Can you open one of your forums up for Ottawa Canada? I requested this before but heard nothing after visiting the web site. On 13-Feb-06, at 3:37 PM, Steven Clift wrote:

In http://E-Democracy.Org land we are receiving a planning grant to develop a proposal for up to 5 pilot online "Neighborhood Forums" in Minneapolis. In an important twist, these forums will be geared to connect immigrant communities and active citizens in very local places.

I see such forums as a more localized mix of our online civic dialogue from city-wide Issues Forums (using the open source GroupServer e-list/ web forum tool) combined with community announcements you might see on Craigslist along with "I have extra black dirt for the taking" Freecycle types of posts. Over the years I've been quite impressed with the Cleveland Park and Adams Morgan neighborhood forums in Washington DC as well.

Anyway, I'd like to inform our efforts based on existing research in this arena or on these projects specifically. Any suggestions?

Research on local online content/service marketing/interest to immigrant populations would also be of interest. This will help us draft our recommended forum "charters" (topical scope) and ideas for on the ground forum recruitment.

Watch this space: http://e-democracy.org/wiki/Minneapolis_neighborhood_forums

Thanks, Steven Clift - Reply to: clift@publicus.net E-Democracy.Org

P.S. Prof. Stephen Coleman at Oxford did an analysis of the new Issues Forums in the UK. One of our agreed challenges is outreach to those less likely to participate - social inclusion. If we receive a full grant (even if we don't since our model is very low cost and can happen with volunteer interest) engaging local immigrant communities from the launch of a forum will generate many important lessons. The Oxford report: http://www.e-democracy.org/wiki/Oxford_e-democracy_evaluation

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven Clift - clift@publicus.net

Web: http://publicus.net Blog: http://dowire.org/notes NGO: http://e-democracy.org

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