Participatory Football

The Guardian and The Telegraph (twice) as well as The BBC (watch video) . The Times and the Daily Mirror and numerous blogs and websites have articles about MyFootballClub’s “takeover” of Ebbsfleet United. MyFootbalClub (an Industrial and Provident Society registered by the FSA) was founded by Will Brooks because “… it makes more sense for a football club to be owned and financially supported by thousands, rather than relying on the wealth and continued enthusiasm of one person. And secondly, that football fans, as a group, are often proved capable of making correct decisions… ” you can read more on the unofficial wiki.

At last, a participatory budgeting project that feels like a grass-roots initiative!

They seem to have generated a LOT of interest:

Who said party political broadcasts were boring?

See more at: barelypolitical.com

10Questions starts Videocracy

(thanks to the Zeitgeistish Euan Semple for the tip off)

More here: http://www.10questions.com/

Red Pepper

Stephen Kingston has written an interesting and quite critical article in Red Pepper about the British experience of participatory budgeting: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article549.html

Voting the Facebook way

Via my Facebook newsfeed I noticed that Euan Semple had installed an App called UK Politics that allows anyone with a Facebook account to vote for a number of political parties.

Of course it is flawed, unfair and unrepresentative… but it does demonstrate how easily people can “do” politics from the bottom-up…. and (of course) you can change your vote as often as you like - which is one of the most powerful aspects of internet voting.

Anthony Eskinazi the developer of the UK Politics App also set up Parkatmyhouse.com. One to watch.

Interesting links:

Thanks to:

Dom for this link: Drafting laws the wiki way in New Zealand

Pete Kaminski found this interesting article about Idea Futures and this strange one about betting and democracy by Robin Hanson

…and to Tom Steinberg (via mySociety Disruptive Tech Talks) for Jason Kitcat’s writing about e-voting

No-permission service desks

Participatory democracy has a lot to learn from commerce and consumer activism. Take a look at the Get Satisfaction website.

It allows internet users to set up their own customer support and help desks - for when a company fails to service them properly. Could have come straight from the pages of The Cluetrain Manifesto.
Couple of reviews in Business Week and on O’Reilly’s Radar

Liz Henry on Ecuador2.0

Liz Henry - a colleague (and friend) at Socialtext writes on her blog about how President Correa is encouraging web2.0 technologies as a way of liberating Latin America.

On the Socialtext wiki she writes:

Did you know that the government of Ecuador is heavily investing in Web 2.0 as a revolutionary socialist strategy? President Correa is also a firm believer in the Free Software movement. He gives speeches (on YouTube, of course, on his blog) about how free software is crucial to the liberation of Latin America from U.S. and mulitnational corporate dominance. Ecuadorean government workers are “required to use free open source software“. It’s fascinating! His party, the , has a very Web 2.0 (”web dos punto cero”) presence, with “blogs and profiles and youtube video clips” for all its candidates for the Congressional assembly elections. There are clickable maps and photos, and the ballots will also have photos of all the candidates. Correa hates the mainstream media, and is asking that the regular citizens of Ecuador get out there and *become the media*, using internet cafes to upload their own videos and news programs and blogs about whatever issues concern them.

I suggested in my weekly column that the Ecuadorean government use “dotsub”, a collaborative video translation project, for its speeches and debates. That way, they could not only be translated into English but into Quechua or whatever other indigenous languages are spoken in Ecuador.

I’m very curious how long Correa will last in office. Maybe Web 2.0 geeks will start emigrating to Ecuador to help out with these idealistic goals about mass access to the creation of digital media.

Time to launch the Brigadas Internacionales 2.0?

4th Estate: AWOL?

Reading Hilary Wainwrights book made me realise that although she is a journalist there is hardly any mention of local newspapers, TV or radio in any of the examples she discusses. Where is the press in grassroots democracy?

From Wikipedia’s article on the Fourth Estate:

In On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), Thomas Carlyle writes:

“

. . . [T]urning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we were to do as a nation. But does not, though the name Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all…

”

Shades of Grey

I am just a few pages into Hilary Wainwright’s book but I am already struggling with her rather dated left-right political metaphors. I felt the same about Namoi Klein’s “Big Business Bad, Big State Good” arguments in her new book about Disaster Capitalism. In particular her concepts of what happened in Tiananmen Square and even the Falklands war seem a bit up-side-down… not to mention the results of the tsunami in Sri Lanka. Shock Doctrine is being widely reported in the papers at the moment - including an videos, interviews and extracts published in the Guardian. Glad to see that Jonathan Fenby calls her on her analysis of Tiananmen Square. Very interesting.