Denmark has contacted us on the blog

[MrPerfect72]

Hi – I work with an online democracy concept called ”We-Decide” – you can find more info on ”http://we-decide.net/online_direct_democracy_project/”
I live in Copenhagen, and will be in Stockholm over the next three days and would like to meet some of you to exchange perspectives.
You can contact me at erdem@we-decide.net – hope to get in touch.
Erdem

http://aktivdemokrati.wordpress.com/about/#comment-1893

Anyone in Stockholm to meet the guy and brief him about Aktiv Demokrati? Or should we just send him some of the links we have in English? Manifesto, FAQ?

[Magnus Gustavsson]

Why not invite him to the west coast of Sweden on the way home to Copenhagen?

[gilroitto]

Why not invite him to the west coast of Sweden on the way home to Copenhagen?

I was contacted by Martin regarding Erdem, since I live in Malmö, close to Copenhagen. So I agreed to meet him to listen to him, which will hopefully happen this weekend. The idea was to report back to Aktiv Demokrati and Direktdemokraterna and anyone else interested. I'm currently not a member of AD but a big supporter and hope i will shed some light over We-decide, and maybe influence Erdem in a good direction to develop products and services which will promote representative direct democracy.

Here is some correspondance from Erdem before the meeting:

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I started We-Decide.net , with the goal of exploring successful systems for online direct governance. I aspire to implement this in smaller institutions besides politics in national level. You can read about we-decide on our website.
...
We-Decide is in its development phase, and is looking for meaningful client contexts, including political parties, but also clubs, associations, etc - basically all organizations with constituents having balanced or equal rights to authority or decision-making. So, the goal is to establish an online governance platform with the deliberation aspect in the center, supported by voting and transparent documentation.

While the product will be sold at a fee, We-Decide will have to prove its concept in initial client communities.
-------

If you have any direct question I can relay them to him during the meeting.

[MrPerfect72]

I feel it is important to tell him that we have already developed a functioning Beta system (GPL) that he could use in the same way as for example freeforums.org are doing with phpBB. This PHP system was programmed by Joasi and follows the directions of the political party program and the design document. Joasi's system has been set up to 75% in winlamp on my computer by Mikko from Finland. Missing bits are budget voting and priority voting. Fore some reason Joasi is unwilling to cooperate and set it up and it is unfortunatly written with swedish parameters. - Don't ask me why!?

We have a new system being programmed at the moment in PERL by fiddur (link in my signature) He does not like PHP som he makes it in PERL.

My advice is that you read party program, FAQ and design document before you meet as a basis of discussions.
Good luck, Gil!

[joasi]

To answer MrPerfect (again) about my 5-years-old effort to create a voting system for AD: I believe I have come to the same conclusion as fiddur, that the structure and overall design of that project is less than satisfactory. I think it would be very demanding to refactor it and develop it into a full-blown voting system with satisfactory functionality, reliability and maintainability. So I fully support fiddurs current effort, although i believe a team effort would have a higher probability of success.

[MrPerfect72]

To answer MrPerfect (again) about my 5-years-old effort to create a voting system for AD: I believe I have come to the same conclusion as fiddur, that the structure and overall design of that project is less than satisfactory. I think it would be very demanding to refactor it and develop it into a full-blown voting system with satisfactory functionality, reliability and maintainability. So I fully support fiddurs current effort, although i believe a team effort would have a higher probability of success.

Well, I am not an expert, bur if putting a man on the moon is possible, then creating a good system for voting in the 21st century seems very possible to me.

[pH7.3]

Well, I am not an expert, bur if putting a man on the moon is possible, then creating a good system for voting in the 21st century seems very possible to me.

I'm pretty sure that if and when we get resources anywhere near the funding of the space race in the 60's, we'll put together one hell of a voting system!

[MrPerfect72]

Well, I am not an expert, bur if putting a man on the moon is possible, then creating a good system for voting in the 21st century seems very possible to me.

I'm pretty sure that if and when we get resources anywhere near the funding of the space race in the 60's, we'll put together one hell of a voting system!

There is an abundance of time and resources available now. Unemployment is huge. There is also an abundance of money available to most people now. That is why there is Linux, Open Office, Gimp, Firefox, Skype etc. available for free. That is why everyone now contribute for free. There are being robots developed now by Nasa that can do almost everything a human hand can do. That is why the future will be completely free and abundant and really fun. We program for fun and just like anything else, the more free, the more fun, the better result.

Just have fun together! If you have money, then use it for the good of democracy, because it will save humanity from destruction and you are part of that category.

[gilroitto]

There is an abundance of time and resources available now. Unemployment is huge. There is also an abundance of money available to most people now. That is why there is Linux, Open Office, Gimp, Firefox, Skype etc. available for free. That is why everyone now contribute for free. There are being robots developed now by Nasa that can do almost everything a human hand can do. That is why the future will be completely free and abundant and really fun. We program for fun and just like anything else, the more free, the more fun, the better result.

Just have fun together! If you have money, then use it for the good of democracy, because it will save humanity from destruction and you are part of that category.

You have to attract people for them to sacrifce their free time on YOUR project, and not the other 1000s of really interesting and good projects out there. The story usually goes that someone starts something that proves to be something useful and good. Then people will jump into it. So some people among us must manage to create something that people will immediately believe in, which is so good and unique already, that it can be the most attractive alternative to contribute to.

I am programmer that will be happy to spend time in something that I can believe in. Fiddurs system is nice but honestly not yet something I can believe in, and therefore I have no motivation to contribute and I will NOT have fun spending 100s of hours, even if I was unemployed, on something that I fear will end up as all the previous attempts.

IF you want to attract programmers already now, then you need a good summary of the analysis and the vision of the system. Then it will be possible to in limited time get the information needed to start to believe in the project.

[MrPerfect72]

You have to attract people for them to sacrifce their free time on YOUR project, and not the other 1000s of really interesting and good projects out there. The story usually goes that someone starts something that proves to be something useful and good. Then people will jump into it. So some people among us must manage to create something that people will immediately believe in, which is so good and unique already, that it can be the most attractive alternative to contribute to.

I am programmer that will be happy to spend time in something that I can believe in. Fiddurs system is nice but honestly not yet something I can believe in, and therefore I have no motivation to contribute and I will NOT have fun spending 100s of hours, even if I was unemployed, on something that I fear will end up as all the previous attempts.

IF you want to attract programmers already now, then you need a good summary of the analysis and the vision of the system. Then it will be possible to in limited time get the information needed to start to believe in the project.

Create a plan for something you can believe in and EXECUTE!