Viewer 17@All: Hello
Brian Sullivan@All: Hi John!
Jeff Prudhomme@All: Hey everyone!
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Everyone, I represent both Every Voice Engaged
Foundation (a 501c3 non-profit designed to promote civic engagement) and
Conteneo, a for-profit enterprise software company that provides platforms
for collaboration and deliberation, including Common Ground for Action - a
platform we created in partnership with The Kettering Foundation
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: For those who don't me, I am a DevOps Engineer,
meaning I build massively scalable cloud systems for enterprise. I have been
speaking around open source government for several years.
Robert Richards@All: hey
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: We also produce Participatory Budgeting and Budget
Consultation projects for cities and municipalities
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: I’m really happy to be here.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I'm just back from OS//OS in New Zealand.
Viewer 31@All: This is David Nevins of The Bridge Alliance and the Nevins
Democracy Leaders Program
Sandy Heierbacher@All: Ele - is that Open Space on Open Space? or does OS
stand for something else in this case?
Sandy Heierbacher@All: Welcome, David!
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Open Space - that’s cool and powerful stuff
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Open Source, Open Society: Business,
Technology and Government. I was sponsored by the US Embassy
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Its a conference put on by Enspiral, the Loomio
kids
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: that’s cool
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: It was Amazing
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Can you send a URL of the conference results?
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Don't know if it's all up yet, but here's the top
level http://opensourceopensociety.com/
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Oh - if you attended the Dec 2015 Common Ground
for Action Tech Tuesday please know that we’ve made a large number of
enhancements to the platform since last Dec. We’re at your service if you
would like an update on these many improvements. One really important
improvement is the ability to easily schedule an arbitrarily large number of
forums with a pool of facilitators.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: We also draw from gamification work from people like
jane McGonigal, Ian Bogost, Jesse Schell and especially Ralph Koster
You@All: If you want to read more about this concept, Here’s a brief piece
from John about it: http://www.challengestodemocracy.us/home/john-gastilon-building-an-integrated-and-empowered-form-of-civicengagement/#sthash.Wa41CiEH.7qQk8YTi.dpbs
Roshan@All: Am I understanding correctly that a user of the machine can't
join and start voting immediately?
You@All: And the full paper John wrote is here:
http://ash.harvard.edu/files/ash/files/democracy_machine.pdf
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Taiwan is running their government with an online
deliberation layer that is advisory to the legislation, there is working code that
essentially aggregates across many applications.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, that’s really interesting. I think Singapore is also
moving towards similar models.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Gamification is good for youth, but you can't be
authentically advisory with that prejudice in place.
David Supp-Montgomerie @Uiowa@All: How scaleable would this be? Could
a city run this machine, or a University community?
Cassandra Hemphill@All: I'm interested in the ethical considerations of
providing extrinsic rewards for public participation
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: We currently have an open source authentication
system through the federal government called MyUSA, there's no reason to
work your way up to voter verification.
John Gastil :-0@All: David - Yes, the idea is that the "machine" is really a
generic platform, which could work at different levels. Ideally, they'd all be
integrated, so one in the "city machine" would also be in that state and
national machine.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Insisting on 'real identity' at the highest level is
really a bad idea. It means only people who have safe ideas can really get
in.
John Gastil :-0@All: Ele - What I like about voter reg. is that we get party
registration data. Is that in MyUSA?
John Gastil :-0@All: Ele - I also like that this step prompts people
unregistered to vote--to register to vote.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Good grief, I wouldn't use that, or demographic
info, you're playing into existing conflict models. However, you could cross
reference the state voter databases for that info
John Gastil :-0@All: Ele - There is a tradeoff between anonymity and
publicity. Accountability can be good, and hazardous, no question. It's not a
settled question.
Jeff Prudhomme@All: I’m not sure how/why “Gamification” would be limited
to youth (Ele’s comment above). I see it as a way to draw out the intrinsic
engagement that comes from applying game-like features to the real world.
Shari Davis@All: it this platform restricted to those that have citizenship? Are
low barrier options for folks to engage that may be homeless (but have a
cellphone), in transition, or speak a language other than English?
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: You can authenticate without exposing people
publically as was mentioned. But particularly in the field of Trans rights for
example, people in public are getting slaugtered.
John Gastil :-0@All: Cassandra - On the idea of extrinsic rewards, that's a fair
point, though it depends on what the credit is "extrinsic" to. If this is civic
engagement and the credits only go to civic activities, it may not feel
extrinsic.
Colleen Hardwick@All: PlaceSpeak has focused on the dual requirement of
digital identity authentication and protection of individual privacy. We have
developed and API that can be used broadly.
John Gastil :-0@All: Did someone note the Taiwan sunflower movement
online practices? Those do, indeed, sound interesting.
Sandy Heierbacher@All: Yes - lots to be learned from PlaceSpeak!
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Nope, because time is the resource.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: You're always playing into the place where
gamification takes time, and that's as much of a resource as money.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: This is my opinion on gamification.
John Gastil :-0@All: Ele - Yes, the 'civic game' does take real time. Hopefully,
it's not a grind (I'm looking at you, Pokemon Go).
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: It will be prone to automation the same as any
grind.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Sock puppets, all the other issues.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Authenication is a better currency than time quality of participation is better currency than quantity
David Fridley @synaccord@All: Could you go back to the slide on what you
can spend credits on?
Viewer 36@All: I joined late. Does this platform envision mixing in-person
with online? Some of the critical trust building that needs to take place
between government and citizens - and between citizens and citizens -seems to need a new in person experience of "other" to make the online
work better.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: A sock puppet is a fake user grinding a game for
profit
John Gastil :-0@All: Colleen - That does sound interesting.
Colleen Hardwick@All: http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/15/placespeak-aimsto-democratize-your-neighbourhood-and-bring-us-all-together/
John Gastil :-0@All: [Colleen - thanks for the URL]
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Yeah, I'm a fan of gamification, but you're not
modeling 'fairly' for quality participation.
Jeff Prudhomme@All: How will the “Machine” keep track of credits and
leveling up if people are participating through all different kinds of online
engagement platforms? Is it one platform that unites them all, so to speak?
John Gastil :-0@All: Jeff - You've got it. "one platform to unite them all."
That's the easy part, and the difficult (impossible?) part.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Viruosity is the product of play - you don't work a
violin for example - that's where gamification is important.
Viewer 38@All: HI John, How will you motivate government
agencies/officials to participate when the are already meeting their legal
requirements for public participation, e.g. Regulations.gov for rulemaking
notice and comments.
David Fridley @synaccord@All: :-)
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I'd like to take this into a deeper channel to
discuss modeling for games - this is talking about good faith vs bad faith
deliberation - I have a lot of research on that.
John Gastil :-0@All: Viewer38 -- We'd actually like to link up to
Regulations.gov (and bring in new people)
Jeff Prudhomme@All: John—so is it dependent on someone big like Google
coming up with the uniting platform?
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: @jeff prudhomme, nope this could be distributed
and open source.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: There's probably code around it already, i.e. the
sunflower movement in Taiwan.
Cassandra Hemphill@All: Online technologies tend to privilege writing over
other means of communication (e.g., oral). Would this provide a way for
people who do not express themselves easily in writing?
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Fake users are fairly easy to spot through a variety of
analysis - e.g., we can detect bots fairly easily based on their linguistic
patterns
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: That was sent to Ele
John Gastil :-0@All: Cassandra - no reason this would have to be text heavy.
depends on the tools out there.
Don Ellis@All: Does the machine simply "link" various existing tool or is the
idea to integrate in some new way. If so, what are the expected benefits of
such integration
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: @Luke, yeah but you won't even have fake users
if you build an architecture that doesn't reward it.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: @Don Ellis one of the cool things about the
code in place in Taiwan is that it's actually grabbing social network data too,
but using it around consensus although their paradigms are actually
polarizing. You don't need permission from teh application.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I love hybrid - online and offline - sweet!
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, not sure if we agree or disagree. If you’re saying
that gamification promotes bad behavior than I disagree. Badly designed
gamification promotes bad behavior
Viewer 36@All: Thanks Luke - great answer.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: @Luke yes we agree.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: @Luke But the way you're building your identity
architecture plays into existing conflict models and discriminatory practices.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Again, I have some deeper research around this,
based on information from actual games (notably, I was inspired by Greg
Coomer of Valve software)
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, you’d have to explore our goals further before
making that claim ;-)
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: And our architectures
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: http://opensourcebridge.org/sessions/1508
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: I’m not saying your points aren’t valid - they are. I am
saying we need a means to manage a fairly complex set of needs, which at
times will include identity management.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: It's very obvious to me, actually.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: I look forward to reviewing this talk
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Sure, but identity is the key to conflict, conflict is
actually useful, the way you're building your arch is obviously playing into
unproductive models.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: and existing systems of privilege.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: The useful part of that talk is impartial identity
architecture, Imparch - in that talk. You're using the status quo model in a lot
of ways.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Face to face is a position of privilege, it assumes
freedom of assembly, and mobility to arrive at a location.
Viewer 36@All: Many of us are agreed that in person and online need to be
integrated. Each has benefits. But many local government clients who do not
yet understand principles of effective engagement overestimate what the
online tools can do without informed implementation.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: I agree with this issue - governments and other
institutions who want to increase engagement are struggling
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, are you then in the camp that we should
discourage or eliminate face-to-face techniques?
viewer@All: NIF one time events are each a dead end. impossible to get
sponsors and participants to participate in a series that may get somewhere.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Yeah, each has their benefits - this is a good
point. But, I always design systems for use in two cases. One is digital services
for existing democracies, the second is virtual democracies emerging in
dangerouse territories
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Yes, this is massive ;-). I told John it was like saying we
want to skip the moon, skip Mars, and go right to Alpha Centauri… ;-)
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I don't find it huge, actually, but I'm at the point
of why.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: There would need to be a better model around
the gamification piece for me to support it.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: It's really just an ecosystem of connectors and
integrations with common interfaces, and a lot of the code may exist.
Jeff Prudhomme@All: Who would manage the credit development? Seems
like it would have to be largely machine intelligence, but at some point there
might be a need to appeal to human judgment.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: It's still multimilion dollar project around
determining what code is useful.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I only do open source.
Rebecca Townsend@All: I'm on a committee of the Massachusetts Moderators
Association devoted to improvement of town meetings, and one of the key
problems we face is in security of participation online. Nevertheless, I look
forward to sharing this with them when we meet in Sept. (in person, of
course! :))
Colleen Hardwick@All: Social venture is a solution.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Naive concept of open source, and I'm not a
charity case - I just did a session on open source business models. Nonprofit
and and forprofit / open source doesn't need to be nonprofit.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I never do nonprofit; I always do open source.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, I’ve also written books on this too - see Beyond
Software Architecture - there are lots of models - dual source, open source,
etc.
Colleen Hardwick@All: We have struggled with this at PlaceSpeak. We came
to the conclusion that non-profit / open source was not sustainable. That said,
our motivation is not strictly profit. Hence the hybrid.
Colleen Hardwick@All: Getting the kind of investment dollars that you need
to scale is the biggest challenge.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, the reality is that there are very examples of
sustainable open source companies other than tools that developers tend to
use for themselves
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Our experiences match Colleen’s.
Jeff Prudhomme@All: Possible educational tie-in to consider with working
on digital badging for civic discourse skill development and competencies for
the 21st century.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Like Colleen, we didn’t think non-profit/open source
would be scalable. AND we have motivations that are not purely profit
oriented.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I am an engineer, and so for me, the deal is just
about keeping control of my own code. If it's closed source, I can't distribute
it etc. I'm well paid for what I do. This isn't really the model for the people
who pay me; I had to negotiate it as part of my job.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: You mean socrata has a different model. that makes
sense. BTW, I supported David Pollak when he created the Lift Framework for
Scala - which we made open source.
Colleen Hardwick@All: The good news has been that there are grants and
R&D funds for building. The 'supply' side is there. The 'demand' side is not,
however. Government is slow to adapt and actually pay for software-asservice.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: So I have positive history in this community
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I'm not at Socrata anymore, I'm at prime8
consulting.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ah
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: I struck a deal for my own IP when I was hired.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: I think that Colleen brings up an important point there *are* funds for experiments and getting things started. But money for
*scaling* is challenging
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: And my IP is all open source.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Again, we find the safest/sustainable path is letting
corporations pay because they see these benefits
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: both for them and for governments
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Yeah, you could apply to the knight foundation
for prototype grant to analyze whether the Taiwan code or model for an
ecosystem would work for your idea.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: @Luke, I have corporations pay for my open
source code.
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Oh - that’s a great idea. I’m also working with Kaliya
Hamlin on understanding identt
Colleen Hardwick@All: I'm going to have to jump off the call, but would like
to be involved.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: This is where it's actually useful to have a
nonprofit, you can get tax writeoff for engineering hours on an open source
project.
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: If's its code owned by a nonprofit.
You@All: http://ncdd.org/events/ncdd2016
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: Ele, our non-profit is http://everyvoiceengaged.org - it
is a fully realized 501c3 and could be a funding vehicle
Tim Bonnemann @planspark@All: Thanks, John & Luke, for this conversation
starter. What I'd like to see, maybe in the lead-up to #NCDD2016, is a slightly
more detailed breakdown of which problems Democracy Machine is trying to
address, exactly, and how. For example, John mentioned the Obama
administration's early attempts at digital engagement. When we look at why
they performed so poorly, it's mostly comes down to process
design/implementation, not technology/infrastructure shortcomings.
John Gastil :-0@All: To everyone on the call -- thanks for the great
conversation!!! (-: See (some of) you @ NCDD!!!
Jeff Prudhomme@All: John and Luke—thanks for this! It was/is thrilling!
Ele Munjeli (laryngitis)@All: Yup, thanks! Good fun!
John Gastil :-0@All: "thrilling" ! [i'll feed on that for a while...]
Robert Richards@All: thanks
Luke Hohmann ;-)@All: THANKS EVERYONE!
David Fridley @synaccord@All: Thanks!
Sandy Heierbacher@All: Thanks especially to John and Luke! And great job
moderating, Courtney!!
You@All: Thank you everyone for a great call! And thanks John & Luke for
bringing this idea forward and talking with us about it today!