Last Friday, as I’d hoped to do, we got some smart and interesting people together at our offices (and a couple of nearby pubs) in Bristol to figure out what digital deliberative democracy might/should look like when mapped on to some specific problems.
I always appreciate this kind of opportunity to discuss interesting problems with bright people – and I especially enjoyed listening to people grappling with issues of the policy-making process from all kinds of different perspectives. We had a great mix of civil servants, consultants, charity staff and suppliers, throwing around everything from the fundamental tenets of representative democracy to the details of digitally implementing scalable, structured policy deliberation.
We’ll be writing up some full summary materials, setting out 10 principles for digital deliberative democracy and walking through the situation-specific conversations that were had on the day, but for now here’s some photos of the teams in action. Look at their massive brains!
