Become an online engagement pro

This fall I’m teaching two e-engagement programs through Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. One of the programs is a TeleForum (a series of conference calls) so it’s accessible to participants anywhere in the world. Please let your colleagues and...

This sheep talks back

On my way back from this weekend’s meeting of the Online Deliberative Democracy consortium I had a chance to enjoy the ever-increasing vigilance of US airport security. At the end of my last US visit I ended up at the airport with a colleague who relayed the...

e-Democracy skills training

I was part of a break-out group discussion today on making online deliberation tools accessible. We discussed three facets of this challenge: tool design, user training, and motivating participation. Our conversation began and ended with user training issues, becuase...

How to raise a gay-friendly child

Jennifer Gerarda Brown has posted a great set of tips on how to raise a gay-friendly child on the Lessig blog. A nice e.g. of the strong respect for civil rights that fits well with Lessig-style cyberpolitics.

NerdTests.com Fun Tests – Nerd Quiz

I am heartbroken to discover that I only rate as semi-nerdy. I think the problem is that my nerdiness is restricted to tech nerdiness rather than general science nerdiness (on which front I score pathetically low). I’ll keep my eye out for something that tests...

South African Blogs

Africa is blogging, too. South Africa is leading the way, with more than 3 million unique users visiting South African blogs every month. High profile South African blogs include Commentary – which focuses on topics like race relations and economics – and Human vs. Nature, an earnest environmental issues weblog. The country […]

A living experiment in online collaboration

The blogiverse is having fun with Just Letters, a little flash game that is a great living experiment in online collaboration. All you need is your browser, so go check it out!

Just Letters is an interesting window on how people can work together when the demands of collaboration are low enough, even if the apparent […]

Stakeholder communications go online

Thanks to Kristan Boudreau of BC Hydro for pointing me to a paper by Carol Adams and Geoffrey Frost on “Stakeholder Engagement Strategies: Possibilities for the Internet.”(PDF) The authors undertook a comparative study of how companies in Australia, Germany and the UK use web sites as a tool for communicating with stakeholders, based on more […]

Gnomedex 5.0

The next mega-gathering of West Coast bloggers, coming up June 23-25 in Seattle. Looks to be a great way to connect with the latest thinking on blogging, tagging, social software and all those other Web 2.0 buzzwords.