Blogging has been a hot topic here at OD2005. While there’s a lot of interest in blogging as a tool of public conversation, there’s also a lot of skepticism about the quality of information and discourse on blogs.

In my own presentations I have talked both about how to use blogging as an engagement tool and how to use blog tools for improving knowledge-sharing and collaboration among e-deliberation practitioners.

To that end, here’s my list of the 10 technologies and tools that together unlock the power of blogging as a very easy and effective way to track news, discover information, and collaborate with colleagues.

1. Really Simple Syndication (RSS): RSS feeds are constantly updated streams of information. Lots of news sites and blogs offer RSS feeds of their content so you can stay up to date on their latest content without having to visit the same sites every day. You can find an official definition, but the most important thing to know is that anytime you see the initials RSS or XML or Atom (another format like RSS) on a web site, you can “subscribe” to its content using an RSS “aggregator”. (And Michael Weiksner tells me that Atom will replace RSS.)
2. Bloglines: an RSS aggregator that lets you read and keep track of RSS feeds. This is a great way of creating a one-stop web page for reading all the newspapers and blogs that interest you. Make bloglines your home page and then create a bookmarklet for your toolbar so that anytime you find an interesting blog or news site you want to track, you can subscribe to its RSS feed with just one click. Once you’ve added a few feeds to your Bloglines account you’ll probably want to make your Bloglines page your browser’s news default page so that you’ll always be on top of the latest news in your field and the world. Check out my Bloglines blogroll to see how I use it to keep track of news, blogs, and web resources.
3. Technorati: the Google of blogs. A Technorati search is a great way of discovering who is saying what about which topics. For example, you can use Technoratito find out what bloggers are saying about e-democracy. And if you join Technorati (it’s free) you can turn that social security page into a “watchlist” — an RSS feed that you can subscribe to using Bloglines. That way you can stay up-to-date on what bloggers are saying about e-democracy.
4. an introduction to tagging, but the most important thing to understand is that tags help you narrow the big world of blogging to the material you find most interesting.
5. del.icio.us: An online system for storing links to favourite web sites (”bookmarks”), and for discovering related web sites that you might not find on your own. Del.icio.us lets you assign tags to the web sites you store so that you can find them again, and shows you who else is storing web sites under the same tags. For example, you can create a Bloglines subscription to the RSS feed for the del.icio.us “deliberation” tag as a way of staying on top of new web resources in the deliberation field.
6. Blogger: Blogging is contagious. Once you become a regular blog reader you’re likely to get the blogging itch — even if it’s just a way of keeping notes on the other blogs you’re reading (bloggers commenting on bloggers is a proud tradition — that’s why people call the blogosphere an “echo chamber”.) But starting your own blog doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive: you can get your own blog up and running in literally five minutes using Blogger. (You can do this in Bloglines, too.)
7. WordPress: Blogging can be a great way of collaborating online. WordPress is a very flexible and extensible blogging platform that allows people to work together easily. The Online Deliberation blog is a WordPress blog that uses a number of enhancements to enhance its collaborative value. If you’re interesting in finding out more about using blogging as a collaboration or conference tool, e-mail me at alex (at) angus-reid (dot) com.

I would like to see an independent resource, like Creative Commons, that has similarly nice and concise specifications of formal deliberation methodology that applications like memeio can refer to.

Perhaps someone at Stanford would be willing to take it on? And perhaps this could be done under the auspices of the new organization?

With respect,
Steven

With application in my memeio project in mind I offer the following formalized view and generalization of deliberation for comments.

Deliberation is the formal consideration of a document. Such consideration has the following properties:

1. A (document).
2. One or more contributing (authors).
3. Prior art, a (reading list) of related documents.
4. A deliberating body (debators).
5. A target audience (readership).
6. A pragmatic statement (goal).
7. A formal statement of (methodology).
8. Mediators/(moderators).
9. (Process) adminstrators.
10. A (record).
11. A chronology and (timeline).
12. A specified (conclusion).
13. A recordable (action).
14. A recordable (response).
15. A specified (review) process.

I would like to see other enumerations of methodology but I suggest the following.

1. Executive decision by a specified individual.
2. Consensus decision by a jury.
3. A vote by the deliberating body.
4. A vote by observers (readership).
5. A vote by the deliberating body and observers.
6. Open deliberation (no vote or executive decision).

Points of clarification.

Examples of a goal include the following.

1. Publication of the document.
2. Revision of the document.
3. Deletion of the document.
4. A published mandate (direction).
5. A published standard (guidelines).
6. A published authority (information).

A jury consensus differs from other voting by observers and deliberating body in that a jury is considered to be a collection of peers in direct contact and close proximity.

Your comments appreciated.

With respect,
Steven

–
Dr. Steven Ericsson Zenith
http://www.semeiosis.com
http://www.memeio.com

A number of folks at the conference have since contacted me with questions about the software we produce at Dialogue Networks. Our Panelogue software is based on a tool that was developed for market research and so is especially useful for projects where you’re trying to manage a large number of participants, a longer discussion cycle, or a larger pool of data — or where you’re trying to integrate engagement/deliberation and research functions.

In response to these inquiries, I’ll be running a couple of online demos for the software over the next couple of weeks. If anybody else wants to join us for one of these demos, e-mail me and we can find a time that works for everybody.

Alex

In the photo, Gunnar Ristroph is taking responsibility for “Grace”, the last computer where eVote/Clerk development work progressed. Because development on eVote/Clerk has been stalled for more than two years, renewing development on a leading-edge platform will involve some port issues, both with the later versions of gcc, and with the newest releases of Mailman.

Gunnar plans to explore eVote/Clerk for powering and expanding the Ristroph Democratic Deliberative Protocol. Marilyn didn’t want him to struggle with port issues before he can get rolling, so Grace made the trip to Caltech.

A student or other Python/C/C++ person who volunteers to port the eVote/Clerk system to the email list platform that Todd plans for us will also be making a valuable contribution to Gunnar’s project.

Definitions of formal types of deliberation and the applications of these types need to be articulated. I would be very interested to see what people believe a list of applications are and the forms of their type.

With respect,
Steven

A few weeks back Jenny Stromer-Galley and myself have started a mailing list for researchers looking at deliberation processes, both online and face-to-face. Meanwhile, 55 people are on the list and we already had some excellent posts and comments. If you haven’t yet, please join at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research or mail to deliberation_research-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

I think we should consider associating this list to the “organization for online deliberation” that is emerging from this conference.

A big hand to Todd for organizing this excellent conference, I had a very good time

Matthias
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel
http://www.zebralog.com

A few weeks back Jenny Stromer-Galley and myself have started a mailing list for researchers looking at deliberation processes, both online and face-to-face. Meanwhile, 55 people are on the list and we already had some excellent posts and comments. If you haven’t yet, please join at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/deliberation_research or mail to deliberation_research-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

I think we should consider associating this list to the “organization for online deliberation” that is emerging from this conference.

A big hand to Todd for organizing this excellent conference, I had a very good time

Matthias
http://www.wz-berlin.de/~trenel
http://www.zebralog.com

I’m in the process of learning more about the various people I met at the recent Online Deliberation Conference. One person I met was Robert Carlitz. We discussed various aspects of electronic rulemaking. I visited his the website for his nonprofit, Information Renaissance, which I call IR for short. On the hot topics page, IR lists three major focus areas: eRulemaking Initative, Capacity Building, and Online Dialogues.

eRulemaking Initiative:

The U.S. government is moving forward with a major initiative to develop electronic rulemaking dockets for for all agencies. … [IR and others recognize] the potential of online rulemaking to transform the nature of public participation in this vital process. … The first stage of this work is visible at the eRulemaking Web site www.regulations.gov. You can use this site to find rules that are open for public comment and to submit simple comments on those rules. … [IR] is monitoring the progress of the eRulemaking Initiative and working to facilitate public involvement in the newly-developed system. In July there was a call for comment on the system; this is our response. For background on these activities, see our publications in the Administrative Law Review and the Government Information Quarterly.

Beyond the logistical benefits of technology that enables online deliberation there are a number of questions that come to mind. If Friedrich Hayek and Karl Popper were alive today they would have much to say about online deliberation and in some sense they have complimentary concerns.

Despite the geographic distribution that online deliberation allows I see that Hayek would be rightly concerned that this technology can effectively centralize power and planning in political cartels that exclude those without the skills, access or comfort to engage with it.

Further, it is my professional opinion that technology and the associated engineering professions are not sufficiently mature to allow the development of online systems that the public can trust. In particular, the voting systems themselves, the human factors and pyschology involved are poorly understood and open to easy abuse. Nor am I confident that simply translating the offline deliberative process into the online domain is the obvious good idea that it at first appears to be.

My fear is that such systems could ultimately come to undermine the basis of consensus building in the community and lead to greater problems.

Caution is in order.

With respect,
Steven