<incom> FW: Tools for Participation -- DIAC 2008 / OD 2008 -- News to Use

[Michael Gurstein]

    ****     Please forward to interested colleagues and lists.  Thanks!

News Break... Early registration extended to May 15!

Just in... Jim Fishkin will present a preview of the rough cut of
       "Europe in One Room," a new documentary that chronicles a
         major deliberative project involving people from 27
           European countries.  [More information below]

    Tools for Participation:
       Collaboration, Deliberation, and Decision Support

http://www.publicsphereproject.org/events/diac08/

Sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility and UC
Berkeley School of Information

University of California
Berkeley, California, US

June 26 - 29, 2008

It has been twenty-one years since the DIAC Symposium for exploring the
Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing was first convened in
Seattle.

Now, in the early days of the 21st century humankind faces challenges of
even greater proportions than those perceived in 1987. The ability of people
around the world to discuss, make decisions, and take action collaboratively
is critical to addressing these challenges. Unfortunately, this fact is
rarely acknowledged or promoted by decision-makers.

Researchers, scholars, activists, advocates, artists, educators,
technologists, designers, students, policy-makers, entrepreneurs,
journalists and citizens are rising to these challenges in many ways,
including the development of new communication technologies that build on
the opportunities afforded by the Internet and other new (as well as old)
media.

DIAC-2008 combines CPSR's 11th DIAC symposium with the third Conference on
Online Deliberation. The joint conference is intended to provide a platform
and a forum for highlighting socio-technological opportunities, challenges,
and pitfalls in the area of community and civic action.

In addition to the wide range of planned events there will be extensive
opportunities for collegial discussion at the conference. Register now for
an innovative and compelling exploration of the future of meaningful social
participation. We have kept registration fees low to encourage wide
attendance.


Research Papers

Supporting Collaborative Deliberation Using a Large-Scale Argumentation
   System: The MIT Collaboratorium
      Mark Klein

What Makes a Search Engine Good for Democracy? Public Opinion Polling
   and the Evaluation of Software
      Jo Ann Sison and Warren Sack

Realism vs. Reality TV in the War on Terror: Artworks as Models of
   Interpretation
      David Crawford

"Liberating Voices" in South Asia: Case Study of Networked Resistance
   in Jharkhand
      Justin Smith

CoLPE: Communities of Learning Practice Environment
      Santi Caballe and Jerome Feldman

A Two-Room E-Deliberation Environment
      Fiorella De Cindio, Cristian Peraboni, Leonardo Sonnante

The KerbabelTM On-Line Deliberation Support Tool
      Aurélie Chamaret

On Social Function: New Language for Discussing Technology for
   Social Action
      Andy Dearden and Ann Light

Privacy Awareness for the Design of Pervasive Home-Based Technology
   for Elders
      Tonya Thompson

Community Network Analysis: Understanding the Contexts and Content
   of Community Communications
      Peter Day

Designing a General Architecture to Support eGovernment
      Carlos Grima-Izquierdo and David Ríos Insua

Networked Publics: Publicity and Privacy on the Internet
      Colin Koopman


Exploratory Papers, Workshops, Technology Demos, Panels, etc.

The exploratory papers will address topics such as collaborative research
work in Arab countries; building research capacity in community-based
organizations; extending electronic public participation; open-source
self-governance; computer, neural, and social networks; community; trust for
online deliberation on wicked problems; forecasting and frameworks for
strategic planning; integrating online deliberation into transportation
investment decision-making; rethinking local conversations on the web;
global issue metamaps; representing community concerns in agent-based
models; online shopping relationships as collaborative decision process;
tools for participation as a citizen-led grand challenge; putting social
pattern languages to work; and community media and community development.

There will be a variety of workshops and posters on topics such as community
networking strategies; role challenges in technology and social action
projects; large-scale citizen engagement strategy; political discourse in
non-political spaces and designing social psychological Incentives for
online collective action.

Technology demonstrations include CivicEvolution; knowledge media tools for
capturing deliberation in participatory spatial planning; discovering
conversations in the blogosphere; dialogue mapping; TransparentDemocracy;
and e-Liberate, a web-based system for online Roberts Rules of Order.

We are planning a variety of presentations and panel discussions on "What
type of software do we need?" and other topics.


Europe in One Room

We are fortunate to have the opportunity to preview the rough cut of Europe
in One Room during the symposium. This new documentary tells the story of
the first European Wide Deliberative Poll in which a scientific sample of
all of Europe gathered in the Parliament Building in Brussels in October
2007 to deliberate for three days about the future of Europe. Each of the 27
countries were represented and the issues were discussed in 22 languages.
Told through the eyes of the participants and organizers, this unprecedented
experiment in transnational democracy shows that dialogue across differences
of language and nationality is possible. This project is based on the work
of Stanford professor Jim Fishkin who will be present at the showing.


Open Space Session

We're planning an Open Space Technology session on "Towards an Agenda for
Online and Offline Public Participation" as a capstone event on the last day
of the conference, June 29. This event will be free to the public (although
donations are strongly encouraged). The open space approach may be the best
way to spend less structured time as a collective group to formulate
research and action plans.


Berkeley, California

It's generally warm (but not hot) in Berkeley in late June. Berkeley,
California, is known for its higher education and cosmopolitan culture and
is the home of social movements, such as the Free Speech Movement, as well
as innovative technology such as BSD (Berkeley Unix). The conference hotel
is located on the water with a view of the San Francisco skyline.


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Tools for Participation
    Collaboration, Deliberation, and Decision Support
       http://www.publicsphereproject.org/events/diac08/

Public Sphere Project (CPSR)
      http://www.publicsphereproject.org/

Liberating Voices!  A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution
      http://www.publicsphereproject.org/patterns/