Tuesday, March 31, 2009

So much is happening on the #we20 front, that I don't have time to write it all up.

A couple of quick notes.

We had a great meeting at Nesta yesterday. With some salutary feedback. A lot of people still don't understand what we20 is, or the fine detail of how it's meant to work. So we have a lot of work to do, explaining, and improving the site.

A couple of important points I kept having to make.

we20 is NOT an online event. It's about the real life meetings you have with your friends, neighbours and colleagues. For people who worried that this is too much trouble, I have a new slogan. There's no such thing as a one-click revolution.

You can't have a more responsive politics, better society, revitalized community etc. without going out in the real world and making it. Trying to do everything online or in specially demarcated meeting rooms with web 2.0 people is just running away. No site can do it all for you. And any site that promises it can, is leading you up the garden path.

However, that doesn't mean that the web-site itself shouldn't be as easy as it can be. And I am working on fixing issues that people raised.

Another issue is that the voting system (which is the bit I like best) is still totally confusing to people when I explain it. Fortunately, despite everything, as the plans are starting to stack up, some people are figuring it out (as I said yesterday, please "vote early, vote often") and the result is getting interesting.

Final note : the G20 is upon us tomorrow. I may or may not go and follow one of the horsemen of the apocalypse through the city. I am pretty sure that the G20 itself is going to be more hype than substance, and no practical effect will be observable. However we20 is just beginning. Many people at the meeting yesterday were keen to explore the site further and start contributing. We're collecting interesting ideas ... I'm working on better searching and filtering which will make it a lot easier to see the Plans soon ... and having picked up velocity from the fly-past of this G20, we're setting our sights on further meetings this year and have a lot of momentum to take us forward. Keep watching ...

Update : Note, just in case it isn't clear, although I'm a volunteer on we20, this blog is my own personal space and the opinions in it are my own and not necessarily representative of we20's.

No comments: