Thanks to our awesome digital democracy supporters out there, I am able to host three engaging small gatherings next Tuesday during a quick trip to DC. Please share this with your DC-area contacts interested in all things civic tech, open government, civic engagement and more. Come on along. All Events - Tuesday Dec 6, 2016: ** Digitally Networking Democracy Builders Globally? A Conversation 9:30 - 11 AM Info/RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1825880037625153/ Hosted at NDI - National Democratic Institute ** Local-up? Digital Bridges for American Communities Brown Bag 12 Noon - 2 PM Info/RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1681899672124715/ Lake Research Partners, 1101 17th St, NW Suite 301 ** OpenGov Civic Tech Facebook Group Happy Hour 5 - 8:00 PM Info/RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/1194660773961648/ James Hoban Bar, Dupont Circle Each link above has extended details. In summary: 1. The morning gathering is about sharing the secret sauce from 24 x 7 "e" knowledge sharing within the niche open gov/civic tech crowd with the broader and global democracy/civic engagement community that is so poorly e-networked in comparison. The geeks are getting it right, but how can we extend that? 2. The brown bag lunch (aka bring a sandwich) session is a strategic conversation about using social media post-election in the US to connect people across the partisan divide with a strategic local-up twist. Over a dozen volunteers responded to my post-election call - http://po.st/localupfacebook - to create new city-wide civic life Facebook Groups adapting the long-time E-Democracy online town hall model - http://e-democracy.org/if - to a new platform. What should we do next? How do we support these volunteers and position these local online town halls to spread across hundreds of cities? Contact me to volunteer for your city: clift@e-democracy.org Put "Local Facebook Group - Your City" in the subject. We must counter the "virtual civil war" - https://medium.com/@democracy - now before it destroys our democracies and this is one small way I hope to be part of the solution with others. If we can't better connect via social media on public issues starting locally with more civility, then we are absolutely screwed as a nation on national issues in the digital era. 3. Social time. For those DC area Open Government and Civic Technology Facebook Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/opengovgroup - members NOT in Paris at the OGP Summit, let's just have some french fries and French wine instead. :-) The Facebook Group is approaching 6400 members from well over half the countries in the world. If you have ideas on who might fund a strategic outreach campaign to bring it to 16,000 members, let me know. This group delivers quality knowledge exchange every day. Let's drink to that! Steven Clift - Executive Director, E-Democracy.org clift@e-democracy.org - +1 612 234 7072 @democracy - http://linkedin.com/in/netclift http://1radionews.com - My radio app