To date, in 2012, aside from the launch of Who Funds You, we’ve organised the following informal and conversational events in London.
Crowdsourcing analysis for policymakers
How open data is being used government, how it could be used as a participative tool, and what the opportunities / pitfalls could be.
Presented by Andrew Stott
Co-design and policymaking
A look at the practicalities of involving large numbers of people in planning and designing policies, followed by a discussion of the politics and the ethics of ‘collaborative authoring’
Presented by Steph Gray
Policymaking in the cloud
A discussion of new ways of doing things that arise from more dispersed technical networks. ‘Scrum’ project management, open source development and, Peer-to-Peer organisation have all been held up as being ideas that politicians and governments can learn from.
Presented by Dr Andy Williamson
Quicker, cheaper and easier than polls
In the past, opinion polls and focus groups have had a great deal of influence over policymakers. Today, the social media ‘firehose’ provides us with a torrent of opinion and sentiment to draw from. How is this done? And how well does this commercial practice apply to policymaking?
Presented by Dr Nick Buckley
What policymakers can learn from gaming
Technological entrepreneurs have become adept at finding new ways of motivating people, not only managing to change their behaviours but also encouraging them to develop skills, mentor others and solve problems. What can politicians learn from the most successful interactive-content industry the planet has known?
Presented by Jude Ower
Are we too irrational to participate in policymaking?
Can a government that adopts approaches from behavioural economics be trusted to be serious about any kind of participative politics? Are the two oil-and-water opposites? Or is it more complicated than that?
Presented by Warren Hatter
In other developments, we have been working on an ‘open data for schools’ project, and the Political Innovation approach to understanding policymaking in the digital age has formed the basis of a number of one-day professional training events.
