I don’t quite recall exactly when I first crossed virtual paths with Christian Kreutz, or how: maybe it was this 2007 post on e-democracy and participation, maybe another encounter from even earlier.

What I do know, however, is that time and again I greatly enjoy being pointed to interesting news, projects and resources via his blog or on Twitter. Maybe it’s the kind of continued partial overlap in interests that does the trick.

A few weeks ago, Christian launched a nifty site that allows citizens in his hometown of Frankfurt, Germany to gain better visibility into decision-making by their local government and even encourages citizen input and participation. Naturally, I had to ask him right away if he would be available for a quick interview. Thankfully, he was. Enjoy!

Download audio file (twip_2010_004_201003130900_kreutz_frankfurtgestalten.mp3)

Duration: 0:13h, download MP3 (11.5 MB)

Links:

• Christian Kreutz blog [00:19]
• Frankfurt-gestalten.de [01:50]
• Frankfurt, Germany (Wikipedia) [02:31]
• City of Frankfurt (homepage) [02:44]
• Drupal [04:10]
• mySociety [06:15]
• Hyperlocal (Wikipedia) [07:14]
• Frankfurt Gestalten on Facebook [09:28]
• Frankfurt Gestalten on Twitter [09:29]
• Open Data Network [11:44]

This interview was recorded on March 13, 2010.

Following my post earlier this January trying to further outline the relationship between crowdsourcing and public participation, Daren C. Brabham left a comment pointing me to some of the research he had done in this area. Last week, I had a chance to hear him present at the 2010 Stakeholder Engagement Online Conference. I really enjoyed his talk and thought this would be a good time to ask him on the show.

In this session, we talk about the concept of crowdsourcing as an engagement process in urban planning. Rather than get stuck too much on the challenges or shortcomings, though, I wanted to focus on what works. Hopefully, we’ll encourage people to start their own experiments with this approach. Enjoy!

Download audio file (twip_2010_003_201003101400_brabham_crowdsourcing.mp3)

Duration: 0:18h, download MP3 (15.8 MB)

Links:

• Daren C. Brabham homepage [00:21]
• “Including the Excluded” 2010 Stakeholder Engagement Online Conference [00:25]
• Department of Communication at the University of Utah [00:52]
• Threadless.com (company) [01:00]
• “The Rise of Crowdsourcing” (by Jeff Howe, June 2006 issue of Wired Magazine) [01:28]
• Innocentive (company) [01:39]
• Daren’s dissertation focuses on “the potential for the crowdsourcing model to move beyond the for-profit sector and to be put into use for government and non-profit problem solving.” [01:53]
• International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) [03:28]
• The Next Stop Design Case (Daren’s presentation at the 2010 Stakeholder Engagement Online Conference) [04:14]
• Wikipedia [05:45]
• Outsourcing (concept) [05:57]
• Utah Transit Authority [08:15]
• Next Stop Design (first contest, Summer/Fall 2009) [08:28]
• “Colbert tops poll to name NASA space module” (CNN, March 24, 2009) [10:01]
• Next Stop Design (second contest, March 9 through April 6, 2010) [12:45]
• Beth Simone Noveck [15:10]
• Wiki Government (book) [15:15]
• New Zealand Police Act Review [15:18]

This interview was recorded on March 10, 2010.

I came across Mike Krieger’s blog in the summer of 2009 while doing some research on crowdsourcing, particularly crowdstorming (large-group online brainstorming or idea generation efforts).

In this episode, we talk about what makes a good brainstorm, discuss a few recent examples of crowdstorming projects, including some of the shortcomings of current online tools and ways these design challenges might be addressed in the future, and learn about Ideas2Ideas, a very cool prototype in this area that Mike and his colleagues built while at Stanford.

Due to a minor glitch, Mike’s entry into the show (right at the beginning where he says he’s glad to be on, presumably) got lost irretrievably in the ether. Apologies.

Download audio file (twip_2010_002_201002211400_krieger_crowdstorming.mp3)

Duration: 0:14h, download MP3 (12.5 MB)

Links to some of the things we touched upon:

• Stanford HCI Group [00:20]
• Mike’s post from September 7, 2008: Brainstorming with the Crowd: Encouraging Constructive Ideation [00:42]
• Dell IdeaStorm [01:46]
• My Starbucks Idea [01:48]
• IDEO’s 7 Rules of Brainstorming [02:45]
• Change.gov Open for Questions [04:07]
• Google Moderator [04:18]
• Open Government Directive (PDF) [06:50]
• IdeaScale [07:00]
• Amazon Mechanical Turk [08:49]
• Ideas2Ideas code repository on GitHub [09:17]
• Luis von Ahn [11:17]
• Google Image Labeler [11:34]
• reCAPTCHA [12:05]

This interview was recorded on February 21, 2010.

For this inaugural episode, I caught up with Amy Lang. Amy is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She wrote her dissertation on British Columbia’s groundbreaking Citizens’ Assembly process, and is currently doing follow-up research on the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly.

Download audio file (twip_2010_001_201002191400_lang_urgentevoke.mp3)

Duration: 0:10h, download MP3 (9.0 MB)

Here are the links to some of the resources that were mentioned in our conversation:

• British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform [01:27]
• Urgent Evoke [02:02] – An “Invent the Future Game” developed for the World Bank Institute (2010). Evoke is a “ten-week crash course in changing the world.” It is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere. The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems. The game begins on March 3, 2010. Players can join the game at any time.
• SuperStruct [03:18] – The world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game (2008)
• Jane McGonigal homepage [04:55]
• Urgent Evoke mentor program [07:33]
• Epic Win [09:07] — YouTube video of Jane McGonigal’s presentation at The Future of the Forum (FOTF) symposium at UC Berkeley, December 2009

This interview was recorded on February 19, 2010.

Welcome to This Week in Participation (TWiP):

This Week in Participation is kind of like an internet radio show. Except it isn’t always live, has no fixed schedule and may include video. Enjoy!

Public participation, the process of letting people help shape the decisions that affect them, is exciting! We want to bring you the folks who live and breathe participation, the people who make it happen.

Our format will be pretty casual. We’ll start out with a series of short, pre-recorded interviews but plan to add longer, more interactive live shows down the road (and who knows, maybe even video). The goal is to have at least one episode each week — we’ll see how doable that turns out to be.

You can follow @twipcast on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook. Our hashtag is #twipcast.

We’re always looking for interesting people to talk to. If you know someone special who should be on the show (including yourself), just email us, and we’ll take it from there. Thank you!