Director, E-Democracy.org describing your interest, community activities, and contact information now through Friday, June 3, 2011. Attach a resume and two references if available. Use the subject line: Community Outreach Leader Application If you do not receive a confirmation with 48 hours that you applied for this position, please call 612-234-7072 during business hours.

Related Volunteer Opportunity

We also have volunteer positions where we will provide a limited number of gift cards to those assisting our general tabling outreach at community events, libraries, and festivals. (A single $20 gift card for at least 2 hours of active assistance will be available at key events.) These important volunteers will assist our Outreach Coordinator, Corrine Bruning and our diverse community outreach leaders. Let us know if you are interested in being on a list of potential outreach volunteers:

If you apply, but are not hired for a lead contract position, please let us know if you would like to assist us as a volunteer with the gift card stipend.

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After months of extensive participant input including blog comments and an online survey, Forum Manager and volunteer consultation, and Board deliberation, the final version of our updated rules (terms of service) were adopted by the Board on April 26, 2011.

The major changes include:

• Setting Better Expectations – We added text throughout to clarify where the rules come from, the power and responsibilities of forum managers,  where to complain, etc. We are honored to have you as a participant on our site, but we need to be clear that these forums have leaders. Base on our legal filing with the U.S. government, since 1994 we’ve had a self-appointed Board and have never been a membership organization with elected forum managers or leaders. This will disappoint some.
• Sharing Content More Widely – We’ve officially adopted the Create Commons with Attribution copyright license. Our previous rules were functionally the same, but we believe we are among the first online community sites officially entering the “commons” by default. If you are posting something you only want shared on E-Democracy.org but not any further, just add “Copyright 2011 Your Name” to such posts, documents, or images.
• Moderation Limits – We’ve greatly clarified the use of limited moderation for new members and for cause. We eliminated two month, renewable moderation and replaced it with flexible up to one week moderation for any reason, not renewable and now allow moderation in lieu of suspension after two official warnings. Our goal is to avoid moderating people who do not want to be moderated. We saved many people from warnings and suspensions with our past system but it caused unsustainable administrative burdens. So, if you can’t follow our very strict civility rules or stay within the local scope of a forum, you may find yourself losing the right to participate based on warnings that we will no longer prevent with moderation.

With our 59 survey responses (thank you!), the responses received were overwhelmingly supportive of the draft rules except in two areas – the “two posts a day rule” and comments questioning the execution and interpretation of our civility rules.

We want to make it clear that the volume constraint is a local choice and setting that can be changed by your local Forum Manager (or if you have an active local volunteer team they can make that choice in conjunctions with their Forum Manager). Some forums have higher limits. Our default use of e-mail and clashing online user cultures of web forums/blog commenting make this a complex issue. In short, it is our experience that overall volume must be limited or we will lose our e-mail participants and by encouraging forums to use two posts in 24 hours, conflict is significantly reduced because the harder edged debaters hold back on their second posts after more voices are raised in the process. While your daily experience might be limited, do you really need more than 700 opportunities to post each year? With so many sites offering “sound off” opportunities, we prefer to enable in-depth exchange with many voices.

With our civility rules, we tweaked them, but they are largely the same. Real names with strong civility is our cornerstone. Improving how forums are managed is an ongoing effort. Almost without exception the few but strong complaints come from the most partisan participants on both sides of the spectrum on our city-wide and up political forums. It is our experience that many partisans like strong debate and cross over into name calling more frequently. It is also our experience that this style of conflict drives away the participant base and power of the forum to reach government and community leaders. We’ve clearly chosen participation and power over unfettered debate as our model.

We are drafting a new volunteer Forum Manager selection policy to provide further clarity. In the end, the execution of these rules and volunteer labor capacity to deal with the most vigorous rule violators has to be sustainable for these online public spaces to exist. If you find that our freedom of assembly and our collective freedom of speech choice to not allow name calling, etc. is too restrictive on you personally, please remember that your real freedom online is on sites that you individually own and operate. The vast majority of our participants cite our stand for civility as a reason they participate. Without it, the audience we’ve gathered wouldn’t be here to listen to your speech on our site.

If you have questions or comments about the rules (after you read them in full) either drop us a note or add a blog comment below.

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Now is the time gather thousands more across St. Paul and Minneapolis (and beyond) like you who want to connect two-way with their neighbors and build strong vibrant communities.

From schools and crime to parks and “free stuff,” it is time to unleash the power of neighbor to neighbor communication online.

Today E-Democracy.org hosts over 20 Neighbors Forums across the Twin Cities with thousands of members. Some have over 600 members and others are in “start-up” mode. See tcneighbors.org for a full list of existing forums as well as independent forum not part of our official shared public network.

With your interest, we can open non-profit, volunteer-run forums across Minneapolis and St. Paul that could someday connect 30,000 households daily simply based on our 15% of households participation rate in our existing largest forums.

To get there, we first need only five “charter” members in the same neighborhood who say “Yes!”, we will set-up a new start-up forum immediately so outreach can begin.

Forums then open with at least 50 members and a volunteer Forum Manager in place.

REQUEST NEW FORUM – So, fill out the 30 second survey here today!

If you are already a member of an existing forum or have filled out the survey, invite others to fill it out from here: tcneighbors.org

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While our marketing lacks flash, we have a surplus of substance.

We’ve simplified the main page for our Christchurch, New Zealand Neighbours.cc collection of neighbours forums.

We’ve also gathered testimonials from members and Forum Managers about the value they receive and we now have a simple list of what actually happens across our forums (one sample 24 hours).

So from our Christchurch FAQ:

What will be discussed?

Local issues and announcements. Ultimately it is up to you.

You have to believe it to see it.

Meaning, until initial members form a critical mass and take a leap of faith that online engagement with your neighbours is a good and very useful thing, we won’t see it in action.

With over 20 existing Neighbours Forums across E-Democracy.org building real community everyday, here are examples from a recent 24 hours of activity across the entire network:

Discussions about:

• Lack of a pharmacy in a low income neighbourhood
• City responsivenes to fixing a pot-holed street
• Reuniting a found dog with its owner to keep it from going to the pound
• Recommendations on a good auto mechanic
• Planning approval for local student housing
• Recycling and garbage incineration
• About how “local” charities canvassing for donations door to door are
• Where to get great service for kitchen appliances
• Where to get violin lessons for their children
• Changes to liquor store spacing restrictions and schools – started by a city councillor asking for input
• Why a local coffee shop went out of business with many thanks for years of service
• Light rail construction
• Parking
• Ceiling plaster work recommendations
• Neighbors helping neighbors in tough economic times

Announcements about:

• An awarded pedestrian safety grant
• A community theatre event
• Local food shelf donations
• Gathering photos of local business
• A video about the online response after the collapse of major bridge
• A  job creation policy conference at a local college
• A dog park fence contract opportunity seeking neighbourhood contractor bids in a low income area
• Primary school fundraiser
• A video from a community event written in the second most spoken language for the area
• Local news headlines from a community media website
• A new local photo of the day website
• An internship opportunity in a local arts organisation
• A community forum with the Mayor

The necessity of communication is one of the biggest drivers of information exchange. On our forums that established before a crisis, they help unleash the communities capacity to respond to challenges. What we have not tried before is helping our local volunteers launch multiple forums all at the same time in response to such a major event like the Christchurch earthquake.

Most of the proposed forums will fail to quickly (or never) attract critical mass participation because they will only come to life if a few local people come to champion their forum. Once one or two break through, our experience is that neighboring areas say, hey we can do that too!

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The other week I presented a webinar titled “Using Social Networking for Powerful School Community Engagement.”

Below are the slides as well as a video screencast of my practice run with a stuffed up nose (that I cut some slides from after and stories like the Cass Lake example). Here are some raw schools and social media links that I collected as I prepared for this audience – note the Delicious collection.

The video:

Using Social Networking to Build Powerful School-Community Engagement from E-Democracy.org on Vimeo.

Just the slides:

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As the role of social media generates headlines from Cairo to Christchurch, I have some bad news for you.

The “Like” culture of Facebook is extremely lightweight when it comes to creating the deep bonds required for sustained local community building. The 140 character exchanges on Twitter create a surface sense among the most extroverted that dropping words into the rapids of community information stream does the trick when in reality the value for many is swept away in hours if not minutes. Twitter allows democratizing organic group formation that is revolutionary. Facebook connects friends and family at is core and is beginning to introduce important “public life” aspects even if it is on private virtual property. Both Facebook and Twitter have serious limitations when it comes to linking local people in the common interest as part of community life.

The “Like” culture is also bad news for us because our fundamentally in-depth and strong bond building model appears to be a lot of hard work compared to slapping up a Facebook Page. People are also more and more resistant to new website registration. Luckily our volunteers in Christchurch New Zealand (where we have had a regional politics forum since 2007 and where our GroupServer technology come from) understand that connecting neighbours intensely online with a long-term perspective is worth the effort.

We’ve just opened a 20+ network of new forums at http://neighbours.cc

The Sumner forum is open and topics have included water access, “toilet bags,” and an invite to a community gathering.

There is a huge amount of work to do with recruitment, but already our extremely effective paper sign-up approach is in the field. Many of the forum will not attract critical mass participation, but by turning our launch model upside down during this time of great need we can serve as many communities as possible. We do need more local and remote virtual volunteers to join our efforts here to increase the chance of success.

Information Stories

It is timely that the Knight Foundation released a series called Information Stories, where Tim Erickson our Issues Forum leader for many years (and now the proud owner of Mr. Tai’s Chinese/Asian Restaurant) produced this video about the use of our city-wide forums during the tragic I-35W bridge collapse across the Mississippi in Minneapolis.

Stay tuned for more lessons from our Christchurch effort.

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Every few years, our Board seeks input on rules changes and reflects on how they have worked in practice so they can be improved.

Online Survey (NOW CLOSED) – Read the proposed rules and comment section by section. Or read the full draft.

The rules govern participation on our Issues Forums and guide our growing network of online communities of practice.

Thank you. We received over 60 responses via our survey. Now the input will be reviewed.

The cornerstone of our rules are:

• Real names to build trust, ensure accountability, and enhance participant power and influence in local democracy
• Promoting civility by prohibiting name calling of any kind and limiting the number of posts a person can make in a day (typically two)
• Forum by forum geographic or thematic “scope” to maximize the audience and therefore forum influence (about local issues, not local people talking national politics)
• Volunteer forum manager facilitation, rules enforcement, and the ability to suspend participants based on warnings for limited amounts of time rather than removing rule violating content

Unlike most private online spaces, these rules intentionally limit arbitrary and unaccountable management action. While we aren’t a government or a democracy (we don’t vote people off the island so to speak), we operate forums to improve democracy, openness, and to foster community building. These rules have evolved since 1994. In order for E-Democracy.org to fully establish your right to participate in forums that we legally own and operate, the rules are quite lengthy (sites with short rules reserve all the rights for themselves and rarely assign themselves any responsibilities like we do).

Below the quick rules summary is our analysis of the major changes from our perspective from the current rules.

Online Survey (NOW CLOSED) – This is your chance to comment on specific draft rules language or propose amendments to our Board. To be fully reviewed by the Rule Committee, you need to use this survey form (public comments on this blog post are more than welcome, but put them in the survey as well).

The full draft rules are available here for printing.

Thank you. We received over 60 responses via our survey. Now the input will be reviewed.

Previous blog posts and comments helped the Board think about this set of revisions.

Draft Rules Summary

1. Real Names Required: Register and sign posts with your real name and community.

2. Right to Post and Reply: Sharing your knowledge and opinions with your fellow participants is a democratic right.

3. Limits on Posting within a Forum’s Purpose: Two posts per day per member on most forums. Forum charters determine geographic or topical scope.

4. Be Civil: No name-calling. Respect among people with differing views is our cornerstone.

5. No Personal Attacks or Threats: This keeps the forums welcoming and safer.

6. Private Stays Private: Don’t forward private communication without permission.

7. Avoid Unsubstantiated Rumors: Asking for clarification of what you’ve heard in the community can be appropriate if issues-based. You alone are responsible for what you post.

8. Items Not Allowed in Forums: No strong profanity, pornographic content, chain letters, unsolicited commercial advertising, etc. Forum charters may detail examples or exceptions including allowing commercial exchange and advice.

9. Public Content and Use: You are sharing your content under the E-Democracy.org selected Creative Commons license unless you state an alternative copyright.

10. Warnings and Suspensions: You may receive informal or official warnings. The volunteer Forum Manager is responsible for facilitation and enforcing rules. With your second official warning in one year, you are suspended for two weeks. You may appeal all warnings after a third warning that brings a six-month suspension.

11. Forum Managers: Each forum has a manager with responsibilities and technical privileges to meet those responsibilities. Disputes with Forum Managers may be brought to E-Democracy.org through various mechanisms.

Major Changes Overview

The most significant proposed changes in the rules are:

1. Moderation Use Limited – The period allowed for special moderation is changing from two months to one week with exceptions specified. Forum Managers will also have the option of offering moderation in lieu of the first two week suspension for repeat rule violators with the goal of keeping them as forum participants.

2. Warning Tracking – While official warnings are given perhaps five times total a year on our 20+ neighborhood forums, our more political city-wide, state, and national forums generate more heat and complaints. To improve our tracking of official rule violations, we are proposing an internal rule tracking system. While there were some calls for public transparency on all issued rule warnings, there were others who asked us to protect their privacy. We are trying to strike a balance where publicity of early violations would outsize the penalty required and the calls for transparency in our dealings (mostly) with repeat rule violators. The draft now makes public forum notices which name the member suspended with third warnings (which results in a six month suspensions) required but leaves the process private “as is” for the first two warnings. We hope that such notices will help assure participants that such removals are extremely rare and reduce the number of times people from different parts of political spectrum think they are being singled out for their political views when they receive official warnings. Use the survey section on XYZ to tell us what you think.

3. Creative Commons for Sharing – We are proposing that content shared by participants – unless marked otherwise in their post – is now copyrighted for open reuse across the Internet with the attribution Creative Commons license. The rules always allowed forwarding of posts, but this makes it more standardized. Most sites claim ownership of what is posted on their property, we do not.

4. General Expectation Clarifications – We more clearly state that these forums are about our collective freedom of assembly and our right to engage in effective speech with civility. Some suggest that their individual free speech rights trump our voluntarily applied civility rules. We’ve made it more clear that if you don’t agree with the rules now or later that this is clearly not the case. No individual or government can deny us our right to define our own form of group political expression. The Internet allows everyone to do their own thing and we embrace that as a democratic actor online with clear civility goals and not as simply like a host of other people’s individual expression on their own website.

5. Forum Governance Input - While some have the impression or expectation that the name E-Democracy implies a membership organization with elections, dues (taxes), etc. our legal non-profit registration from 1996 established a mission focused self-appointing Board and volunteer empowered governing framework. We are a democratic education organization with a view on how to facilitate online public engagement and not a representative organization with voting members. That will not fundamentally change. Our position on this is relates to our direct experience with the resources required to operate a local chapter that had elected officers and the like and ongoing lack of volunteer capacity beyond the role of our dedicated volunteer forum managers who do the heavy lifting across 35+ forums. To encourage distributed community leadership and local volunteer “team” engagement where there is volunteer interest without creating difficult to meet obligations for every community, a separate Forum Manager appointment and oversight policy is being drafted for future Board consideration. This will encourage local volunteers to activate their local volunteer teams (most communities have internal team online groups used during forum start-up and that almost without exception go dormant once a forum opens) to become more active in Forum Manager oversight and support. In places where local volunteers do not actively support the forum with their time (recruitment and outreach, content gathering, fund raising, related civic engagement programming, etc.) the Forum Manager will remain the single authority on the local charter and lead nominator for their replacement when they retire. (The policy will also allow for the replacement of local Forum Managers for cause.)

As we only dig this deep into our rules every few years (and this was the deepest review in a decade), the online survey is your chance (through March 15, 2011) to offer comments straight to our Board’s rules committee before we make any final revisions based on your input and adopt the new rules in late March at the full Board of Directors level.

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