Workshop: Creating GREAT Citizen Engagement Software

This workshop was incredibly successful and resulted in the creation of an association of developers and vendors of citizen engagement software to continue the conversation. For more information, please visit the Open Model for Citizen Engagement website or read the documents that were created there.

Speakers Include:
	Sean Hackbarth Senate Republican Conference	Doug Kaufmann Zynga (makers of Farmville)	Joe Goldman AmericaSpeaks
	Rob Pierson House Democratic Caucus	Alan Rosenblatt Center for American Progress	Rory Cooper Heritage Foundation
	Gerritt Lansing Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL)	Dan Watson Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)	Tim Hysom Congressional Management Foundation

This workshop is for you if you are a developer of citizen engagement software that focuses on the United States Congress, including:

Constituent Management Systems for Congressional offices
Constituent Relations Management software for advocacy groups
Community organization tools to enable political action
Politically-oriented communication platforms intended to connect citizens, advocacy groups, and representatives, or any subset of those three.

This is a new market, or at least a dramatically changed market with the advent of social media and the Gov2.0 and OpenGov movements.

Goal

To enable you to build better software by having a holistic understanding of the market, and a more clearly defined understanding of the needs of the audiences within the market.

How

By bringing 30 passionate developers together with Hill staff and experts that focus on advocacy groups, dialogue and deliberation, and UI design. Collaboratively, we will construct something that doesn’t currently exist – an understanding of:

the boundaries of the market and its current status
the issues we are trying to solve and how software can help
the players within the market
the specific audiences that software needs to be tailored for
the resources currently available (APIs, open data, etc…)
resources that should exist or need to be created
data standards that already exist, their benefits and drawbacks
data standards that should exist

Too much to do in a two day workshop? You’ll help determine what’s important and what’s not.

Is something missing? You’ll be able to add it to the list.

The final product of this process will provide you with a powerful tool for improving your software and marketing it to your audience(s). In addition, you will have gained a broader community of experts whose advice you can draw on when improving your software.

In addition, ninety days after the end of the workshop, we will release the final product to the broader citizen engagement community with full recognition of the people that made it possible. This will help to solidify your name (or your company’s name) as a leader in this growing market.

Speakers

At the end of Day One, there will be a series of 5-10 speeches to give you a broad diversity of information in a short period of time. These speakers will include:

Tim Hysom, Director for Communications and Technology Services, Congressional Management Foundation
- The Communicating with Congress Project
eCitizen Foundation
- Open Architecture and Public Infrastructure
Forum One
- Development Action Networks
Stuart Shapiro, President, iConstituent
- Presenting MiCongress on Demand
Megan Price, Manager, Partnership Development at GovLoop
- Social networking with the government community

On Day Two, we will have focused sessions on the following issues. The panelists will be tasked with introducing new understanding, answering your questions, and critiquing your work. Among these speakers will be:

Dialogue and deliberation Helping us learn from the offline participation world
- Joe Goldman, Vice President of Citizen Engagement, AmericaSpeaks
Congress A bi-partisan, bi-cameral panel of staff members, including
- Sean Hackbarth, Online Communications Adviser at Senate Republican Conference
- Daniel Watson, Online Communications Coordinator for Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)
- Rob Pierson, New Media Director at House Democratic Caucus
- Gerritt Lansing, Deputy Press Secretary for Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL)
Advocacy groups What does this important audience need?
- Alan Rosenblatt, Associate Director for Online Advocacy, Center for American Progress
- Rory Cooper, Director, Strategic Communications, Heritage Foundation
- Tim Cameron, Director of Digital Operations, American Solutions
User engagement What makes an addictive online experience?
- Doug Kaufman, Senior Designer, Zynga (makers of Farmville)

Details

When	April 7th and April 8th, 2010
Location	Washington, DC
	For-profit	Non-profit
Before March 22	$ 595.00	$ 495.00
Full Price	$ 695.00	$ 595.00

What will happen?

This is a participatory conference, meaning you don’t just come to learn, you come to share. Each of you has a unique set of experiences that make you an expert in this field.

Day One will focus on capturing your collective understanding of the market and issues.

8:00am	Check-in and Breakfast
8:30am	Introductions If we’re going to work together, we better know who’s in the room.
9:00am	Develop the big picture What are we here to accomplish?
10:00am	Open Space scheduling You decide what needs to be discussed
10:30am	Working session
11:30pm	Working session
12:30pm	Lunch You will definitely need this.
1:30pm	Working session
2:30pm	Working session
3:30pm	Rough draft Solidify an initial product that incorporates all of the above.
5:00pm	Rapid Fire session This is where we overload you with new information from a host of fabulous speakers.
	Happy Hour Of course! It’s DC.

Day Two will bring in experts to educate you, answer your questions, and critique what you created on the first day.

8:00am	Check-in and Breakfast
8:30am	Tweaking Review the product with fresh eyes
9:00am	Dialogue and Deliberation Critique Experts present new perspectives, answer questions, and critique the product.
10:30am	Congressional Staff Critique
Noon	Lunch
1:00pm	Advocacy Group Critique
2:30pm	User Engagement Critique
4:00pm	Wrap up