**** 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/