Truly conference happiness!

Thursday the 26th of November finally came, at it was time for our Truly Yours conference. About 60 participants from Sweden, Finland, Malta, England, Italy and Umeå participated in debates, lectures and work shops.

We started of by identifying the big challenges we see in the participatory democracy field. The most critical questions we ask ourselves now are ” “Who has to gain by there not being participatory influence?”, “Who decides who participates?” “How do we give the people with power the courage to hand over influence?” and “”How can we make the target interested?”

The day moved on and we became enlightened on the latest projects, research and methods for participatory democracy.

Nils Hertting from Uppsala University started of by making us aware us on what a radical change process it is to move from a vertical structure with representative democracy to a horizontal structure with focus on participation.

Jan Lindgren shared with us how the Pirate Party is using social media in their democracy work.

Natasha Borg from Atelier on Malta shared the story of the project “from North to South: Space for Memories”.

Tommi Laitio from Demos Helsinki talk about how the role of the civil servant will change in the future. The role as an expert who gives recommendations and advice will be buried and a new role, as a process designer will emerge. The role of the designer will be to create processes that involves the real experts, the citizens, in the decision making.

Fredrik Lindegren, project leader for “Umeå – Culture Capital 2014″, took us on an impressive film tour and shared success stories on methods that the municipality of Umeå has used in order to involve the citizens in the decision making processes.

You can now follow the debate on participatory influence and look at slide shows and videos from the conference, at our Truly Yours wiki.

Gazing in to the future, we are right now putting our minds to work on the next possible subject to do a geek-dive in. We are right now considering implementation. What do you think? Please e-mail us!

A big hand to all of you who participated and made the day a participatory success!

Truly conference happiness!

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