When a movement becomes a party: the experiment of Barcelona en Comù and the new network of Spanish democratic cities

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 10th September 2015

Article by Francesca Bria and Elettra Bianchi Dennerlein. The original article was published at the Nesta website.

Four years after the emergence of the revolutionary networked social movement 15M, the newly formed Spanish political party Podemos is now one of the most innovative, growing political parties in Spain and just over three months ago the grassroots citizen-led coalition Barcelona En Comù won the City Council elections in Barcelona forming a network of new democratic Cities that include also Madrid, Zaragoza, Pamplona and others. Read more +

Crowd Dialog Europe: It’s all about the crowd

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 1st September 2015

On August 27th, 2015, Crowd Dialog Europe gathered representatives from 28 European countries to Helsinki to discuss latest trends on crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and crowdinnovation. D-CENT participated the event by hosting a workshop discussing new e-democracy tools for cities. Read more +

D-CENT Roundtable: Technologies for network democracy and citizen actions

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 30th July 2015

On the 8th of July 2015 D-CENT took part at the second International conference organised by CAPS2015 (Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation) in Brussels.

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Managing the Knowledge Commons: Interview with Carlo Vercellone

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 17th July 2015

Article by Francesca Bria and Elettra Bianchi Dennerlein. The original article was published at the Nesta website.

Interview with Dr. Carlo Vercellone, one of the leading theorists of cognitive capitalism and economist at the CNRS Lab of The Sorbonne Economic Centre (Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne, CES).

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The future of the Web should be truly open, surveillance-free and enhance citizens’ rights

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 1st July 2015

Article by Francesca Bria and Elettra Bianchi Dennerlein. The original article was published at the Nesta website.

The 2015 Web We Want festival edition launched with a Q&A evening session on Thursday the 28th with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee discussed the future of the web and his vision of instituting a successful Bill of Rights for the Web.

During the opening interview, Tim Berners Lee covered a broad range of topics such as limiting the surveillance powers of State Agencies and corporations; providing equal Internet access as basic human right; re-appropriation of data and data control by citizens, privacy and security by design; Net neutrality and copyright reform.

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Designing digital democracy: a short guide

Democracy Projectadmin 18th May 2015

Writer: Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive at Nesta. The original article was published in the Nesta website.

I’ve written quite a few blogs and pieces on digital technology and democracy – most recently on the relevance of new-style political parties. [1]

Here I look at the practical question of how parliaments, assemblies and governments should choose the right methods for greater public engagement in decisions.

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Network Democracy for a better city Barcelona 5th May

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 11th May 2015

D-CENT’s Network Democracy for a better city event was organised in the 5th of May in Barcelona. The event explored how politics and political participation can be reinvented with concrete proposals to devolve greater control and power to citizens. We also presented network democracy tools and ideas for real participatory cities of the XXI century.

The programme (see in English here / Spanish here) included four panels and 24 speakers. The event attracted around 170 high-level policy makers, academics, activists, civic society organisations, and hackers together to debate.

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New Scientist: Could digital democracy win your vote?

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 30th April 2015

Niall Firth writes in the New Scientist (24 April 2015) about digital democracy and the potential of online tools to revitalise old democratic practices.

“New online tools are revitalising old democratic practices, bypassing the political middlemen and even offering the prospect of a world without politicians at all”, the article says.

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Open Knowledge Finland discusses the D-CENT potential to change democratic participation

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 1st April 2015

Writers: Darryl Chamberlain & Francesca Bria (Nesta)

Representatives of the groups involved in D-CENT met in London to share their experiences. Jaakko Korhonen of Open Knowledge Foundation Finland talked about D-CENT’s potential.

What are you doing for D-CENT?

I’ve been doing research and development work and design work, and have colleagues that are working on participation, community management and more. There’s a network of people who are trying to find citizen-oriented democracy opportunities and there’s only a handful of organisations with the capability to accelerate this.

Maybe it comes from being in a small circle, but we keep ourselves away from the stuff that we’re not responsible for, so the decision-makers don’t get confused!

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D-CENT Interview with Citizens Foundation

Democracy Pilots Projectadmin 27th March 2015

Editors: Darryl Chamberlain, Francesca Bria

Citizens foundation promotes e-democracy and participatory budgeting in Iceland. Interviewing Róbert Bjarnason.

What is the Citizens Foundation?

We’re a non-profit that started after the Icelandic financial crisis in 2008, and we aim to increasing people’s influence in policy and government. All the banks went bankrupt, and there was a big decrease in trust in the political process and parliament. Parliament went from a 70-something percent trust rating down to six or seven per cent. It’s now recovered to 14%.

I started Iceland’s first internet service provider in 1993, and I thought we could use the internet to empower people and give them a stronger voice. Our Your Priorities tool was written into the original proposal, and I think D-CENT could really help us.

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