All posts in the topic E-Democracy.Org UK Input Meeting in Oxford on Oct. 2 0 Invitation (Short link)
Summary
- There are 2 posts — by 2 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Joe K at Sep 16 08:45 UTC
Have you ever wondered what the heck "e-democracy.org" has to do with your
local community Issues Forum?
A few years ago, the UK Local E-Democracy National Project funded pilots in
Newham and Brighton and perhaps miraculously with no further funding, the
forums remain open and have spread to five neighbourhoods in Oxford and
Bristol with more likely next year. Because this is a citizen-based model
run by volunteers and some in-kind support from council staff in Oxford and
Bristol, keeping the network operating in "basic" mode is not too costly.
Basic isn't good enough. What might you, might we, do better with Issues
Forums and local e-democracy in your community? Are there good ways to
connect your efforts across the UK, leverage resources, promote community
empowerment and social inclusion with greater outreach, find central funding
sources, etc.? Who and how might we coordinate and over time expand UK
activities with either dedicated volunteers or UK staff in the near and
long-term?
These are some of the questions we will discuss in an input session at the
Oxford Town Hall on Thursday, October 2. I'll be coming through the UK from
a conference in Austria (I am based in Minnesota) and look forward to
meeting a number of you.
Join us!
Details and information on how to RSVP is on our wiki at:
http://pages.e-democracy.org/Oxford_meeting
Sincerely,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org
P.S. We are in the process of forming an E-Democracy.Org UK Advisory
Committee. If you can't make it to Oxford, but want to help improve our
collective local e-democracy effort or make sure your local forum has
influence within E-Democracy.Org, mention the committee to me in a note:
<email obscured> or http://e-democracy.org/contact
Hi.
This seems like a very good place to ask: Whereas I understand that if councils
are involved in setting up a forum, they pay towards the cost of it, I can't
distinguish if private individuals need to pay anything? The reason I ask is
that a couple of message boards that were specifically tailored to our ward
have closed down over the years, and when I try to bring back the main one, as
a member of the commnuity trust board, money is always the issue.
We do actually have a fairly successful internet forum covering
Gloucestershire, with most discussion based on Gloucester and Cheltenham, and a
message board tacked on to a disability website which doesn't get used at all,
but a lot of people don't seem to know the difference between a blog and a
message board, so I figure, baby steps.
So, may I ask, what are the upfront costs of signing up to an E-democracy
forum, bare minimum?