How can online collaboration support democratic innovation? That's the question web development company Affinity Bridge is tackling through its work for Participedia, a global research community that is tracking participatory and deliberative democracy experiments worldwide. SIM is helping Affinity Bridge and Participedia develop an innovative web platform that combines case study collection, collaborative authoring of academic articles, content aggregation and storytelling. From the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly of 2004 to consensus conferences in Denmark; from participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre to local school council governance in Chicago; from municipal evaluation meetings in China to the People’s Campaign for Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, India: Participedia will be the single best source of information and insight into the extraordinary variety of democratic innovations now underway worldwide.
SIM matched Affinity Bridge with Participedia's UBC and Harvard-based leadership team, and is helping develop the platform strategy, feature selection and visual identity. Design student David Aitken developed Participedia's initial logo and site design, working with Affinity Bridge to develop a sustainable approach to the initial site. SIM Centre Director Alexandra Samuel is working with Participedia's creators, Archon Fung and Mark Warren, to develop the longer-term platform vision. The platform will draw on ECUAD's expertise in participatory design, curatorial practice and interface design, engaging a range of students, faculty and industry partners to create both the design and technical implementation.
