Participatory Tools for Democracy: Meet the working group

I am interested to join your discussion also as I feel it is central to advance of all online work of all groups +;like geeking out ;-)

Hi Margarita, will you attend the work-group sessions of Participatory Tools for Democracy in Madrid? If yes, would you be willing to help organizing some form of remote participation? Steve and me were interested to contribute to the work group but cannot come to Madrid. This would be great. I made some suggestion above, like a daily skype in session, or then some form of online discussion here in loomio, like that the people on the ground in Madrid formulate the most urgent questions discussed during the day and post them in loomio, and then the online crowd (Steve, Zeljko and me probably...) can throw in their perspective overnight....

I'm not confident this is going to happen - as you say, this forum seems particularly unresponsive :( However, meanwhile, I will try and track down Stéphanie Bost and Thomas de Groot. Thanks for persevering Oliver...

Hi Oliver,
I am so sorry for not be efficency and fast with the response, but first of all I have just seen now.
I am very grateful for the offer, but to be honest I want try but I advance that I do not have a domain of English lenguage at all, and I will need a help, (this is the reason because sometimes I am a little shy), but If the group give me a hand, all will be possible!

Using this message, I invite all to see my little contribution for democratic tools, that I launched here in Spain years ago. Now is in desuse because I did not find out aliances and economic aid (https://votando.es/index.php/homepage/que_es_votando; www.votando.es).
I am so excited for this meeting and I am going to do all I can for make the best of me.
Thanks for all in advance,

Margarita

Hi Margarita, thanks for your message. Since you will be in Madrid in the work group for Participatory Tools for Democracy I would hope that you or somebody else from the workgroup will keep us updated here on Loomio and perhaps consult the crowd on some of the questions you discuss. I would have like to come to Madrid, but it wasnt possible, so this would give me some way to feel involved. Thanks a lot! Oliver

This is ideally @thomasdegroot 's group. Stéphanie de Bost is not coming.

Sorry all that our group organization before the event is not as tight as we'd like - almost everyone is working on a voluntary basis so things do get dropped. However, I can report that things are shaping up very nicely for when you'r ein Madrid, and we will have great facilitators. So I'm very excited for this moment and it's going to be a great time :)

Hi Nicole - if you read the thread, you'll see that some of us are unable to attend Madrid. However, we would like to participate, so we're wondering if there will be mechanisms in place for doing so remotely.

I saw Thomas's twitter feed, but I have long since removed my twitter account (too much noise, not enough substance), so I'm unable to message him there :( Could someone else oblige and point him towards this discussion regarding remote participation at Madrid?

Hi, Steve. This is Ana, I am working with Medialab-Prado in the coordination of the workshops. As you might know, the Medialab is a public cultural institution working on commons and on the development of citizen laboratories since long time (Margarita can probably explain it better than me ;). As for myself, I have been doing independent reaserach and activism on urban commons since may years, and I have been involved in the organization of many international workshops and meetings in Madrid. With the Medialab, I am collaborating in a project called Common Codes.

According to this different experiences, for the ECA in Madrid we are developing a methodology that, alas, relies very much on the actual participation of people in the workshop, and that we hope would be dynamic - not based only presentations - and would allow cross-pollinization - mixing theme discussion with group discussions. I am afraid that, in this frame, it is not possible - technological or methodologically - to think of remote participation.

However, there are two methods to follow this meeting when you are not in Madrid. First, there will be a public streaming of the more general sessions sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. second, we are working very hard to get a good documentation of the workshops, so that the information gathered, the discussions and the proposals would publicly available for everybody to work on/with them. If you have any suggestions regarding the documentation side of the event, please let us (Nicole and me) know, and we wil try to incorporate them.

Hi Ana - thanks for clarifying - that's fair enough - then it's such a shame I cannot attend.

Regarding documenting the workshops - make the documentation plaintext (or markdown) and publish to GitHub?

Hi, Stev. Thanks for the suggestion! I have never used GitHub for texts, but will consider it. Also, I think we might need both plain text and more edited text, with images and graphics.