[open-government] To -WATCH- the Poplus-hosted Q and A with Knight Foundation on Elections News Challenge - Thu Mar 5

[Steven Clift]

We had a very informative Hangout with the Knight Foundation today on
their "elections" themed News Challenge.

Here is an Open Gov Facebook Group post with the key links:

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/opengovgroup/permalink/1605893399642250/

Or visit the *on-demand* recording on Google Plus/YouTube:

    http://bit.ly/NewsChallegeQAHangout

The News Challenge itself: http://newschallenge.org
Our Google doc has some rough notes from the call:
    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fwM5d_2dN_Hhc3RXhxiSj6Nf7ZAlQEY54eDJowrDXSE/edit?usp=sharing

...

With my Poplus.org component collaboration hat on (join us
http://bit.ly/poplusgroup ) ...

I am personally interested in how we support crowd-sourcing of deep
social media links down the ballot about candidates. The code/model
from http://yournextmp.com in the UK has some real momentum - they
have a serious no data challenge in that official government lists of
who is running for parliament only exist a few weeks before the
election and not from a central source.

In Minnesota, we can get the basic "who is on your ballot data" far
sooner, but with increasing "friending for office" via Facebook, etc.
emerging, helping voters find and engage candidates on social media is
a huge need if we want this increased engagement to go beyond the
usual suspects and most connected voters.

I am also interested in how candidates/campaigns themselves could take
control over certain standard data fields and upload character limited
statements, a candidate photo, and other content that would
dramatically lower the cost for ANYONE producing voter
guides/websites, etc. Ultimately we need a syndication ecology that
gets "informed voting" info to voters to the media, search, and others
sites with lots of eyeballs.

I am curious who else is interested in leveraging this code -
https://github.com/mysociety/yournextmp-popit - in their city, state,
or nation?

The News Challenge may be an important opportunity to rapidly explore
some global collaboration, but only if folks who want to use the code
(and of course can marshal local resources to deploy/crowdsource) say
they are interested.  (Here on this e-list is fine, but also
http://bit.ly/poplusgroup )

Thanks,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org

P.S. As the creator of the world's first election info site in 1994 -
http://e-democracy.org/1994 - I hope the News Challenge funds ideas
that break out of the boom bust cycle of online election sites. Every
big election, a dozen major projects emerge in every country and then
go poof after the election. There must be better ways to build
election engagement engines that allows each country with a major
election to build on the code base/model of those before and then make
it easier for the next country to help more voters cast votes and more
informed votes to the level each voter aspires.

Steven Clift  -  Executive Director, E-Democracy

* Support E-Democracy. Pledge drive to raise $10,000 US:
      http://e-democracy.org/donate?ft  - Only $890 to 2015 Goal


On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 11:21 AM, Steven Clift <clift at e-democracy.org> wrote:
> RSVP here - you'll see it in your local time too (11 Eastern Thursday):
>
>      https://plus.google.com/events/c98nmucr8hmc7f3j7os34ekmoig
>
> You'll be able to watch/listen via Hangout/YouTube live or ON-DEMAND later.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Steven Clift
> Poplus Engagement Lead
>
> Steven Clift  -  Executive Director, E-Democracy