Chicago Region Civic Forum (launch in progress)

[Michael Maranda]

On Tuesday of this week, a joint meeting of Chicago Net Tuesday and
the Open Government Chicago-land meetup groups was convened in
celebration of One Web Day. The theme for 2009 OWD was "One Web For
All" - an inclusive and political concept.

Gordon Dymowski presented on the launch of our e-Democracy effort --
the Chicago Region Civic Forum -- a space for Civic Discourse on all
aspects of quality of life and political means in the Chicago Region,
and Jonathan Eyler-Werve (Global Integrity) facilitated a discussion
on what we want for Chicago viz. the themes of Open Government and
"One Web For All". There was certainly a lot of energy there -- and
yet we know many other groups around the city are asking the same
questions.

I invite you all to invest in growing the open and civic collaboration
movement grounded in dialogue by joining and recruiting others to
Regional and Neighborhood Civic Discourse here: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/chicago

We're using the Minnesota based e-democracy platform as a means of
sidestepping all the potential fragmentation of platforms. It's a
little old-school, in that you can interact via web browser, email, or
follow via RSS, but this is beneficial in being inclusive.

Under that framework, we hope to support the establishment of
additional neighborhood and community forums. If any of you are ready
to take point on organizing one for your locality, let me know, and I
will be more than happy to help.

I want us to start with the widest meaningful sense of our local
identity: Chicago not restricted to City politics alone, but to
everything that pertains to our quality of life, with opportunity for
us to work in voluntary association and to transform government and
governance.

Regards,

Michael
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/chicago