The five year journey from Civic Hacking Fund to mySociety

Tom Steinberg from David Wilcox on Vimeo.

Five years ago I met Tom Steinberg at a conference workshop where he was tentatively proposing the idea of a “Civic Hacking Fund”. Last night Tom and friends, including social media Minister Tom Watson, celebrated the fifth birthday of mySociety, the high-successful organisation now justifiably proud that:

Using our services, 200,000 people have written to their MP for the first time, over 8,000 potholes and other broken things have been fixed, nearly 9,000,000 signatures have been left on petitions to the Prime Minister, and at least 77 tiny hats have been knitted for charity.

(read more...)

Tracking the buzz online

My creative friends over at Delib have launched a tool to track online conversation, and used it to give us insights into the buzz around Boris, Ken and others in London Mayoral election. You can read the analysis behind the diagram here – Boris is (read more...)

E-Democracy Centre “surprised by speculation”

The International Centre for Local e-Democracy has been subject to some discussion on blogs and mailing lists, started by Professor Stephen Coleman questioning what we get for our money.

Is it new research and understanding? Or new tools to be used by governments? Or critical debate about the merits and values of e-participation? (read more...)

E-democracy centre: what do we get for our money?

Professor Stephen Coleman, blogging on citizenship in the digital age as I reported earlier, has now turned his attention to the Govenment-funded International Centre for Local e-Democracy (ICELE).

After listing a range of well-known e-democracy projects in the UK, he says they will be judged by the quality of their outputs.

Join Stephen Coleman on a Bristol blog

Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, is brilliant on the sounds bites for any video blogger (as well as main stream media) as you can see here when he talks about TV voting scandals, and here at an e-democracy conference in Bristol.

However, Stephen doesn’t blog himself, so it is a delight to find him available for discussion back in Bristol – virtually at least – guesting at Connecting Bristol.

I’m grateful to Shane McCracken for pointing this out, and neatly summarising the issues Stephen is highlighting about the changing nature of politics and citizenship: (read more...)