Much of the work to date has focused on pushing the use of technology to further engagement, improve the delivery of services and information, and help organizations meet their goals and missions.

In my experience, it is important to think about several layers when designing gov/tech/engagement projects:

I. Ecosystem

Although there is currently some question around the federal commitment to open government, we are pretty good at creating an ecosystem that encourages engagement. From the Open Government Directive released in 2009, to Mayors across America experimenting with and pushing engagement, to the newly formed Open Government Partnership, we have leadership at high levels expressing the importance of open governance. We also have a robust system of contractors, journalists, advocates, an citizens pushing us in the right direction.

II. Organizations

I think we also understand that it is critical to get the entire organization involved – its not just about the PR or tech shops; for engagement to work there have to be feedback loops that are integrated into the fabric of the organization.

III. Projects

Projects themselves have also become much better aligned with important goals, and are structured to create productive products.

IV. People

However, I still think that we can much improve our understanding of people – how they want to engage (i.e. in-person town halls, online, via mobile, or some combination thereof), what they actually need and expect from their interactions with organizations, and what will motivate them to participate in meaningful and sustained ways.

In developing engaging projects it is important to understand the deep motivations and interests of specific communities as well as the overriding motivations and interests that appear over and over again.

In fact, a lot of my client work focuses on understanding the specific groups with whom agencies want to engage with. The tools we use can range from surveys, individual interviews, focus groups, data analysis, and ethnography, and work really well in terms of understanding specific groups of people in a really deep way, ensuring that we are engaging equitably in ways that excited, motivates, and delights them.

Outside of my client work its super important to spend time thinking about and studying the research around engagement to ensure that my thinking is fresh around how to best captivate audiences.

Experience Hacking Salon (#exhack)

That’s why I started the Experience Hacking Salon.

ExHack Salon an opportunity for folks to get together for dinner once a month and discuss research findings in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, linguistics, ethnography, and sociology to design better and more engaging experiences for our communities, constituents, and customers. We know so much more than we ever have about what motivates, captivates, and excites people from a scientific perspective, and we should use that knowledge to design better experiences and interactions for the people we want to engage.

The goal of the salon is to dig into this research in a fun and productive way, figuring out how to  apply this research in ways that makes our projects more impactful.

We get together with a small group of people once a month for discussions, and beer // wine // soda // pizza. The only requirement is to read the materials distributed ahead of time, and come ready to discuss them with the group. Social policy makers, product developers, technology strategists, politicians, business owners, consultants, and game designers are encouraged to join.

Anyone can sign-up, but sessions are limited to a small group to promote deep conversation. Our goal is to be inclusive, yet intimate.

Our first meetup focused on Game Design, and we had a fascinating discussion about the power of game mechanics, which was a perfect first topic because it reaches across so many diverse fields. We are narrowing in a bit for our next Salon (August 11th @ 7pm) when we focus on the concept of flow (http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html).

We’re organizing via meetup and hope to see you soon: http://www.meetup.com/experiencehacking/

I’d say 20% were  substantive:
@brucelesley: Child poverty in the U.S. is approaching 25%. What is our nation doing to address this national crisis? #AskObama

20% were slanderous and inflammatory:
Example:
@southsalem: Who gave you the Mao Xmas ornament: Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, VanJones? #AskObama
and
@anabeavenhauser: WWMD….What would Mohammad do? #askobama.

Although these comments did add a hostile feel to the monitoring of the incoming tweets they did not loom over the finished product of the actual Town Hall, and there were some substantive questions.

60% were somewhere in-between, and relatively harmless (if not funny )
@drbrown_bear: Mac or PC??? #AskObama.

@Kaore: Will you insist the Dems NOT cave to GOP hostage taking? Why do we CONSTANTLY insist on bipartisanship when they don’t want it? #askobama

Only seventeen out of what I can only assume were hundreds of thousand of questions were answered live on with Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey as moderator. My Tweetdeck was very chaotic and once the Q&A began I had to turn it off because questions were flying so quickly that it was impossible to read them fast enough. Truly, overwhelming.

I thought President Obama gave detailed, thoughtful answers to all of the questions he was asked, and overall I feel that it was a very powerful and insightful Town Hall. At this moment there are still questions flying on the #AskObama hashtag. It was an example of the all inclusiveness mentioned in previous posts (See Phil Ting Interview) that makes government transparency efficient and important. As Tweeter, jeremyt1982 said, “I think this #AskObama stream is really going to take off…”

The questions selected are listed below (as re-tweeted by @TownHall)

To watch the replay of the Obama Town Hall click here

@ModeledBehavior Modeled Behavior
So will you raise taxes on the middle class at least to W Bush levels@askObama @townhall

pedsnursemarcia marcia schneider

@AssignmentDesk1 #AskObama Public Edu here in CA falling apart. Not grad enough skilled workers or smart citizens. Privitization looming?

flynnbw Brendan W. Flynn

@WhiteHouse We definitely need to get more vets into jobs. But when are we going to support the troops by cutting oil dependence? #AskObama

Shnaps Shnaps

Is free-market an option? RT @whitehouse: Obama on homeowners underwater: Have made some progress, but+ needed, looking at options #askObama

almorrison88 Lane Morrison

#askobama What changes to the tax system do you think are necessary to help solve the deficit problem and for the system to be fair?

NickKristof Nicholas Kristof

#AskObama Was it a mistake to fail to get Republicans to commit to raise the debt ceiling, at the same time tax cuts were extended?

craigoc34 Craigoc

@whitehouse @townhall My question is can you give companies a tax break if they hire a Honorable discharged Veteran?

nealhannon Neal Hannon

Small biz create jobs. What incentives are you willing to support to improve small biz growth? #AskObama

johnboehner John Boehner

After embarking on a record spending binge that’s left us deeper in debt, where are the jobs? #AskObama

robinmarty robinmarty

@Kara_McGuire How will admin work to help underwater homeowners who aren’t behind in payments but are trapped in homes they can’t sell?

pmglynn Patrick Glynn

Mr. President, In several states we have seen people lose their collective bargaining rights. Do you have a plan to rectify this? #AskObama

awg9988 Allison Good

@KimQuillenTP Will you focus on promoting alternative energy industries in oil states like Louisiana and Texas? #townhall

ensina Sina

Immigrant entrepreneurs can build companies and create jobs for US workers. Will you support a startup visa program? #askobama

_RenegadeNerd_ Dexter Smith
#AskObama Mr. President, will you issue an executive order to raise the debt ceiling pursuant to section 4 of the 14th amendment?

dwhite105 Dustin White

Higher ed. is necessary for a stronger economy, but for some middle class Americans it’s becoming too expensive. What can be done? #askobama

dmscott David Meerman Scott

#AskObama Tech & knowledge industries are thriving, yet jobs discussion always centers on manufacturing. Why not be realistic about jobs?

conblog William Smith
@DrewHampshire: What mistakes have you made in handling this recession and what would you do differently? #askObama

(Photo by: http://blog.twitter.com/2011/07/twitter-town-hall.html)

Post by Mallory Garrett, BYO (http://byoconsulting.com) Summer Intern

The MBI has embarked on this project in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services and the Home Base Program, a partnership between the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Awesome important project.

The RFP can be found here: http://www.massbroadband.org/contracts_RFIs.html

While in San Fransisco last month I had the pleasure of interviewing San Fransisco Mayoral Candidate and Harvard Kennedy School alum Phil Ting. We talked all things gov20, and had a fascinating conversation about his campaign, life working in SF government, and his thoughts around what public policy students need to learn to be leaders in a networked world.

Phil Ting is running a transparent campaign, and is focusing his efforts on engaging San Franciscans through Reset San Francisco, an online forum designed to give people opportunities to interact with each other and their elected officials to discuss the issues they care about. Ting is a gov20 advocate, and understands the challenges and opportunities of large-scale engagement:

“the way we [the government] get feedback is so archaic and has such an inability to process large amounts of information that you can only get feedback from five or ten people…and the other ten thousand people…are shut out of the process. So how do you really open it up to be representative…you have to go get enough people so that you are getting a response that is accurate to the population…I think that is what we are trying to do with Reset San Francisco, is not just get feed back but then say, ‘hey, I can’t do it by myself, I’m just one person … we need people’s help to do it.”

Here is a summary of our conversation (Listen to the full interview here):

1. What are your priorities for this campaign?
Our main priority for this campaign is to change the way the people elect the mayor of San Francisco. Traditionally, politicians cater to interest groups to leverage their power. However, this shuts out the rest of the population.  We want to win this election by empowering individuals and increasing the number of active participants in the campaign from a few hundred to thousands. Our campaign seeks to skip the game playing and go right to the people. By fostering an exchange of  ideas we are helping them become more involved and engaged to make government more transparent and accessible. This is how the idea of Reset San Francisco came about.

2. So what is Reset San Fransisco all about? What is the User Experience like on the platform?
The participant gets a login, picture, and has the option to link it to their Facebook. Members can then go in and read or comment and be a part of the dialogue. In their profile, they can give their name or be anonymous and provide as little or as much information as they wish. This is a safe space to talk about the issues San Franciscans care about.

• Participate in online discussions through message boards and chat rooms

• Give feedback through surveys and polls

• Interact with elected officials and neighbors through Offline Community Events

• Open a profile that has their picture, information, and other information they wish to disclose.

• Access content in Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese, and English.

• Link to facebook

• Obtain information about events, processes, and need-to-know resident information.

3. How do you translate the principles of engagement in your campaign into structures of governance?

Working with the barriers to, not avoid them, but change them and adapt the system to work for the people. I serve as both the head of a governmental department as well as a mayoral candidate. Therefore, I implement change within my division to better serve the community. This is how something is taken from a campaign promise to policy.

4. What challenges do you face in using technology to engage?
In tough financial times, people perceive technology as a luxury rather than part of their core business model. People are also overworked; therefore, the idea of opening something up as more work not less work is a hindrance. There are also people in government who are looking to keep things the same and they don’t like change. Although the Internet eliminates the hindrances of time and location, many people perceive it as promoting less interaction rather then more.

5. What are some interesting things that have come out of Reset San Francisco?
The petitions are extremely successful. We have a solar program in San Fransisco that actually brings in more money than it costs. However, there was a government proposal to cut funding for this program. The Go Solar SF petition was started on Reset SF and received over 700 signatures that led to a rally being held with city workers and environmentalists who demanded that the program be saved. This highlights the power of using online organizing to spur offline behavior.

6. One of the things we thought about a lot at the Kennedy School was the extent of technology training needed for Public Policy students, aspiring to careers in public service. You are a Kennedy School alum and dedicated public servant and are committed to using tech in your work; what do you think HKS students should learn regarding technology?
How to communicate with the public is a vital part of using technology to expand engagement. Communication is not just about giving a speech, but how feedback is processed and used to improve the organization. Good organizations who want to become great take feedback and use it to make things work more effectively.

San Francisco will hold its mayoral election on Tuesday November 8, 2011. Currently, Edwin M. Lee is holding the office of Mayor as a replacement for Gavin Newsom who is now serving as Lieutenant Governor of California (elected 2010). For more information on each candidates open government platform, check out Code for America’s recap on the SFOpen 2011 debate. The current candidates are:

I was invited to provide some perspective on the role that social media has / is playing. I was happy that the panel was so diverse; the focus was not on social media, but rather on the socio-economic and political factors at play, which was quite refreshing to someone embedded in online media.

The panel video is now available in case you want to watch it.

The “why now” question was interesting, and I think that it has more to do with the social / political issues on the ground than social media played. Social Media is a way to connect people to each other, but the offline organizing has to be there in order for there to be meaningful change. Tweets can only do so much to save you from the barrel of a gun.

The “what’s next” question is more interesting to me, especially given the events unfolding with #amina over the course of the last few weeks. I followed the #amina story from the beginning, secretly rooting A Gay Girl in Damascus who turned out to be a White Man in Georgia. Lots of smart people have written about this topic (see Micah Sifry, Andy Carvin, Jillian York, the Guardian’s Dan Gillmore, and Ethan Zuckerman).

I think this incident highlights one of the points I tried to make in my talk.

Online organizing is no longer seen as a fringe activity. Books about social media and revolution are being published in the mainstream (see Tweets from Tahrir and Revolution 2.0), and the public expects information that is shared through social media to be real (i.e. amina).

It has clearly  providing a way for disenfranchised people to connect with the rest of the world and with each other without the need or formal institutions. However, as reliance on the medium has grown, so too have our expectations of it. In a way, social media is becoming an authoritative institution, and bringing with it all of the expectations that we have of them.

However, in becoming that institution, social media loses its grassroots nature, and the relative anonimity that is unfortunately necessary to organize and connect, specifically in MENA. Organizers who use social media without adequate protections risk be watched and persecuted by the regime for speaking out, and we are increasingly seeing that the west is obsessed with verifying the legitimacy of the information shared through social channels. This parallel need to hide in plain site and be honest and open create a dangerous environment online organizers and activists.

The implications are that policitcal activists will need to find new ways to organize, perhaps going back to simpler and more anonymous methods of connecting with each other.

The goal is to get beyond talking about big ideas and start focusing on overcoming some of the more pervasive implementation challenges people are facing.

The conference calls will be run in a case-study method, with participants on the call responding to the challenges presented. This is a unique and effective learning method, and we hope that it will help support people in project implementation.

We are currently soliciting cases, so if you have a project or challenge you’d like to discuss on one of the three upcoming Open Gov calls, please fill out this form and tell us more about it. We’ll select one or more projects to focus on for each call. If you’d like to join the call but don’t have a specific case to share, you can register here.

We are lucky enough to have Dustin Haisler joining us on our next call on Thursday, January 27th at 4pm. Dustin is the former Assistant City Manager and CIO for the CIty of Manor, TX and is currently the Director of Government Innovation for Spigit. Needless to say, Dustin has plenty of implementation experience, and is looking forward to discussing your cases on the call. If you would like your project to be included in this upcoming conference call, please respond by Friday, January 14th with your case: http://bit.ly/gov20casestudy

All are welcome, and you can also for the calls here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/confcallreg

If you’d like more information about the conference call series, please see the community matters website: http://www.communitymatters.org/conference-calls

Thanks!

Yasmin

Both of these people were/are tireless leaders, and I am proud to say that I worked at the NYC Department of Education from 2005-2008.

However, as they both prepare to leave their respective positions, its appropriate to think about how their replacements can carry on the great work that they’ve done in reforming their schools, and what opportunities new leadership may bring. While many in the reform community laud the work of both of these leaders, they left many feeling disenfranchised from the process.

In DC, Mayor Fenty took major heat for Rhee’s lack of collaboration, and many pundits credit her approach with Fenty’s loss.

In fact, Mayor Gray has indicated that he is interested in increasing participation in the reforms. His Education Plan includes promises to increase “Transparency, Accountability, and Sound Management” as well as support “Collaborative, Innovative, and Involved Leadership” which includes continuing the reforms while giving more power to the community.

This is a good thing for education reforms in DC, as increasing participation has the potential to lead to more sustainable change. However, any public participation process should be rooted in the theory and research around participation in order to ensure that the work is meaningful and impactful.

As Mayor Gray thinks about how to structure an increase in civic engagement, I wanted to offer some advice to help ensure that any participatory processes he selects are responding to actual concerns in the education reform movement and are also grounded in participation theory and best practice.

EDUCATION REFORM AND A LACK OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Critics often talk about how dogmatic and bullish Michelle Rhee was during her tenure as chancellor of DC public schools. Although his reputation wasn’t severe, people definitely criticized him (his approval ratings were often in the 20s) about excluding families and teachers from the reform process.

So what are people upset about? Contemporary Education Reformers of the Rhee-Klein-Duncan brand are typically singularly focused closing the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in our schools as measured by student performance on standards-based assessments in English and math. They tend to prefer market based approaches to reform that focus on teacher quality, including promoting merit based pay usually through a value-add model,, doing away with automatic tenure,  supporting charter schools as a way to give students and parents alternatives to the public school system (and also to create competition w/public schools under the assumption that this will increase their quality), supporting rigorous accountability based on standardized tests scores, and closing or restructuring schools that repeatedly fail. These favored reforms have been ushered through across the country with the support of federal initiatives and legislation such as No Child Left Behind (initiated during President GW Bush’s tenure) and Race to the Top (initiated during President Obama’s first year in office).

There is not doubt that reform needed to happen in both cases. The systems were both in disarray, and were failing kids. The Education Equality Project lists states that “The huge difference in academic performance between students from different economic circumstances and racial/ethnic backgrounds is what we call the achievement gap.”

“by 4th grade, African-American and Latino students are, on average, nearly three academic years behind their white peers

Only 10% of students at Tier 1 colleges (146 most selective) come from the bottom half of the income distribution

Barely half of African-American, Latino, and Native American students graduate from high school, with African American students graduating at 54%, Latinos at 56%, Native Americans at 51% and their white counterparts at 77%

The average student eligible for free/reduced lunch is approximately two years of learning behind the average ineligible student”

However, the way that they approached reform was alienating. Michelle Rhee said at the 2008 Aspen Institute’s Education Summit at the Mayflower Hotel that “if there is one thing I have learned over the last 15 months, it’s that cooperation, collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated.”

I understand Michelle’s frustration here – the system was failing for years, and she needed to cut through a lot of dysfunction in order to make radical and much needed change in a short time frame. She had an economic and social justice imperative to fix the schools quickly, and collaboration isn’t always the best strategy for creating change. She had a clear vision for what needed to happen, and they pushed it through and sometimes large scale participatory action is not the most effective strategy.

However, for all the improvements she may have made, there were many community members who felt extremely marginalized by her approach. And although you cannot create change without offending some people, its important to hear their concerns from a procedural perspective. When the success of your change requires the cooperation of the very people you are cutting out of the process + your boss’s reelection you will have a serious implementation and sustainability problem if you do not have proper participation mechanisms in place.

If the new DC Public Schools Chancellor (whether Kaya Henderson – the current Interim Chancellor – or someone else) is going to continue the reforms she started, he/she is going to have to do a much better job of engaging teachers, parents, and students in the process, and support them throughout periods of massive change.

POLITICAL THEORY ON PUBLIC PARTICIPATION^[1]

Luckily, literature regarding the best practices and values that motivate a participatory approach to public decision-making now spans almost forty years worth of critique of liberal democratic tradition, and can be used to support an increase in participation. Authors ranging from Jurgen Habermas to Carole Pateman and Benjamin Barber have criticized what they see as a technocratic approach to policy-making that legitimates decisions by experts that may not have otherwise enjoyed the consent of the larger population.

These theorists suppose that without avenues for citizens to participate in policy decisions, the benefits of local knowledge may be lost in sacrifice to the interests of a central authority. Indeed, Peter Bachrach and Aryeh Botwinick are among those that argue inclusive decision-making leads to a fairer outcome for those otherwise excluded from these processes.

Others argue in favor of participation as a means to increase the social awareness that can lead individuals to learn how to act in the collective good. Robert Putnam’s work on social capital provides an argument for civic engagement as an educative process whereby the social networks and associations central to quality public life can be formed and developed.

A third main line of support for civic participation comes from those such as Frank Fischer who argue that a deliberative process of engagement can offer a means of breaking through intractable policy problems. By this argument, the involvement of citizens in a dialogue that entails learning, processing and creating new information and analyses increases the likelihood that creative and well-supported solutions to problems can be found.

The education reforms taking place across the country as well as in DCPS could definitely use some of these benefits.

Benefits of Public Participation

• Allows decisions to benefit from local knowledge
• May lead to fairer outcomes for those otherwise excluded from the process
• Increases social awareness that can lead individuals to learn how to act in the collective good
• Offers a means for breaking through intractable public policy problems

The extensive literature on civic participation and engagement also acknowledges several potential barriers to achieving effective engagement, which include:

• Prohibitive costs (both in terms of establishing and running a participatory process and regarding the opportunity costs forgone by participants who chose to engage)
• Assumptions regarding a highly motivated and capable citizenry
• The potential for participatory process to increase conflict or exacerbate divisive positions

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INCREASING PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN DC PUBLIC SCHOOLS

In the case of Education Policy reform, there is a clear and already engaged citizenry, but they are not being involved in the decision making processes. By involving them in the process you can reap some of the benefits of participation while minimizing some of the problems with divisiveness and conflict that exists in the field. Furthermore, the emergence of sophisticated online tools and platforms that support large-scale, multi-party dialogue, collaboration, and data amalgamation and ranking offer a new technical capacity for increased civic engagement via the web, which also lowers the barrier to participation for citizens.

In order for participation to work best, however, it has to be structured in a way that will maximize success. You cannot just have an online portal that asks people to submit ideas. My research shows that meaningful participation includes the following elements:

• Executive Level Support Creates the Context for Engagement, but is not enough
• Engagement As a Practice Must be Integrated into the Agency’s Organizational Structure and Culture
• Online Strategy Should be Driven by Engagement Goals
• Engagement Efforts Should be Designed with an Eye Towards What Interests, Delights, and Excites your Audience

There are additional indicators that are important to consider within each of these realms, which I discuss in my thesis.

I also turned this research into an assessment tool to help government agencies plan engagement projects that may be helpful in the education reform context in DC: bit.ly/dbsaeA

It is important to think about change on each of these levels in order to be successful. Furthermore, DCPS officials should look outside of their system for leadership as well. Given the breadth of interest in DCPS, the engagement team should not only include high level administrators at DCPS as suggested by Gray’s plan, but also include partners from other stakeholders such as the teachers unions, charter school leaders, students, parents, and social services administrators (to represent children whose legal guardians are state appointed). Accordingly, the technology platform selected should allow a wide range of people to participate at varying levels and styles of engagement. Furthermore, the offline participation should be connected to the online participation – both should support each other, rather than being completely distinct projects. The processes and platforms should also be beautiful and innovative in terms of how they manage and organize participation and information.

There is a lot of good work to continue in education reform, but unless people are included in the process, they will likely fail. I am excited to be a resident and business owner in the DC metro area, and look forward to seeing how Gray and his new Schools Chancellor take on this extremely important challenge. I hope to see more participatory process that are grounded in the theory of engagement, and provide rigorous, beautiful, fun, and meaningful opportunities for community members and stakeholders to become more involved in education reform efforts in Washington DC.

[1] This section is from my master’s thesis which I co-wrote with @annayork

I’ve been thinking about this article ever since it came out, and people have asked me to respond on several occasions. When I read Next Generation Democracy and BYO started helping the author (and now friend) Jared Duval, I realized it was the perfect opportunity.

Its not that Malcom Gladwell is wrong in his article. Its just one sided.

He starts the article by describing a lunch counter sit in that took place in the Woolworths in Greensboro North Carolina in February of 1960, and that spurred a movement in which 70,000 students eventually took part.

These nonviolent actions were a core component of the civil rights movement, and although the protesters advocated peaceful solutions, their lives and limbs were often in danger.

Gladwell is clearly fond of what he describes as this old form of social activism, and uses the article to take issue with the assertion that “the new tools of social media have reinvented social activism.”

He spends the rest of the article deriding all the ways that social media have degraded activism, instead of looking for ways that it enhances it. His primary claims are as follows:

• The life-threatening and impactful forms of activism we saw during the civil rights movement require strong ties between people, and social media only promotes weak social ties
• Hierarchy and structure are needed for social action, and social media promotes loose decentralized networks
• We take the actions that we see online (fans, followers, etc) as social action, and we have forgotten what real activism is.

While his argument is not wrong, it is superficial and misleading. What Gladwell is commenting on is only what he sees, and what he sees is often just the surface of much larger movements and campaigns. Its like someone writing a story in the 1960s about how the civil rights movement cannot rely on the telephone alone, without talking about all about the actions that the telephone can help facilitate.

The telephone was probably used during the civil rights movement to reinforce relationships between people who already had strong ties (i.e. facebook) and connect people who may have common interests through random phone banking (i.e. twitter).

The core problem with Gladwell’s article is that he spends most of it discussing people who are chatting about activism and social justice on the phone (i.e. people in America tweeting about Iran and Moldova), rather than discussing people who are using the telephone to organize lunch counter sit-ins.

Next Generation Democracy
I recently read and am helping get the word out about Jared Duval’s new book: “Next Generation Democracy – What the Open Source Movement Means for Power Politics and Change.”

Jared’s book is all about how civic engagement and collaboration can help solve some of the world’s most wicked problems, and Jared also happens to be a former youth organizer and activist. I recently had a chance to talk to him about what Gladwell’s piece and how social media interplays with today’s activism.

Jared (and any good online or offline organizer) agrees that the main measure of social media’s impact is the action it promotes offline. Its fine to have 2000 facebook fans; the question is what their fanship means.

Jared is “sympathetic to Gladwell’s main point which is that the activism of generations past came from a depth of moral courage that people were really wiling to sacrifice their bodies and their lives for what they believe in. But today’s activism requires similar efforts. ”

Jared described stories of fasting for days at a time in his work on climate change, and has friends who have risked their lives as mountain top removal activists.

The problem, Jared asserts, is in the efficacy of those old school tactics. The media does not cover young activists risking their lives for causes they believe in.

This type of reporting is saved for documentaries that play well in niche circles, but not with traditional news outlets. If no one sees it, nothing changes. Millennials are willing to risk their lives and limbs, but only if it will work.

This makes sense given the ideological differences between Millennial and young activists in the 1960s. The Center for American Progress did a bit of polling which found that Millennial tend to be more progressive, but our ideological range is much more compressed. There are fewer on the extremes which may mean that there is less of an impulse for in your face activism and more of an impulse for things that are seen as pragmatic.

Jared’s book is all about how increased participation in governance can help solve some of the world’s most wicked public problems and this perspective goes a long way in describing Millennials preferred form of activism. If we don’t like something, we will probably first ask someone in power to change it. If they say no? We’ll start to create the change we want to see.

Next American City & SeeClickFix
I was just at the Next American Cities: Open Cities conference about the future of cities, and the participants exemplified this new form of change making. The room was not filled with people talking about how to get mayors to change our cities (although there was a bit of that). The conference was mostly filled with civic entrepreneurs who were creating social enterprises and companies that were the change they wanted to see.

While these companies and people do not solely rely on social media to promote the change they want to see, many of them rely on large-scale public participation, and use the web to create transparency around their movement and facilitate meaningful interactions, both online and off.

That’s just how we roll.

While at the conference I had a chance to catch up with Ben Berkowitz, founder of SeeClickFix – one of the most interesting companies currently shaping the online/offline world that was also profiled in Next Generation Democracy.

SeeClickFix is a civic company where anyone can report a nonemergency problem which then gets shared online for others to see and comment on. The social nature of SeeClickFix makes it more than just a complaint forum, but rather a place where people can spark actual change. Not only does it allow city officials to see what issues people care about and want solved, it allows people to connect with other that share similar concerns to advocate for greater change, and most interestingly, promotes people solving these problems themselves without relying on government to step in.

To date, there have been over 70,000 issues reported, 45% of which are marked as resolved.

I asked Ben what he thought about Malcom’s article, and what he thought of the power of social media and online media to facilitate meaningful change.

Ben – like all good social change makers – sees the power in the combination of the online tools and offline action.

He sees social media tools as a sort of onramp to more offline action. In the case of SeeClickFix, people start by reporting potholes or other non-emergency problems. But this often leads to a larger action.

Ben relayed a story about a group of runners who were in a park and found an abandoned boat and complained to the city about it. Then they realized it would be cheaper and easier to remove it themselves, and did just it. Their online activity lead to offline action. Ben has countless other stories about people banding together to make certain stretches of road safer to walk through, stories of previously unengaged residents becoming activated citizens, and stories of real change ushered through by everyday people.

To me, SeeClickFix is a great organization that really gets how online social tools can facilitate, spark, and enhance offline action, and exemplifies the power of online/offline integration.

To be fair, Gladwell did state in an authors chat a few days after the article that he believed online tools + offline grassroots organizing can be very powerful. However, I wanted to explore that intersection a bit more, and for that I called Evgeny Morozov, a brilliant theorist who is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford and was quoted in Gladwell’s original piece.

Evegeny’s main focus is on the international context, but his main question to me still applies:

In the case of limited resources, “how do you want to spend it to maximize social good? Do you want to blow it on save Darfur facebook groups, give money to groups that are effective offline and want to expand online, give it to people who do nothing on the internet.”

In the cases of serious social change and limited resources, it is important to think about how digital activism fits into the larger goals. Sometimes promoting the use of the tools distracts from the issues on the ground.

We need to make sure that we don’t focus on facebook and twitter and social media in ways that crowd out other types of activism and drain resources. There is a danger that many powerful tools will be disregarded because people have too much faith in the internet alone.

While Evegeny’s perspective is in the international context, I think the advice is important for us to think about. There are very real limitations to online organizing in the United States – we have a significant digital divide that prevents all people from participating equally, and on many issues this can be devastating. I completely agree that the first piece is to look at what you are trying to accomplish, and then work back from there. If online tools can help you enhance your strategy and better meet your goals, then by all means go for it. If you have limited resources, and are not able tp craft a campaign that adequately ties your online work to offline actions? You might want to focus your resources elsewhere.

The thing is, activism has changed since the 1960s. People are no longer engaging in direct actions in the same way that they used to. Today’s activism is no longer focused on the action, but its also not entirely focused on the tool, as Gladwell states in his piece. Rather, today’s “activism” is focused on change. We may not engage in direct action to the extent that past generations did, but we start companies, volunteer, take on government service, run for office, form community groups, write books, and otherwise create the change we want to see.

I think this new form of social change is really critical to think about. Gladwell is a much smarter theorist than I, and he missed a really important opportunity to explore how activism has shifted since the 1960s, and what role (if any) the internet has played in those major shifts.

Right now theorists like Malcom Gladwell see the internet, and they see the Saul Alinsky form of organizing, they don’t see the connection, and they think the system is broken.

The system is not broken, its just changed a bit.

Right now, Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” (1971) is number one in Civics on the Amazon bestseller list. I studied Saul Alinsky during my days as a community organizer, and I still use many of his ideas in my organizing work. But there are some new ways of organizing that are critical for people working in social change these days to think about and study.

Next Generation Democracy was released today, and contains a whole host of ideas about a new way of thinking about community engagement and organizing. It is important that the word gets out about how new ways of working together – both online and off – can help us create the change we want to see.

Next Generation Democracy begins to explore this new paradigm.

Here’s where you can buy the book: http://tiny.cc/nextgendem

Here’s what other people are saying about the book: http://vimeo.com/16646306

I hope that Gladwell and other theorists, practitioners, and citizens will contribute to a meaningful dialogue about how social change and activism has changed in the last few decades, and what that means for the future of citizen activism and participation in the Next Generation.

Jared’s new book – “Next Generation Democracy: What the Open Source Movement means for Power, Politics, and Change” – is an inspiring work that challenges people to think about how large-scale participation and collaboration can help us solve some of the world’s most complex and dynamic problems.

From the blurb on the back of the book:

“Picture the chaos of Hurricane Katrina. Waters rising and families stranded. There are federal officials somewhere, but they can hardly communicate with each other, much less the people in trouble. How could anyone be expected to manage this sprawling disaster?

Katrina is an extreme example of many of the problems we face today. Carbon Dioxide emissions, financial instability, the need for health care – these are things we could easily manage if they were occurring on a much smaller scale.

But what if we could turn our vast size and complexity into an advantage? According to social-change leader Jared Duval, the Millennial generation is in a unique position to do just that. Next Generation Democracy chronicles some of the watershed events – including Katrina – when directly democratic, forward-thinking organizations become more effective than our centralized government. Telling the stories of a participatory organizations, such as SeeClickFix and AmericaSpeaks, Duval describes a new approach to solving complex problems that draws on all resources, voices, and flexibility or vast networks of citizens – with unprecedented speed. An artful blend of personal writing, journalism, and political argument, Next Generation Democracy not only gives us a vision of a brighter future, it inspires us to help create it.”

Like many of you, I have been steeped in government and gov 2.0 for some time now, have tried to practice the principles of transparency and collaboration of the Open Source Movement in my work, and have been studying the ways that organizations and politicians are trying to open up government to greater levels of participation.

Yet while the theories are familiar, reading the book was amazingly refreshing to for several reasons. First, the theories were articulated in a way that make them accessible to a broader audience in ways that I think all people can connect with. This gives me hope that the message will reach beyond the echo chamber, more leaders will start opening up their practices, and more citizens will demand to be included in deeper forms of participation. Second, in the book Jared is focused on exploring how greater levels of collaboration and participation can help us solve “wicked” public problems. It is this focus that we all have to remember when engaging in this work – its what many of us are here for, and ultimately what will help this movement prevail. Finally, and most compelling to me, was the way that Jared wrote the narrative and how he used story in the book.

Starting with a forward by Tim O’Reilly, Jared relays stories from many of the leaders in today’s movement to open up our systems of governance to more participatory, transparent, and collaborative processes. The quirky and awe-inspiring accounts he relays draw the reader into the book, and illustrate how individual actors can precipitate large-scale action:

• How a broken copy machine inspired the open source movement and a student in Finland catalyzed massive change in the field
• How volunteers and technology helped unite families and communities during and after Hurricane Katrina
• How an old farmhouse in Vermont provides a framework for changing our ever broken political and governance systems
• How an exotic animal zoo in the mountains of Vermont can inspire the creation of a foundation dedicated to improving rural communities by promoting citizen engagement in Heart and Soul planning
• How remote controls and tree-like structures can help us untangle solutions to some of our deepest social problems
• How a transformational event in Frances Moore Lappes life inspired her to change the course of her career and leap into the world of wide-scale social change
• How someone equally loved by Steel Magnates and Radical feminists went on to transform post-Katrina planning in New Orleans through AmericaSpeaks
• How an iphone app and website is changing the way that people solve problems in their communities
• What 13 – 29 year olds have in common with the Open Source Software movement, and how they are shaping the next phase of politics and power

For people like us, working in the field every day, trying to push forward the ideals of the Gov20 movement, it is really cool and inspiring to see how others are making change. Jared reminds us that behind every theory, movement, and or bit of innovation are the people making it happen. People with ordinary lives, doing extraordinary things. People like us, trying to do better with less, and opening up our democracy to greater levels of participation.

If you are reading this blog post, you are probably a leader in the field. We are lucky to have another piece of literature to support this work, and I am hoping its publication will help us get the word out about the massive potential for large-scale participation that will change our systems of governance for the better.

Let me know what you think of the book, and if you get a chance to attend one of the book’s events (I’ll be at the official launch in Washington DC on November 8th) definitely do so and meet Jared:

Bus Boys and Poets
w/ Carolyn Lukensmeyer, AmericaSpeaks
November 8th, 2010
6:30 – 8:00p

Books, Inc
November 16th, 2010
Mountain View, CA
7:00pm

Kilton Public Library
co-sponsored by Upper Valley Land Trust
December 1st, 2010
West Lebanon, NH
7:00pm

WestPort Public Library
December 6th, 2010
Westport, CT
7:30pm

Demos: Ideas & Action
December 7th, 2010
New York, NY
6:00pm – 8:00pm

What else are people reading now? Anything inspiring that has come in front of you lately? Any stories that you find particularly innovative? What other texts are currently helping to move our work forward?

I was there as an attendee, but also had the privilege of participating on a panel with Aneesh Chopra (CTO of the U.S.A), Ian Freed (V.P Amazon kindle) and HKS students Seth Flaxman (he’s also the founder of TurboVote) and Philip Schroegel, moderated by Mary Jo Bane, Academic Dean and Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management.

Our topic was what “Kennedy School Students Entering the Digital World: A Discussion with Aneesh Chopra & Ian Freed.”

In general, I think the Kennedy School is an excellent institution in most ways. Great professors are teaching in the field; there are several centers (Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation) that support efforts in this areas; students are demanding more courses in gov/tech (as evidenced by the enrollments in Nicco‘s and Clay‘s courses); there are great speakers series, there’s a vibrant gov20 student community; and a committed external community (including alums) interested in engaging with the school to push it forward in this field.

However, the Technology and Governance 2.0 conference convinced me even more that you need academic institutions in this debate.

The conversations were deep, rigorous, and challenging. Gov20 conferences that I’ve attended tend to be about the success stories. The speakers at this conference really challenged the normative assumptions around gov20 and that is super healthy and refreshing. Government officials working in technology are bombarded with people trying to sell products, and are constantly faced with make/buy decisions, and this is just the type of intellectual exploration that is important for them to think about. They need to arm themselves with tools that will help them understand when tech is appropriate, and when there are better ways of meeting the same goal. Academic institutions are the perfect place for this kind of exploration, and I applaud the Kennedy School’s efforts to prepare students in this way.

Since the conference I’ve had some time to think about how the Kennedy School (and other institutions that prepare public policy practitioners) can take this work even further and ensure their place as leaders in training students to take on governance challenges in a digital world.

The recommendations listed below cover two broad constituencies: 1) students who want to go into the specific field of Technology and Governance and 2) students who are generalists, but whose work and careers could be enhanced with a greater understanding of the capabilities and challenges that technology poses for governance.

In no particular order…

1. Highlight the Awesomeness of Careers in Government + Technology
Kennedy School students (no matter their field) typically want to change the world in a rigorous and sustainable way. They also want good jobs. When marketing careers in Government + Technology to these kinds of students its important to speak to both of these motivations. To that end, we need to show generalists how leaders have used technology in their general policy work. Policy/Tech wonks like me love to hear from Government CTOs. Generalists would probably be more engaged by learning about how Mayor Bloomberg relies on technology to hold his Agency leaders accountable on their social goals.

Furthermore, it would be great to have a general listing of the types of careers that are available in government + technology, and the types of skills you need in each. There are science and technology policy folks, people using technology in the creation of policy, public affairs specialists, resource analysts, contractors, KM officials…the list goes on and on. It would be great to have a consolidated place to see the breadth and depth of job opportunities in this space.

2. Make “Innovations in Government” a Core Course
Kennedy School Masters of Public Policy students are required to take economics, statistics, econometrics, ethics, and management to obtain their degree. I think there should also be a course around innovations in government to help students see the new and exciting ways practitioners are solving public problems. This wouldn’t be a strictly techy course, although that would certainly play a role. Technology changes so frequently, and the benefit of thinking about technology in governance is that it keeps things fresh, and constantly makes you revisit your practice. This general approach is something that could really benefit new practitioners. The ideal would be a case-based class where the cases are updated every year. You could generate the cases by holding a competition about what upcoming leaders need to know right now, and solicit ideas from alums in the field via something like challenge.gov…this is also a great way to keep alums engaged in the school…

This would keep the Kennedy School at the forefront of compiling the most interesting ideas in this space, and give students access to these cutting edge concept. It would also make the idea of “innovation” central in the minds of future policy makers, which is certainly a good thing.

3. Produce Technology Related Cases
Many of the general courses (econ, stats, econometrics, management, etc) use case-based teaching methodology. More of these cases should focus on technology. Generalists would then learn about technology through other disciplines, which will deepen their understanding of both. ‘Nuff said.

4. Develop a Civic Innovation Incubator
Cambridge is a hub of entrepreneurship, and it would be great to connect Kennedy School students – who have an expertise in how to solve social problems – with folks who are experts in entrepreneurship and business. We need more civic innovators, and Cambridge is the perfect place to develop them. Harvard Business School just launched an Innovation Incubator, and it would be great if there was a civic stream in that incubator, or if the Kennedy School partnered with this center in some way to promote civic innovations. Students could work on everything from developing an scoping creative apps for government databases to starting social enterprises that leverage technology. One way to institutionalize this is to give students the choice between writing a master’s thesis and writing a plan for and/or launching a civic startup? (thx for that one, Seth Flaxman).

5. Model the Behavior You Want to See in Government
What would be truly representative of the Kennedy school taking this seriously is to develop the plans for enhancing tech at the school to develop it in a collaborative tech-enabled fashion. Its fine to talk about how innovative you are, but at some point you actually have to eat your own dog food. I think the Kennedy School is heading in the right direction (many professors now blog, the school is active on social media sites, etc) but there could be more done to facilitate online collaboration and communication between students and there are definitely opportunities to create an ideascale like platform to engage students in the planning and decision making process in an open and transparent way.

Any one else have thoughts on the types of preparatory experiences that would support emerging public servants in the field of gov20?