real dialogue seems to have given way to parallel monologues, paired with an inability to actively listen... Rhetoric teaches the art of using persuasive tools... resolving disagreement through measured agreeable discussion, known as the dialectic method... In 1922... "communication can by itself create a community". This early definition was clo…

Tap into the wisdom of your citizensYour city platform for citizensourcing

Plebiscite-pushers have got Europe's voters hooked on the cheap rush of direct democracy

focusing less on how audiences interact with content on the screen but more about how, because of stories, we engage with each other as a community. Less transaction, more relation; less on audience, more on community... in 2003 I launched the initial version of Interactive Narratives ... Finding inspiring multimedia work was one benefit. But f…

Wouldn’t it be great if your government had a conversation with you instead of just talking at you? - The White House / Me

The Art of Hosting is a highly effective way of harnessing the collective wisdom and self-organizing capacity of groups of any size.  ... a suite of powerful conversational processes to invite people to step in and take charge of the challenges facing them... better decision-making, more efficient and effective capacity building and greater abi…

"What was originally intended to be a simple and user-friendly tool for all EU citizens has turned out to be cumbersome and challenging in its use... Stakeholders have come up with concrete recommendations on how to adjust the instrument... first report on the application of the ECI Regulation by 1 April 2015 ... the first step towards a revision…

A whole load of recommnendations for the UK's House of Commons, including some intriguing ones - eg: "We believe the public want the opportunity to have their say in House of Commons debates; we also believe that this will provide a useful resource for MPs and help to enhance those debates. We therefore recommend a unique experiment: the use of…

"The report uncovered an uncomfortable truth: that there are few civic society organisations that are capable of participating in shaping the national positions at a stage when the European Commission has already come up with a draft.... it is usually a challenge to find a list of EU issues where the national government is elaborating its nati…

Transformative civic technology needs to be built “with, not for” a community.... [but] constrained deadlines for development make co-designing with communities a mere exercise at best, an abstract afterthought at worst. If your work is with communities, you better be able to LITERALLY define that community... Once you’ve identified that “who”, L…

"The League of Young Voters in Europe is a politically neutral initiative that aims to amplify young people's concerns and expectations in the run-up to European elections. It's a movement across Europe designed by young people, for young people."

"The MyVote 2014 tool is the latest in a series of tools of this sort ... but this time it’s different in one crucial way: MyVote 2014 uses data about MEPs have voted in the past (between 2009 and now to be precise), and uses this as the data for the tool. This makes the outcomes of the MyVote 2014 tool more solid than previous efforts. Rather tha…