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Trying to serve the latter part of the technology adoption lifecycle with new technology.

Framework of Participation: A process model for the grassroots campaign

• Stage 1 - Discovering
• Stage 2 - Deciding
• Stage 3 - Planning
• Stage 4 - Acting
• Stage 5 - Retiring

Takes 2 years typically, but stage 1 and 2 could be accellerated

Discovering
-Exchange concern, time and skills.
-Routes In:

• news
• where i live local sites
• offline publicity

-Democracy Database:
*Civic information
*How-tos
**On running a campaign
**On how local and national government works

Deciding: Validating concern, monitoring responses, considering action
*Lowering barrier to participation
*Dont have to register to post a prod
*Start of a "conversation of action"
*Shipbuilding
*Its expressed in the language of the systems; no need to mederate, all signal
*Search for people of same concerns

Planning: recruiting, strategizing
*Folder permissions
*Tools for organizing meetings, journaling progress
*Tools with hooks to support existing technologies
*Democracy database content
*Case studies
*Call an editor: peer and/or editorial review prior to publishing

Acting: apllying pressure, managing outcomes
*Folder goes live as a window on group activity
*Fellow groups in other locations with similar issues discover the work and links, information exchanged
*Support gained
*Broadcast media coverage

Retiring
*Stage where action dies
*Knowledge retired
*Creative commons license

^^^^Different Scales, Different Tools
*Issue clustering can ramp up participation
*Issues dont stay at one scale
*Tools work differently at different scales

^^^^Different Types of People, Different Tools
*Connectors, Mavens & Salespeople (Tipping Point, by Gladwell)
*Mavens - Democracy DB Tools
*Connectors - People tools
*Salespeople - Initiative tools

"We make ourselves stupid in order to make the computer software seem smart" - Jason Lanier

The real world is complicated enough. Whatever we do cannot be simple enough.