Wednesday, October 19, 2011

From CSD: Sign up for our next round of Democracy Exchanges!

From the Campaign for a Stronger Democracy:

"Don't Miss this Our Upcoming Democracy Exchanges

The Campaign for Stronger Democracy is happy to announce our next round of Democracy Exchanges!

Each month, we'll spotlight a different topic and ask key leaders to share about their experience working on the topic during a one hour conference call. Additionally, we will set aside 10 minutes from each call in order to give a few other organizations a chance to provide a quick briefing on an important new project or campaign that the community should know about.

To sign up to participate in one or both of the Democracy Exchanges scheduled for November & December, register here.


The Latino Community and Democracy Reform
Wednesday, November 2, at 2pm Eastern Time

The Latino community in the United States has grown significantly over the past 10 years, and in 2010 totaled over 50 million. Much work has been done within the Latino community to foster civic, community, and political engagement, and Latinos continue to play a prominent role in the broader democracy reform movement. Val Ramos of Everyday Democracy will moderate a conversation with Julissa Gutierrez of the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials (NALEO), Hector Sanchez of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, and Maria Teresa Kumar of Voto Latino, on the work that has been done within the Latino community on democracy reform, as well as what other groups can do to engage and reach out to the community.

The Assault on Voting Rights
Thursday, December 1, at 2pm Eastern Time

State legislatures across the country have recently passed new laws that make it more difficult for citizens to vote. In a conversation moderated by Tova Wang of Demos, we will discuss what is being done to fight back against some of these new restrictive laws, and how people can get involved. Joining us on the call will be Heather Smith of Rock the Vote, talking about the work they are doing on the ground, and Eric Marshall of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law to discuss the activities the Lawyers’ Committee is taking on, and some of the legal avenues to challenge these new laws.

Save the Date

Sign up here to participate in one or all of the Democracy Exchanges. We will send around call-in details and other information as we approach the date of the call.

Please pass this on to your colleagues and encourage them to sign up to receive future updates from the Campaign for Stronger Democracy. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter."

Read more »

1st WeGov Workshop within eChallenges e-2011, in October 2011

From WeGov:

"WeGov is happy to announce the 1st public WeGov Workshop within the eChallenges e-2011 conference, on the 26th - 28th October, 2011 in Florence, Italy.

The Workshop aims to demonstrate the WeGov toolkit prototype to a panel of experts and stakeholders in the field. A panel will present on the implications of this tool-kit for policy makers and citizens alike, within the context of social media. Round table as well as open discussions on use case applications that have been developed within the project, are scheduled in order to gather participants and attendees feedback.

The workshop is the first within the project that opens up project results in an iterative manner to a wider community of interest. For this reason we are pleased to invite you to participate in this event and to add your voice to the many already shaping WeGov outcomes. Come be a part of an exciting innovative project where we can shape how policy and social media worlds interact!

About eChallenges 2011

The eChallenges 2011 Conference takes place in the beautiful city of Florence, Italy, hosted by the Regional Government of Tuscany. This is the twenty-first in a series of Annual Conferences supported by the European Commission and hosted by national governments, which regularly attracts over 600 delegates from leading commercial, government and research organisations around the world to share knowledge and experience, lessons learnt, good practice and innovation.

The WeGov workshop will take place between 14:00 and 15:30 on the 27th of October 2011. You can learn more about registration for the event and the conference here:
https://www.echallenges.org/e2011/default.asp?page=registration    

The Workshop Agenda as well as the official Workshop Invitation are attached here in pdf files.

Find more about e-2011 and the e-2011 Agenda by clicking <http://www.echallenges.org/e2011/default.asp?page=home> here.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Best wishes,

The WeGov Team

About the project:

WeGov has been funded with support from the European Commission under the SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME THEME ICT 2009.7.3 ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling. The project aims to provide the tools and techniques for closing the loop between policy makers and the citizens, taking advantage of the plethora of well established social networking sites. These tools will enable policy makers to move away from limitations involved in the current practice of government hosted websites and instead to make use of the high levels of participation and rich discussions that already take place in existing social networking communities. The pilots are conducted in Germany and within the European Parliament.

For more information please visit:  http://www.wegov-project.eu/"

Read more »

Friday, September 30, 2011

NCCPE partners with JISC on new funding call to build capacity in analysing research impact

From the National Co-ordinating Center for Public Engagement
"The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has just launched a new funding call to encourage skills sharing between researchers, engagement practitioners and information management specialists. The project, facilitated by the NCCPE, focuses on the highly topical area of research impact and invites people to form partnerships in order to explore how to embed technology-enabled good practice in impact analysis across research departments. The deadline for applications is the 31 October 2011

JISC are looking for bids from partnerships of the following people
Impact analysts: those with specific expertise in business and community engagement
Information Management Specialists: with experience of using IT to support impact analysis
Research groups seeking to demonstrate the impact of their work.

We have developed an online matching service to help researchers, impact analysts and information experts to find one another. We hope you will want to get involved." Learn more at this link.

Read more »

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Campaign for Stronger Democracy seeks full time executive director

"The Campaign for Stronger Democracy is currently searching for a full time executive director. The director will not only play a central role in developing and growing the Campaign, but will also work towards building a unified democracy movement across all of our issue areas.

This position offers a unique opportunity to lead an emerging movement that is crucial to the future prosperity and success of our nation. We are looking for someone who has the energy and passion to engage people across the democracy reform movement; enlist support and resources from funders; develop strategies for reaching out to regional and local reformers and advocates; and influence key leaders in the national policymaking and opinion-leader community.

Some of the qualities an ideal candidate should have include (but are not limited to)…

  • 7-10 years of nonprofit leadership experience in the democracy reform field
  • Expertise in fundraising and financial management
  • Experience working with diverse constituencies and coalition building (cultural competency is required)
  • Excellent project planning and strong communication skills
For the full job description, please see our website.

The position will be based out of the offices of Demos in New York City, though other locations will be considered. This position offers generous benefits, including health insurance, 401K, vacation time, and paid holidays.

We hope that you will spread the word about this exciting opportunity!

If you are interested in the executive director position, please send your cover letter and resume to Michelle Carpenter at carpentermm@comcast.net by Monday, October 3."

Read more »

Special Issue on Risk Governance and Democracy

"Dear colleagues,

We would like to direct your attention to a recently published Special Issue ('Towards democratic governance of uncertainty? Contesting notions of participation, control and accountability') in the Journal of Risk Research that you may find interesting (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjrr20/current).

The papers of the Special Issue critically discuss the increasing interest among policy-makers and scholars in opening up the governance of health and environmental risks to the public - and what forms this takes, how this may not always work given existing institutional settings, and that it may have unintended consequences that contradict the goal of greater democracy in risk governance. Overall, the issue therefore argues for the need of greater reflexivity and points to limitations of one-size-fits-all approaches for governing risk and uncertainty.
The issue contains five papers and four commentaries by international scholars and practitioners - in addition to an extensive introductory editorial.

We hope you will find the issue interesting.

Kind regards,
Fabrizio Cantelli (Université libre de Bruxelles, GRAP), Naonori Kodate (King's College London, NIHR PSSQ Research Centre) & Kristian Krieger (King's College London, Hazard & Risk Group)"

Read more »

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Oct 25 and 26: Roadmap 2030 Conference

"Join leaders and influencers from visible minority, Aboriginal and disability communities, government, political parties, charities, non-profit organizations and media to learn best practices and innovative approaches to engaging diverse communities in creating programs and policy."

October 25 and 26 in Toronto, Canada
Learn more and register at http://www.innoversity.com/roadmap/

Read more »

NCCPE: Public Engagement with Research, Catalyst Call for UK Higher Educ Institutions

From the National Co-ordinating Center for Public Engagement
 "RCUK have announced a major new funding scheme, inviting UK Higher Education Institutions to apply for funding to embed public engagement with research.  This call builds on from the successes of the Beacons for Public Engagement initiative and aims to support more researchers to engage the public by creating a culture within grant holding HEIs where excellent public engagement with research is valued, recognised and supported. The deadline for applications is 12:00 Thursday 17th November. (Please note that there are eligibility requirements, which include a threshold figure for your institution’s income from the UK Research Councils.)"  Learn more at this link.




Read more »