Also, it has been a number a few years since I've spoken in New Zealand, so
the Kiwi contingent on the 700+ person "Democracies Online
Exchange" online community of practice is not as big nor vocal as it
used to be.
If you are interested in the democratic/transparency/community
solutions side of "Government 2.0," then this is the very
international online group for you: http://dowire.org/x (You are
also welcome on my main Newswire - http://dowire.org
http://twitter.com/democracy
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
CityCamp - Where Gov 2.0 meets local - Chicago Jan 23-24
http://barcamp.pbworks.com/CityCamp
This is exciting. An unconference/barcamp focused on the *local*
aspects of Gov 2.0 - which will likely include a healthy mix of
interactive citizen-centric participation, community engagement,
increased transparency, etc. or it would be boring.
"CityCamp explores and documents ideas, lessons learned, best
practices, and patterns related to use of social/participatory media,
linked open data, and "Web as platform" at the local level."
Info/register (its free, but space is limited):
http://barcamp.pbworks.com/CityCamp
Then, join the online group/e-list for the event:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/citycamp
And follow the event on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/CityCamp
http://twitter.com/#search?q=citycamp
E-Democracy.org will be bringing a number of next generation online
civic engagement ideas to the table as we launch our "Participation
3.0" effort (stay tuned! http://e-democracy.org/p3 ). If you are
willing to exchange some volunteer coding, E-Democracy.org may have a
few partial travel stipends available. Drop me a note, if you want
more information - these are not first come, first serve:
cl...@e-democracy.org
For those new to "unconferences" or "barcamps," they typically start
with a session where people plaster the wall with session ideas/things
they would like to learn or do, themes get clustered and sessions get
mapped out over the time available. Sometimes a few pre-set sessions
are determined ahead of time and it is not usual to mix in a special
speaker or two for a hybrid experience. See some of the past events
linked from here - http://barcamp.pbworks.com/CityCamp - to get a
sense of how it works (10x better than typical top down conferences
from my experience) or watch this mini-video on the Public Media Camp
- http://vimeo.com/7244760 - Our check out this image from the
Minnesota Voices Unconference -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21699097@N05/3426923800/ .
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy