Come join us on Tuesday
<https://www.meetup.com/OpenTwinCities/events/dscbjmywqbhb/> December 5th
for some Midnight Madness at 6 p.m. at the start of the next Open Twin
Cities Meetup in Saint Paul.
It will be midnight in Iceland when Robert Bjarnason with Iceland's
Citizens Foundation <http://citizens.is/?cf_source=edem> will join via a
live video connection for 45 minutes.
Last week their open source *digital idea generation and participatory
budgeting tech* was featured globally in the Financial Times: The world
watches Reykjakik's digital democracy experiment
<http://po.st/FTworldwatches>. If that wasn't awesome enough, now they've
been invited to present at Open Twin Cities. Dream and dream big they have.
:-)
This has the potential to be even bigger than the Kensington Runestone
<https://www.runestonemuseum.org/runestone/> ... an s-mail that took over
500 years to deliver.
*RVSP Here* <https://www.meetup.com/OpenTwinCities/events/dscbjmywqbhb/> -
Via Open Twin Cities Meetup, open to the public
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM
Every 1st Tuesday of the month
Granicus <https://granicus.com/> - The generous conference room host!
408 Saint Peter St Β· Saint Paul, MN
Take the elevator to the 6th floor
Thanks,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
(which is the fiscal agent for volunteer-based Open Twin Cities group)
P.S. Below is a related post from civic tech circles. Pass this on.
*Is your community exploring participatory budgeting? *
If yes, what digital tools are you looking for or at?
[image: Iceland names street after Darth Vader - Idea proposed and voted
online.] <http://po.st/FTworldwatches>
The *Financial Times* just wrote an interesting *article on community idea
generation and participatory budgeting* <http://po.st/FTworldwatches> in
Reykjavik, Iceland.
The City of Reykjavik just finished their 6th yearly round to allocate
about 6% of the city budget on community improvement projects - that's over
$20M total over the years. Turnout was up 20 percent to a high of 11% of
people voting via participatory budgeting (with over half completing the
process via a mobile optimized experience). Reykjavik uses Your Priorities
to gather and vet public ideas and then a more secure online voting system
than you'll likely find with many other PB projects due to the scale of
spending.
Both tools are open source, but in this case and with governments in other
countries <http://po.st/cfportfolio>, the lead nonprofit Citizens Foundation
<http://po.st/citizensfoundation> can do the hosting, manage a locally
hosted server, or build out any desired customizations. An new AI tool is
also mixed in to raise up useful content.
If you'd like to learn more, participate in a webinar on tools for PB or
idea generation, *please fill out this form* <http://po.st/CFrequestinfo>.
I've been in the civic tech space for over twenty years and the humble,
make it simple, make it work Citizens Foundation approach is such a winner
that my nonprofit decided to partner with them on global outreach. So
please share this with those you think would be interested.
Thanks,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org
P.S.* Civic digital advertising outreach case study
<http://po.st/CFrequestinfo>* - The other week at the Council of Europe's
Participatory Democracy Incubator for cities, Robert Bjarnason
<http://po.st/rblinkedin> with the Citizens Foundation and I had a chance
to catch up. In one of those "ah ha" moments (at the bar of course!), he
mentioned that they invested heavily in online advertising via Facebook and
some with Google Adwords. Spending about 13,000 Euros they reached just
about everyone in Iceland recently. They tested and tracked different civic
messaging and know what led to wasted paid visits and what led to actual
deep participation. I pressed Robert to write a case study and he agreed!
You can request the future case study and more information on their digital
tools here <http://po.st/CFrequestinfo>.