We Are Team Rubber

Largely the show was geared up for large companies with marketing departments, who wish to explore and learn new ideas. That’s not to say there were not nuggets of interest and new things to learn.

                               

We went to Parliament and had us a debate. Check out the pics over at Flickr…

And so the time has come (at last!). Tonight we (Delib) host a debate in Parliament on the subject: “The Internet: Saviour or Corruptor of Democracy?” For those of you who are not able to attend, you can follow the whole debate live on Twitter via hash tag #idebate or via our Delib twitter account.

Hosted by Danny Alexander MP, the panel is: Nick Robinson (BBC), Michael White (Guardian), Peter Kellner (YouGov), Grant Shapps MP (Shadow Minister for Housing), Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes’ blog).

Follow the debate (it’s running from 6.30pm today) and send in your questions and comments to the panel - before or during the debate - and they’ll reply (if you’re lucky!)

I randomly came across this lecture by Beth Noveck for the Stamford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar entitled “Technologies for collaborative democracy”.

Once she’d got over the introductory bits of her presentation of various e-democracy projects from around the world (which covered the usual Downing Street e-Petition stuff), she went on to make some really interesting points.

Here’s a random selection of some of the things I learnt from Beth Noveck’s video (N.B. I only last til 40 mins, when I got hungry!):

- Her main interest is in how to break out of the current nature of ad-hoc democratic processes - e.g. one off consultation events of things like Flash mobs - and create ongoing collaborative governance.

- Vermont is trying to become the “digital Delaware”, setting up a legal framework for creating “virtual companies” i.e. legalising online collaborative partnerships

- Libya’s Policywiki - bizarrely, Libya has embraced e-democracy, and has set up a Policywiki,  enabling citizens to take part in collaborative policy making.  The projects been funded by the Qadhafi foundation.

- I liked her description of the Peer-to-patent’s project as creating a “Human database”.  It was also interesting to hear how the peer-to-patent project uses highly structured participative process, aimed at experts.

- I LOVED her anecdote about Thomas Jefferson being the founder of participative governance. 

- Her point about collaborative governance being about effectiveness not equality was something that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

- Visual deliberation - I thought this was her most interesting point.  She described a research project’s findings that found that when we see ourselves in the screen we change our behaviour.  And gave the example of how if you morph your face into the face of a President you’re more likely to vote for them.  Further she made that described how President Bush colourised his face darked in ads targeted at black and hispanic neighbourhoods.

- Group brain - this is the point that if you explicitly identify a group as a group, then they’re more likely to act as a group, and be more effective at solving a problem collaboratively.

- Social Translucence - following on from the Group Brain point, is the question of what happens when you see yourself as a group in a screen?  And also, how do you design interfaces that create this?  She firmly believes that this idea would  bring about change.

She then got on to a point about “Green Chicago”, at which point my hunger took over and I had to go!

The good news is that Delib’s democracy and the internet debate has proved massively popular - with huge amounts of people wanting to attend.

The bad news is that there’s now no spaces left, so if you haven’t signed up then you’ll have to follow the debate virtually.  There’s a number of ways you can do this:

- Twitter - we’ll be running a live Twitter debate alongside the real debate, allowing people to interact and ask questions to the panel remotely.  Follow the debate by signing up to our Delibconsults Twitter feed

- Podcast - we’ll be releasing an audio podcast of the event the day after the event.

- TV - BBC Parliament will be filming the debate, so you’ll be able to catch the debate on TV some time (I don’t know when!)

Adam and I have been helping out (largely by eating Pic n Mix) on the new Woolies relaunch.  I’m a particular fan of their new spin on Pic n Mix, which has been cheekily dubbed Click n Mix.  Genius!  Here’s my Click n Mix tour below . . . mmmm, sweets . . .

Just wanted to say a great big sad goodbye to Helen!

I know she’ll be back doing work for us from time to time (hopefully more often than not!) - but it’ll be sad not to see her smiling studio services based face any more. Thanks for all the smiles and bounces!

I’m not gonna lie…. it’s been emotional!

Tidy. x

Last night was Iglympics, the first in a series of events put on by the lovely people at Simon Games to promote the Interesting Games Festival which is returning to the streets of Bristol in September. Team Rubber managed to get the top score for Korean Lazer Ball (woooot) - I think there was some bad feeling about their performance last year and so they have been swotting up since…..

The Team Rubber Lazer Ball Team

…..with added random person (bottom left) - who kindly stepped in at the last minute to fill in for Jess Gurr who had to go home

The most exciting new place to sell aMaps is Ampleforth College and Monastery (my old school).  The “Does God exist?” aMap title was mostly inspired by my Theology lessons with Fr Timothy, so am super pleased that the Ampleforth shop is now stocking them.

When I was up in Yorkshire this weekend I popped into Ampleforth and managed to get this photo of Fr Hugh posing next to the fresh stock of aMaps!

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Original link here —-> X