Personal Democracy Forum

Unconference (barcamp) at 9.30am-3pm at Centre Zielna.

The unconference provided PDF attendees a chance to create their own agenda. Everyone was welcome to propose a topic to discuss at the start of the day and to share information tools and applications that can impact politics at local, national or international level.

The workshops included:

• Online Activism: Video Advocacy, Fundraising and Communication - Experiences of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU/TASZ)
• Parliamentary Openness and Engagement: Learning from the Past & Forging a Collaborative Future
• Making and Telling Stories with Data

Breakout Session Descriptions

Online Activism – The Reach & the Limits

Online activism is more and more often presented as a one-size-fits-all solution for successful advocacy campaigns, no matter the scope or purpose. Hardly ever are we pushed to define what "online activism" really means, what its strengths are or its limits. Phenomena such as the Arab Spring, Occupy movement or European protests against ACTA bring interesting insights in this respect. Citizens engaging in various forms of online activism (e.g. via social media) can often be at risk but can also fight back using ever more powerful tools not only to organize protests but to record the behavior of those who would oppose them. What opportunities and challenges do on-line tools create for activists? Are we just at the beginning of an entirely new era of connected activism or is "on-line activism" nothing more than yet another buzz word?

Public policy in a Networked Age

In an era of growing connectivity, transparency and public participation, how should policy makers respond and adapt? What are the benefits and risks of inviting public engagement in policy conversations? Is greater public participation inevitable, or does it require certain kinds of government interventions or policies to ensure that it happens (i.e. reforms of copyright, changes in government culture or policies regarding using interactive media, expansion of access to affordable Internet)? Who stands to win or lose from these changes?

Social Innovation for Transparency and Participatory Democracy

Can transparency and participatory movements benefit from social innovation methods? Are new decentralized communication and participant-driven events helping in bringing change to democracy? Let's talk about app contests, prototyping social change and testing new ideas for anti-corruption and improvements in politics. What's working and what are the challenges. How to engage citizens in the age of 2.0, while simultaneously capitalizing upon all the work that's been already done in the field.

Watchdogging 2.0

New technologies have brought acceleration and the opportunity for massive engagement in civic oversight. How will organizations use it in practice? How can they solve key problems with getting information? How can organizations use that information? Are the on-line tools only an element of traditional work, which focuses on communicating with politicians, pressuring them, finding evidence, informing media – maybe even litigating - or maybe we should forget it and change our thinking? What have new technologies brought – new methods or new types of organizations?

From E-Government to We-Government

Governments are publishing ever more online data. At the same time citizens are also generating huge amounts of public data and are beginning to develop civic applications using gov’t and/or public data and doing it faster than governments can, moving the relationship between government and citizens from eGov to weGov.

Technology Tools for Citizen Engagement and Accountability – Sponsored by Omidyar

In Central Eastern Europe, organizations are emerging that are adeptly building robust new tools, platforms, applications, and techniques to increase citizen engagement and citizen-led engagement with elected leaders and governments.

See demonstrations of four projects, and meet and ask questions of the people building and running them.