Today

The current system of communication platforms that connect citizens to their elected officials is a direct evolution from the system that was established in 1787 when the Constitution was signed. It’s based on person-to-person conversations and up until about 10 years ago, this was a perfectly acceptable paradigm to operate within.

Problems

However, messages are easier to send today. Email started the process, but mobile phones, Twitter, and Facebook are all equal culprits. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, more and more Americans have the ability to convert a thought into a message to their elected officials in about 10 seconds.

The current system of receiving messages in Congress has not failed to accept and properly distribute incoming messages for about 10 days now. By that, I mean that the Congressional email servers were overwhelmed and incapable of handling the incoming email during last week’s discussion leading up to the final vote on health care. Shocking, isn’t it?

Well, it’s only going to get worse. More and more citizens are getting broadband internet and smart phones. Unstemmed, the current deluge will appear as a trickle when compared to the flow of information that citizens will want to convey to their elected officials when another decade passes. (Now, I’ll acknowledge there are some underlying assumptions to this premise, including the desire of all those citizens to communicate but I’m happy to discuss those points in the comments if you’d like.)

What to do?

It seems to me that there is only one logical answer and that is to fundamentally change the paradigm in which the communication system operates. Person-to-person, one-on-one communication is not a reasonable expectation with today’s technology. Instead, we need to build technology to handle the problems that technology has created.

The Goal

Every citizen who wishes to engage in a meaningful discussion on any issue should be able to do so using the form and format that they wish to use.

A New Paradigm

Let’s call this led multi-directional communication.

Part the Uno. Ongoing, continuous discussions on every imaginable issue that anyone can engage in. These could be sources of new ideas, education on the issues, and debate. They could live on blogs, social network sites, and in mobile apps – many of the places that already exist.

Part the Dos. Technology to tie it all together. Maybe it’s not unlike what exists today to connect blogs for search and pingbacks. Perhaps it’s based on OpenID, Facebook Connect, or Twitter OAuth. Maybe there are multiples methods of connecting diverse sources of information. Nonetheless, it has to go farther than any of these examples. It has to collate the information and provide it in a meaningful format for representatives. This should include breaking it down by topic, perspective, and of course: constituency.

Part the Tres. Representatives engage in these same conversations: adding more information, sharing their perspectives, explaining the current political situation, and helping their constituents to understand the complexity of the process. Ideally, they can do this all from a single dashboard on their computers and cellphones.

Sound crazy? Maybe it is. I will not pretend that this is the answer but I do know that what we have today is not sustainable.

The Workshop

Basically, I’m saying that all the software that is being used today to connect citizens to representatives will be replaced in a number of years. I don’t know how long that time period is, but my goal is to hasten that process. This workshop is my first attempt to identify the players that will lead that change and empower them with everything they need to do it swiftly.

Only when a new paradigm has been developed, accepted, and implemented will every citizen have a voice in the decision making processes that shape the world they live in.

If you’re a developer and ready to lead, sign up here and let’s do this thing!

It’s on the Majority Whip’s website. There are other versions on the Majority Leader’s website, the Minority Whip’s website, and I presume on the Minority Leader’s website, but they were all more difficult to read than this one (and this one’s a doozy).

So here’s something that will help it to make more sense: recesses are not called recesses. They are District Work Periods! Isn’t that great?!? District Work Periods are in red. The House convened on January 11 and hopes to adjourn on October 8th.

I think the fun part of it is that while we ARE exempt under section 501(c)(3), our Public Charity Status is:

• 509(a)(1) & 170(b)(1)(A)(vi)

That pretty much rocks, huh? As in:

“Are you a 501c3?”

“We are exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, but we are actually a 509(a)(1) & 170(b)(1)(A)(vi).”

Do you think that’s said 170-B-1-A-V-I or 170-B-1-A-6? I don’t know, but I’m going to try to work it into conversation – we’ll see how that goes!

Here’s the actual letter if you want to read it and here’s a link to all of our legal documents with full details.

Now you know what that means! We can finally start a full-blown fund drive. They’ll be more about that in the next couple of days, but if you want to get a jump start on making us sustainable and donate today, please do.

As 2009 draws to a close, we consider our past accomplishments and prepare for new ones. As an organization, we are now in an exciting position where our opportunities exceed our capacity: that is to say that if we had more resources, we would be accomplishing more than we are.

If you haven’t yet donated to the Open Forum Foundation, please consider doing so. In addition, please consider sharing this message with everyone that you know (direct link). Together, we will create responsive government!

A Vision for the Future: Responsive Government

The quality of a government is determined by the quality of its citizens, and we are at a critical time in history for the development of government. Never before has it been possible for every citizen of a country to participate in the decision-making process, but new tools developed on the Internet are making that feasible.

This doesn’t mean the transition will be quick – or easy! Government is entrenched in centuries of internal culture, precedents, rules, and regulations. Some of these are very important; some of them need to go; but deciding which is which will be an effort that lasts for years and impacts the entire world.

Our mission is to ensure that the end result of this transition is responsive government. We do this through three main methods:

1. Education. We educate, inform, and connect the elected leaders, government staff, technology developers, and organizations that are on the forefront of this transition.
2. Technology. We promote the use and development of technologies that enable inclusive and meaningful political dialogue, while lowering the barriers to entry for both citizens and government representatives.
3. Research. We engage in research that illuminates the current state of affairs and proposes paths for a smooth transition.

Our Projects

This is not all that we’re working on, but it is what we’re currently most proud of.

GovLuv connects you instantly with your government representatives through the magical power of Twitter. It shows messages sent both to AND from your reps, filters them in a number of different ways, and enables you to join the conversation. Visit GovLuv.org to see for yourself.

CongressCamp began as a barcamp to discuss “transforming citizen engagement with Congress through social media and collaboration tools.” The event was a huge success, and the momentum is spawning more events and the development of educational resources. Visit CongressCamp.org for more information or to get involved.

Mapping Political Communication is a joint project with George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet to understand how political communication flows today. This knowledge will help us to understand how the transition is occurring and how best to support it. While still in an early phase, the results of this research will be made available for public use and scrutiny once they are presentable.

How to get involved

If you’re still reading, something must have piqued your interest. Don’t let that die:

• Share this message with others via email, Twitter, or Facebook.
• Contact Wayne to get involved.
• Browse the website to learn more.
• Donate.

We have committed our lives to this. If you believe in it also, share what you have to offer. Everyone on the planet stands to benefit.

Onwards and Upwards!

I received the full amount in 6 donations.

What?

S.i.x.   d.o.n.a.t.i.o.n.s.
Among those are 4 averaging $125 each, one for $1000, and one for “the rest of the amount”.

I would not have thought it possible, but here I am at the receiving end of kindnesses that I could not have imagined previously. How do I justify it?

It’s not about me – I’ll explain:

Now that people have contributed money to the Open Forum Foundation, I get it. It’s different. Thirteen months ago, I established a board who owns the organization and is legally responsible for everything I do. I then became an employee of the Open Forum Foundation. But still, it was really mine – everyone knew that. I founded it. I did all the work. I put everything I have into this for a year and a half. I built all the connections, established the understanding, facilitated the projects. And, I spent all the money – it was all my money, so who really cared. I mean, I was careful with it, knowing that someday it wouldn’t be all mine, but it was really just an academic exercise, wasn’t it.

Until now.

Now, it’s not mine. Now, I don’t own it. Now, it’s not my money. Now, I’m not alone.

Six souls have joined the Open Forum Foundation. Six people have said that they believe we are positioned to make a significant impact in how government to citizen communication operates. Six people have stepped up and told me without words that they trust what I have done, but their is an implicit statement that I see in this trust: I am no longer working for myself, I am working for the community. Everything that I do for the Open Forum Foundation is no longer for me – it for the donors and the board members and the volunteers and the interns.

Everyone has a part to play and mine is facilitating the interaction between the rest of the parts to make sure they add up to something. Mine is ensuring that everyone understands how their contribution leads to greater things, how it ensures that the system takes shape, how it creates legitimate channels of communication between citizens and their government representatives, how it paves the way to a new era of responsive government.

There is much to do, and I will do everything I can to make it happen and make it be fun to be a part of.

Onward and Upward!

I’ve been working really hard on figuring out how to get the Open Forum Foundation funded, and frankly – it’s a struggle. It’s not so much from failure of my attempts, as it is with discomfort with the options I see available, and a lack of clarity around what to do about it.

So check this out:

1. The average person doesn’t like being asked for money. It’s irritating if there’s no definite personal reward in it, it distances people, and makes them wary of you. While money is not really a dirty subject, it’s taboo in strange ways. Generally speaking, people don’t like to talk about it, and the worst part of a meal out with a group of friends is frequently the part when the check arrives.
2. Large donors are hard to find. This is intentional, of course. If you’re going to give away money, you don’t want everyone asking you about it. You want to make those choices on your own time and make sure they are good ones that support the things that are important to you. Unfortunately, this creates a sort of sneaky, research-and-network-with-the-specific-intention-of-meeting-high-profile-individuals mode of operations that I am just not well suited for.
3. Foundations are difficult. I know, also by design. They tend to be insular with two options for approaching them: run the application gauntlet where you’re being judged on your ability to write effectively; or get to know them personally, where you’re being judged (primarily) on your personality. Finally, if you do get a grant, it normally comes with all sorts of limitations on what you can do with it. Difficult. Time-consuming. Rarely collaborative.
4. Corporations – I’m not even sure what to say. From a corporate perspective, there are two reasons to give money: PR, or supporting something that’s good for your business (there’s also the passion-of-the-CEO reason, but let’s lump that in with option 2 above). Is accomplishment of our mission good for business? Depends on which company I suppose, but in large part the companies with money to throw around are rather fond of the status quo. This can also introduce concerns about conflicts of interest, which is particularly relevant in the government space.

So if I don’t like the available options, where does that leave me?

Let’s start with an ideal world – if I could create my own model of engagement with potential donors, what would that look like?

1. Well first of all, I don’t think I’d call it fundraising (I wrote previously about friend raising, but really! While the idea is sound, the name is awful). The reality is that it’s not just about raising money. It’s about building a community of people that understand the importance of what you’re doing and are willing to participate in seeing it come to fruition. Donating money is only a piece of this.
2. Everyone that participates should get more out of it than they put into it. They should participate in whatever way they are comfortable with, and always see the value that their contribution is making in the bigger picture.
3. The organization should touch enough lives and create enough difference that it can sustain itself on the contributions of individual, small donors.
4. New initiatives may require larger donations, eg from foundations, corporations, or large donors in order to get off the ground and prove their worth.

So what we’re talking about here is a model of engagement that we are well-positioned to move on. Our reputation in the government communication space is that we are committed to forwarding the space and not to benefitting ourselves and we already have a couple of great projects underway (most prominently GovLuv and CongressCamp) that could benefit from additional participation, if we open up to it up and make it easy for people to engage.

Let’s look at the basic building blocks of doing this:

1. Build trust. Before people will commit to participating, they need to understand where we’re going, how we plan to get there, why we’re the right people for the job, and THEN: how they can be involved.
2. Gain recognition. The next piece of the puzzle is to reach out to enough people. The rule on web content is that 90% of people will read it, 9% will comment on it, and 1% will create it. If we’re only going to get 1% actively participating, we need a big number to be that 100%.
3. Find evangelists. This helps with the previous item by duplicating our efforts multi-fold. It’s not enough to reach out to all of our friends; we must excite, encourage, and engage them in our vision, so that they reach out to their friends and so on, spreading the word and finding more participants.

That doesn’t sound so bad. I mean it’s not easy, but what did you expect? Is anything worth doing ever easy until after you’ve accomplished it?

So then, what are the steps to creating a fully funded non-profit that can stand on its own?

1. Mission. It needs to appeal to the people that you want to get involved. It should touch them in a personal way. Seth Godin often writes about the value of niche marketing. You don’t need everyone to be involved in what you’re doing, you just need the people who are passionate about it. And once you’ve gotten all of them, then you can focus on impassioning the rest of the world.
   Oh yeah – and you have to mean it! You have to live by your mission. Everything the organization does, what it stands for, and how it conducts itself all need to align with the change you are promoting to the outside world. To create real change, become that shiny castle on the hill!
2. Activities. What do you want people to do? How are they going to participate? Different people are ready for different levels of commitment, so don’t forget that . Maybe you need people to follow your activities (email, twitter, facebook, …), get connected to you and one another, offer their expertise, contribute time or effort or money. Whatever it is, be prepared and have a plan. If 100 people showed up at your door right now and wanted to help, what would you have them do?
3. Find the audience. How you do this will depend on the audience that you currently have the ear of and the audience that you are attempting to connect with. Use your networks, both online and off. Reach out to them. Tell them what you’re doing. Tell them what you need. Tell them why it’s important. And this may just be my personal perspective, but try to avoid use of the word help. I think people are tired of being asked to help nonprofits. This only serves to further the idea that nonprofits are powerless entities that require YOU to save them, when this isn’t the case. As nonprofits, we are servants. We don’t NEED help, we provide it. We are leaders who are pursuing visions of a better world, each in our way. We are often the experts at what we do, and there is no viable business model for accomplishing our vision, or we would have taken that easier path in the first place. Lead with your strengths, target your niche, reach your audience.
4. Keep them engaged. As people begin to show up, there is another level that you need to be prepared for. How do you keep them coming back? How do you keep them informed? Do you make it easy for them to contribute in ways that you haven’t even thought of? Is there space for them to be creative, to take responsibility, to excel each in their own way? What are you offering that they can’t get anywhere else? It’s not enough just to reach out to people today. Once you’ve awoken that passion for your issue, you need to do something with it. You should have an idea of what this is before they start arriving. Participation should last until the issue is resolved or their passion for it wanes due to reasons beyond your control.

Wow. So those are the basics. Pretty succinct, and I would even argue: doable.

But here’s the real point of this post: What does this mean for me? Here’s my proposition:

Empowering responsive government is about citizens having their voices heard. Our job at the Open Forum Foundation is to provide vision, direction, organization, connections, and consistent leadership that can bring this to fruition. We need to live by our mission and repeatedly show our ability to accomplish projects that move this vision forward.

In terms of a plan of action, these are my next steps:

1. Mission. While the wording is still being worked out, I realized at the last board meeting (thanks, Noel!) that the mission of the Open Forum Foundation is only communication-oriented in terms of our activities, and that the actual vision that we’re pursuing is ‘responsive government’. I need to get that further clarified and finished up. There are also a few things that should be publicly available on the website that I just haven’t been able to get put up so that we can live by our creed of transparency and responsiveness.
2. Activities. There are a number of activities that I could use help with. Why don’t I have them listed on the website? Why don’t I have an entire page dedicated to how to get involved? I will soon! And one of the activities is donating. For some people, it will be the only activity they participate in. For others, it will be part of the mix. Creating this page will be invigorating for me. It will establish a series of goals that I need to accomplish: Step 3.
3. Find the participants. How do I find the right people to complete all of the activities on that page? I’m really looking forward to this. I have wanted to reach out to the community that I’ve been building, but never knew what to reach out to them about. Depending on the individual, I’ll use Twitter, email, LinkedIn, Facebook, phone calls, and face to face meetings. How exciting!
4. Keep them engaged. This piece then becomes about keeping everything and everyone up to date. We have a website, a blog, several Twitter accounts, and email lists. Different people will require different information on different schedules and in different ways. I may even start a weekly conference call or web meeting to go over what we’ve accomplished in the last week.

Good. Done. Thank you.

If you have comments, I’m open to them. I know that I have a lot left to learn.

That means you’ll probably find a glitch or two in it, and that’s the point – because we can’t solve them if we don’t what they are.

What is GovLuv, you may ask? As the fancy ad copy says:

“GovLuv is a website that connects government representatives and citizens through Twitter. It illuminates the existing conversations and encourages a more productive two-way dialog. It is a project of Act.ly and the Open Forum Foundation, and is freely available as a public service.”

Check it out and let us know what you think!

First, I must announce the resignation of Ellen Williams from our Board of Directors. She has been very helpful during these early stages of our formation, but personal priorities have drawn her in too many directions. Luckily for us, she is astute enough to recognize this before it was able to interfere with fulfillment of her responsibilities. Thank you for your help and guidance, Ellen and we all wish you the best of luck!!

Secondly, I’m happy to announce that we have two new board members. Both are easy to find on Google and bring with them a passion for citizen engagement, a technical understanding of social media, and a whole host of other skills, both relevant and irrelevant!

Noel Dickover impressed me from our first meeting with his grasp of the inner workings of government and his thoughts about, “Putting Citizens on Par with Lobbyists” which he had previously blogged about. Noel day job is as a contractor for the Department of Defense and has been involved in the innovative application of social media in a very rigid, non-accepting environment, most prominently with DODTechipedia. If that wasn’t enough, he also carves pumpkins that will make your head explode – like the 178lb Death Star (scroll down to find it), for example!!

Nisma Zaman and I connected at Participation Camp in early July during my session on Citizen Participation in Congress. Afterwards, we ended up talking extensively about a wide-diversity of topics that included growing up in the 80s, social media, and the value of being able to communicate with your government. She has a past filled with documentary film-making and Emmy-winning, a future as a Master’s student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a present filled with figure skating in Idaho.

So we’ve expanded the board in its passion for government communication and in its diversity, both of which I think are vital elements for guiding the future of the Open Forum Foundation.

Onwards and Upwards!!

Now, this does not mean that we’ve received our 501(c)3 status yet. However, everyday makes it seem all the more likely that we will have an early beta version of a Congressional communication platform being evaluated and tested by Congressional offices, advocacy groups, and individual citizens by early September.

When?

Early September!! That’s effectively tomorrow in the grand scheme of things.

Unfortunately, this will not happen without funding – and thus the beginning of our push to become self-sustaining. We’ll be working on this more and more over the next couple of weeks.

Of course, that’s not the only way to support us. If you have an interest in helping to bring this to fruition, we openly collaborate on our project at the Open Forum Foundation Community and would love to have you be a part of it. Alternatively, leave a comment below or just send an email if that’s more appropriate.

How to donate

It is as easy as you would imagine. Just click through to the Donate page and know that we will be grateful for whatever you may give.

Onward and upward!!

You know what I’m talking about – it’s the high energy college students working for Greenpeace (or any number of Adopt-a-child charities) in their matching shirts, clipboards, and excessive geniality. It’s the form letters you receive in the mail from faceless alumni organizations touting the value of your dollar for the next generation. It’s the ads on your favorite websites with pictures of unhappy black children in front of a grass hut. And it’s the appeals from acquaintances asking for help in spreading the word on this ‘really important issue – it’ll only take five minutes to make a difference!’

I’ve been trying to place why this bothers me so much and I think it’s a combination of things. First of all, I don’t feel respected as an intelligent being able to make my own decisions (it’s a one way, ‘broadcast’ conversation). Second of all, as a digital immigrant in the information era, my expectations of having the ability to gather understanding and perspectives from multiple sources prior to making a decision have been raised significantly. And thirdly, they don’t have my permission to be talking to me in the first place!!

Now, I’m clearly not arguing with the effectiveness of these emotional techniques, nor am I blind to the obvious attraction that these groups have for social media. If a friend of mine (that I trust with regard to the relevant issue) asks me to read something or join a cause or contribute to a campaign, that’s a powerful ask – much more powerful than a letter from a stranger.

What I’m saying is that the information age requires us to manage the flow of information that comes our way – there’s no other option! There is simply too much information to contend with otherwise. We have to be selective, and we’ve gotten very good at determining quickly if something is worth our while or not. Put another way, there is no longer a scarcity of information but quite the opposite.

I believe that this alone makes the above tactics particularly abrasive. Not only is it unsolicited, but in addition, it is calculated to prey on the emotional connections (and potential guilt that saying no may bring) from our pre-existing friendships, or our on our innate need to save the world or help starving children.

Well, I call foul!

And I’ll take it a step further! I am hereby publicly committing to raise funds for the Open Forum Foundation based solely on the strength of our accomplishments and ideals.

As the industrial era ends and the information era begins, people are finding themselves. They are finding their voices, finding their convictions, and finding the issues that they are passionate about. I believe that my role as a change agent (and fundraising is part of creating change) is to help people understand the importance of what we’re doing at the Open Forum Foundation and to find those individuals who are share our passion and are willing to support us in whatever way they are able.

We need to do this not by interrupting potential supporters in the middle of their lives, but by informing them, entertaining them, or both. At first, this may be all we accomplish. But if at the same time, we raise their understanding and appreciation for our cause and our organization, then we are a success. We don’t need to sell everyone on what we’re doing, we need to locate the people that harbor a similar passion and be respectful of everyone else along the way so that they will help us meet our target audience.

Let’s call it the fundraising equivalent of winning hearts and minds.

Friend Raising

In researching fundraising, I read the simple advice that you can’t just raise funds, you have to raise friends. Friends will support you, funds are gone tomorrow. At the end of the day, the emotional tactics that I referred to above are only raising funds and doing nothing to secure the long-term friendships that are necessary to engender real, lasting change.

So that’s what I’m committing to – friend raising.

Spread the Word

So if you know anyone that’s passionate about ensuring that citizens and elected leaders are able to engage in meaningful dialogue, spread the word.

And if not, I wish you the best in fulfilling your own passions. Let me know if I can help.

What do you think? Am I crazy?